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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
How will disruptive technologies like Generative AI change the financial services landscape. How will these technologies impact our ability to expand financial wellness and promote financial inclusion?
The rise of disruptive technologies has created new opportunities for banks and financial services companies to bring new and better services to consumers and businesses. Here’s a look at what our fintech experts told us this year at FinovateFall about how disruptive technology will shape the future of finance.
This year at FinovateFall we heard from fintech analysts and financial services professionals on what financial institutions can and should do in order to bring better financial services to more individuals, families, communities, and businesses. Here’s a brief Streamly Snaphot sharing what our experts had to say.
It’s no secret that we’re facing many challenges right now. Declining VC investment, rising interest rates, and the looming threat of a recession are all obviously significant obstacles that must be overcome, but we’re also seeing a surge of innovators tackling real-world challenges head on.
At FinovateFall, we’ve seen exciting automation and AI use cases, including generative AI! We also heard financial institutions talk about their digital transformation journey and how they’ve applied technology to improve their processes and enable their businesses to grow. Plus, we met with industry agnostic experts who inspired us to be better leaders and innovators and who helped us think about a future with AI and a future in the metaverse.
With hundreds of ballots officially cast and carefully counted – here are the winners of Best of Show for FinovateFall 2022!
Debbie for its technology that leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off 3x more debt and help lenders recession-proof members. Demo.
Horizn for its platform that helps financial institutions maximize the impact of digital and accelerate returns on digital investments with customers and employees. Demo.
LemonadeLXP for its digital growth platform that helps financial institutions and fintechs turn staff into digital experts and support digital customers. Demo.
Quilo for its technology that empowers lenders to digitally syndicate an individual personal loan at the time of underwriting, enabling them to provide more loans to more people. Demo.
Stratyfy for its technology that increases access to financial services by bringing true transparency and less risk to critical financial decisions that impact millions. Demo.
Themis for its collaboration platform designed for risk and compliance requirements to help accelerate partnerships between banks and fintechs. Demo.
We are grateful to all of our demoing companies for being a part of our biggest FinovateFall to date. Thanks as well to our sponsors, our partners, and – last but not least – our awesome attendees who continue to make our conferences among the most anticipated events on the fintech calendar each and every year. We look forward to seeing you again next fall!
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their six favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2022 conferences are below:
Exciting things are happening in fintech right now, and we’re incredibly grateful to have so many of you joining us at FinovateFall this year to take it all in for yourself. There’s a lot to be excited about! As you may have heard, this year’s FinovateFall is officially our largest show yet, with more than 1,600 of you here in the room with us. After a period of general upheaval and uncertainty, it’s great to see the fintech community coming together en masse to plot a course for the future.
What’s happening is bigger than just the number of people in the room, though. It’s no secret that the last few years have been challenging ones and what we’re seeing now is fintech’s response to that challenge. New ideas, new innovations, and new companies are taking shape right before our eyes; venture capitalists are actively seeking out early-stage investment opportunities; and financial institutions themselves are more receptive to change and innovation than ever before. And most importantly, at every step of the way, the industry is making a concerted effort to help the everyday people who need it most.
Analysis from our resident journalists on the top trends from the event and beyond
Thought leadership from Headline Sponsor, Provenir
The Best of Show demos videos
The Finovate Awards winners, and finalist profiles of Highnote and RBC Clearing
Expert opinion on accelerating your lending strategy, the do’s and don’ts of leveraging emerging technology in fintech and exploring virtual worlds and economies
Yesterday we shared the announcement that FinovateFall 2022 is on track to be our biggest event to date. Today we have great news from the other side of the Finovate stage: fully 50% of the speakers at FinovateFall in New York next month will be women.
“This definitely contributes to our DEI initiatives and effort to inject diversity into our events and portfolio as a whole,” Finovate Brand Strategy Director Adela Knox said.
Here are just a few of the women who will share their insights into fintech and the future of financial services at FinovateFall, September 12 through 14.
Remember that early-bird savings for FinovateFall 2022 end soon! Be sure to stop by the FinovateFall registration hub today to take advantage of special discounted ticket prices through Friday, September 2nd.
SC Moatti
SC Moatti will deliver a keynote address titled: Winter Is Coming: Now’s the Time to Hire That Chief Product Officer. Moatti is the founding Managing Partner of Mighty Capital; and the founding CEO of product acceleration platform, Products That Count.
In her address, Moatti will explain the consequences of not heeding the “product call” and why, if there’s one role companies should keep on their list of new hires this season, then it should be a Chief Product Officer.
As part of FinovateFall’s Payments stream, Wells Fargo Head of Enterprise Payments Ulrike Guigui will give a keynote address, Has the Pandemic Changed Payments Forever? 90% of Bank’s Useful Customer Data Comes from Payments – How Can They Ensure They Stay in the Game?
Alyson Clarke
Also in our Payments stream, Bernadette Ksepka, AVP and Deputy Head of Product Development, FedNowSM Service, Federal Reserve System, will sit down with PayGen co-founder and Chief Product Officer Robin LoGiudice to discuss The Continued Evolution of Faster, Cheaper, and Better Payments – Where Next with Instant Payments.
Alyson Clarke, Principal Analyst with Forrester, will deliver a keynote address titled Hybrid Banking – Why the Future is a Blend of Physical and Digital, as part of our Customer Experience stream.
Also in our Customer Experience stream, Symend co-founder and Chief Impact Officer Tiffany Kaminsky will share her insights in an address titled Upping the Ante: Using the Science of Decision-Making for Effective Customer Engagement.
FinovateFall 2022 in New York next month is on pace to be the biggest Finovate conference to date.
The Finovate team got the word early Tuesday morning: 1600+ registered attendees for FinovateFall. And counting …
“That’s huge!!” said Finovate VP, podcast host, and conference Master of Ceremonies Greg Palmer. “Biggest show in a long time!”
And with less than two weeks to go before the curtain goes up on our fall fintech conference, there’s every chance that the biggest Finovate in a long time is going to get even bigger.
Early-bird discounts end this week, so today is a great time to swing by our FinovateFall registration page and save your spot as Finovate’s return to live events continues. From September 12 though September 14, FinovateFall 2022 will feature three days of live fintech demoes, insightful main stage keynotes on critical fintech topics, as well as fan favorites like our Analyst All Stars Panel, Fintech Fight Club, all-day networking opportunities, and more.
Earlier this year, we unveiled our Sustainability Scholarship Program for demoing companies. Our new initiative supports startups that are embracing environmental sustainability, social equity, and responsible governance (ESG).
With FinovateFall just weeks away, we are excited to share the names of the six demoing companies to win Sustainability Scholarships for our upcoming autumn event, September 12 through 14, in New York.
Remember that early-bird savings for FinovateFall end after September 2nd. Register today and save your seat!
Headquartered in the U.K and founded in 2019, Daizy helps users become more conscious investors with an AI that gives them the data-driven stories behind America’s biggest companies.
Deborah Yang is co-founder and CEO. Follow Daizy on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn.
Debbie – Winner of the Female Founded/Owned category
Based in Miami, Florida and founded in 2021, Debbie is the Noom for debt loss. The company leverages behavioral psychology and rewards to help users pay off 3x more debt and help lenders recession-proof members.
Co-founder Frida Leibowitz is CEO. Follow Debbie on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn.
Deposits – Winner of the Person of Color Founded/Owned category
Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Deposits is a cloud-based fintech platform that gives banks and brands an easy-to-use turnkey solution to build best-in-class financial experiences from payments to lending.
Joseph Akintolayo is CEO. Follow Deposits on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn.
Energy Shares – Winner of the Environmental category
Headquartered in Pasadena, California and founded in 2020, Energy Shares is a FINRA registered broker-dealer and equity crowdfunding platform for utility scale renewable energy projects in the U.S.
Based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and founded in 2020, Investii is an actionable, wealth-building app empowering healthy savings habits, financial confidence, and alternative credit data.
Nishant Deshpande is co-founder and CEO. Connect with Investii on LinkedIn.
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, MinervaAI is an AI-driven platform that provides simple and effective sanctions, KYC, KYB, IDV, and enhanced due diligence to help businesses grow.
Co-founder Jennifer Arnold is CEO. Follow MinervaAI on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn
With a little over a month to go before FinovateFall 2022 in New York City, our agenda for the autumn event is still being finalized. But there are a few highlights we can share with you this week to further whet your appetite for the fintech feast to come on September 12 through September 14. Today we’ll take a look at the mastermind keynote speakers we have scheduled for FinovateFall, each of whom was selected for their unique understanding of what’s driving innovation in financial technology today.
Day One will feature a Mastermind Keynote from Chris Cox, Chief Operating Officer of Apiture. Titled “Closing the Data Intelligence Gap”, Cox’s address will look at ways that financial institutions can better process and analyze available data while simultaneously (1) helping their businesses, (2) supporting their customers, and (3) maintaining regulatory compliance. Cox will examine ways that banks and credit unions can close the “expertise gap” that may be preventing them from innovating in the ways their customers want.
Before becoming COO of Apiture, Cox was General Manager of First Data’s digital banking business. He also led the mobile payment product development efforts at the company. He is a graduate of Miami University in Ohio, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, and of Duke University, where he earned an MBA.
Day Two will include a Mastermind Keynote from Claudio Cungi, Chief Product Officer, and Alice Menenti, Product Manager, both of Strands. Cungi and Menenti will present “Providing Actionable Insights to Create the Banking Platform of Tomorrow.” This address will review how enabling technologies have given banks the ability to dramatically increase the degree of personalization they can bring to their products and services. Cungi and Menenti will show how financial institutions can use the insights made available through more personalized engagement with customers to build better, more personalized business banking platforms
The final day of FinovateFall 2022 will feature a number of Mastermind Keynotes as part of our various tracks on Payments, AI, Customer Experience, Lending, Cryptocurrencies, and Digital Transformation. Among the day’s highlights are a discussion on the Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) and its priorities for fintech in 2022 and beyond conducted by Thomas Ward, the organization’s current Enforcement Director. The day will also feature a presentation by Tiffany Kaminsky, co-founder and Chief Impact Officer for Symend titled “Upping the Ante: Using the Science of Decision-Making for Effective Customer Engagement.” This presentation will discuss the concepts of behavioral engagement and hyper-personalization and examines initiatives that financial institutions can take to integrate both into their current business strategies.
These are only a handful of the Master Keynotes scheduled for FinovateFall this year. For more information, visit our FinovateFall hub to learn more about our agenda, our speakers, and, of course, how to register today and save your spot at our upcoming fintech event. Pick up your ticket by Friday, August 12 and take advantage of big, early-bird savings!
Is there a better person to lead a conversation about bold leadership in fintech than Luvleen Sidhu? Chair, founder, and CEO of BM Technologies, Sidhu was the youngest female founder and CEO to take a company public when her firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange at the beginning of the year.
“I am proud to see BM Technologies take this historic step and enter the public markets,” Sidhu said in January. “We are delighted to be one of the first neo banking fintechs to go public. We are also EBITDA positive today, which serves to set us apart from other neo banking fintechs in the market.”
Formerly known as BankMobile, BM Technologies currently has more than two million account holders, and provides disbursement services at 700+ college campuses in the U.S., reaching one out of every three students in the country. The BaaS innovator was among the fintechs to earn recognition at the recently announced Finovate Awards, taking home top honors in the Best Fintech Partnership category for its collaboration with T-Mobile.
Beyond the Arc’s Steven Ramirez hosted a fireside chat with Luvleen Sidhu as part of the FinovateFall conference in New York last week. Below are a few excerpts from their conversation.
On what it takes to be a bold leader today
For me, being a bold leader really comes down to a few key things that, in my opinion, a bold leader would demonstrate. So that is being able to have a compelling and unique and unifying vision and purpose. (It is) being able to get people to buy into that, to be energized by that, committed to that. (It is also) being able to have superior execution, because you can have a great idea and be in the clouds, but unless you are working on improving, iterating, and being agile and adaptive to the times, you’re not going to succeed.
On the inspiration behind her company’s “bold bet” in 2016
We launched in 2015 as a direct-to-consumer strategy – like the Chimes, the Varos, the N26s of the world are doing now. We found out pretty early on that our pillar of being able to have a profitable, sustainable model as fast as possible wasn’t happening. The CAC was really high. We weren’t getting the sort of engagement and direct deposit customers which are critical in banking to actually get. So we took a bold bet in 2016 where we took a B2B2C approach and started implementing banking as a service, which is our strategy today.
On practicing bold leadership on an individual level
I think it’s contagious. When you’re bringing that innovative sort of passionate mindset and energy to work, then you engender that with everyone that you work with. It creates this ripple effect and you get others to buy in and work with you and you create a lot of tremendous momentum from that. I think it’s (important to) remain keen to continuous learning. This space is moving so fast. We can’t rest on our laurels for more than six months (before) you’ve got to innovate again. And so it’s people that make sure that they’re looking at what their customers are saying – and responding to that – but also looking at the competitive environment, how is it changing, how is it evolving … (That’s) how you remain competitive in the space.
The future of finance is being ushered in. And the pioneers of the new era lead the change from the FinovateFall stage this year.
We can’t tell you how exciting it was to welcome so many people back to Manhattan. It was made even sweeter by the fact that we were able to engage so many digital attendees at the same time. It felt good to be able to bring our community together again!
Following the long-anticipated meeting of minds and ideas, we looked back on the themes that emerged and will steer the industry forward into unchartered territory. It’s impossible, of course, to distill so many conversations down to a few high-level takeaways. However, within these pages are snippets and insights from on-and-off-stage to give you a taste of the action and a spark of the knowledge shared.
After two days of live demos from innovative fintechs and financial services companies, today is a day dedicated to discussing the key themes and critical issues facing our industry today.
From our Investor All-Stars presentations to our special focus tracks on Future Tech, Future Payments, SME and Consumer Lending, and Digital Transformation, Day Three of FinovateFall gives us the opportunity to put two day’s worth of fintech innovation into context – and to turn that context into action: to grow and evolve, to improve ROI, and to change the customer experience for the better.
Thank you for spending the week with us here at FinovateFall. Here is the agenda for today. All times Eastern.
8:15am – 9:00am | Registration, Breakfast, and Networking
9:00am – 9:05am | Welcome from Finovate
9:05am – 9:35am | Investor All-Stars
9:35am – 9:50am | Mastermind Keynote featuring Jon Curtis of Samsung Electronics America
9:50am – 10:40am | Seven in Seven: 7 Expert Speakers Tackle Top Issues in Fintech
10:40am – 11:10am | Networking Break
11:10am – 11:25am | Special Address: The Growth of In-Car Intelligent Assistants
11:25am – 11:40am | Mastermind Keynote: The Future of Digital Identity is NOW
11:40am – 12:05pm | Five in Five: 5 Expert Speakers Tackle Top Issues in Fintech
12:05pm – 1:05pm | Lunch and Networking Break
1:05pm – 2:25pm | Finovate Focus Tracks
Future Tech
Fireside Chat: Digital Currencies, Diem, Central Bank Digital Currencies & Blockchain – Are Digital Currencies & Blockchain Finally Gaining Traction with FIs?
Mastermind Keynote featuring Nick Mates of Lendr
Keynote Address: Harnessing AI to Improve Efficiencies, Increase Margins, and Prevent Fraud
Power Panel: The Conversational AI Market is Expected to Reach a $14 Billion Valuation by 2025 – How Can You Leverage It to Deliver ROI-Driving CX?
Future Payments
Mastermind Keynote: Creating a Winning Cardholder Experience
Fireside Chat: The Need for Speed – Where Next with Faster Payments?
Keynote Address: eCommerce and Post-Pandemic Priorities
Power Panel: How Will New Technologies, New Competitors, and New Business Models Shape the Future of Payments? Is Payments Orchestration About to Have its Moment?
2:25pm – 4:00pm | Finovate Focus Tracks
Digital Transformation
Keynote Address: Customer Insights – Sharing Real Life Examples of Best Practices in CX and How to Blend Human and Digital CX
Keynote Address: Financial Services Digital Transformation: Embracing the Next Generation of Technology
Power Panel: How Open Innovation & Strategic Partnerships Can Help You On Your Digital Transformation Journey
SME & Consumer Lending
Keynote Address: PPP Loans – How Community Banks Rose to the Occasion & What Lessons Can We Learn from Their Success?
Mastermind Keynote: Onboard at the Speed of Digital – Flatten Silos, Fuel Lending, and Regain Control
Power Panel: Lending 2.0 – What Are the Problems that Need to Be Solved for Consumers & SMEs in the New COVID-19 World?
