Finovation Friday | September is Fintech Conference Month

Happy Friday!

As we approach September, conference season is in full swing. As the Finance Capital of the world, New York offers a high concentration of fintech conferences next month. Whether you work for a startup, VC firm, or finserv incumbent, take time to get out of the office and interact with others in your industry. The relationship building will be the most important part of any conference you attend, and nothing can compare to building those relationships face-to-face. Here are some great options for you to explore.

September 7, 2016

Next Money will have something for everyone in the fintech community — BBVA-sponsored startup pitch competition, panels, keynotes, etc., covering fintech trends, innovation + regulation, and blockchain. Speakers include Brett King (Moven CEO), JP Nicols, Aldo de Jong (Startupbootcamp), and Ryan Gilbert (Propel Venture Partners). If you are a finserv incumbent familiar with fintech but wanting to learn more, this might be a good choice with low time commitment and variable format.

September 8-9, 2016

If you are headed to Finovate Fall this year, look me up! I will be there again this year, enjoying the mix of demos and networking. If you like traditional PowerPoint presentations (anyone?), this is not the conference for you. It is two full days of 70+ fintech companies doing live demos of their latest offering in 7 minutes or less. There tend to be a quite a few finserv incumbents, and some corporate and fintech VCs as well. Good for VCs, startups, and advanced incumbents.

September 20, 2016

Most appropriate for finserv incumbents who are considering leveraging IBM tech to power their data capabilities. Moderated by Jim Marous of The Financial Brand, you will hear IBM’s sales pitch for their behavioral customer segmentation solutions. As a half-day, this may be a starter for finserv incumbents who are taking their first steps into fintech and using customer data.

September 27-28, 2016

This event by American Banker is a very full two days focused on, you guessed it, marketplace lending! A more traditional format of keynotes and panels, the speaker list is huge, and includes such names as Scott Sanborn (new LendingClub CEO), Noah Breslow (CEO OnDeck), and Matt Burton (CEO Orchard Platform), plus plenty of others from startups, banks, law firms, etc. While not quite as big as LendIt, this is still a great option if you are specializing in lending.

September 26-29, 2016

Technically, this conference is in Geneva so might not be the easiest trek for the majority of you. However, it has something that none of the other conferences have — a cyborg anthropologist (not making this up). The conference is run by SWIFT, and will cover Banking, Compliance, Culture, and Securities. They expect over 8,000 attendees, which would be the largest conference in this list.

SelfScore, raised $7MM from Accel and others to help international student get credit in the US. SelfScore uses “data analytics and machine learning to measure credit potential” (and gets a bonus for buzzwords).

Non-prime lender LendUp raised $47.5MM in a Series C round. Notable backer include Susa Ventures, SV Angel, and GV (Google Ventures). The GV story has some intrigue as Google is banning payday lenders from advertising using Google AdWords, and LendUp is a payday lending competitor.

We have been following the development of Goldman Sachs’ consumer lending arm over the last year or so, including their acquisition of GE Bank and hiring of top talent from other banks. Now, they have unveiled the new name for their consumer lending arm: Marcus.

Speaking of names, U.K.-based challenger bank Mondo has had a challenging time with its name – they have been forced to change it due to a trademark dispute. However, the change wasn’t too severe as they settled on Monzo, after inviting the public to weigh in with suggestions. Sadly, they rejected Banky McBankface.