The Fintech Talents Festival brought that sentiment to life across six lively stages of content. Each highlighted how the borders of fintech are forever shifting and how our community grows as a consequence. From high street retailers to high street banks, the Fintech Talents community is unique. 

All the world’s a fintech stage 

The Fintech Talents Festival brought that sentiment to life across six lively stages of content. Each highlighted how the borders of fintech are forever shifting and how our community grows as a consequence. From high street retailers to high street banks, the Fintech Talents community is unique, diverse, inclusive, and fast changing. 

Perhaps that is not surprising given the role that financial services play in all our lives – whether as consumers or businesses. And as we learned, the future of the industry is a journey in progress, not a destination. As 2000+ participants demonstrated, the key issues and problems to be solved both from a macro and micro perspective, are all in scope.  

There can be no transition to net zero, for example, without the active participation and engagement of the financial services ecosystem. The challenges facing consumers and businesses given the macroeconomic headwinds need to be considered by both established financial providers and innovative fintechs. 

A few thoughts on each of the stages follows and to get a real sense of the Festival experience, have a look at the highlights video. It was an incredibly informative two days, but it was also a lot of fun. We are grateful to everyone – speakers, partners, and attendees – that made the 2022 edition of the Fintech Talents Festival such a success.  

Fintech Talents Stage 

Across the two days, speakers discussed and debated the issues noted above, as well as the challenges faced by growing companies themselves. How do fintechs navigate uncertainty whilst continuing to deliver for both their customers and employees.  

Data, as demonstrated across the two days of conversations, continues to underpin the creation of better financial products, as well as successful companies.  The cloud is an important part of enabling innovation at speed, lower cost and providing agility to scale up (or scale back) as needed. 

There were lots of takeaways with regards to where we are now and the technologies and business models leading the industry into the future.  

FTT Open Finance Stage 

Data, data and data. Open finance has the potential to ‘open’ even greater access to that crucial building block of innovation.  

The backdrop to every session and presentation was taking stock of where we are now with Open Banking and looking ahead, how does the move to Open Finance broaden the horizons of innovators across the financial services and fintech innovators to new opportunities. 

More changes to payments are coming, digitised (at last) mortgage processes, better lending products, greater engagement in wealth management and incorporating geo-spatial data were just some of the exciting ideas and projects discussed.  

FTT Embedded Finance Stage 

If you’re curious about how embedded finance is revolutionising the next wave of digital payments innovation, the Embedded Finance Stage was the place to be, to receive the latest updates and insights.  

From debating whether crypto payments are entering the mainstream to reimagining retail through payments, our speaker faculty of world class payments experts from Uber, OnlyFans, Goldman Sachs and more divulged the hottest takes on all things digital payments.   

If you would like a taste of what transpired at Embedded Finance, click here.  

FTT Defi Stage 

It will probably come as no surprise, given some of the unfolding crypto-related woes and scandals that the Defi Stage was host to many lively debates and conversations.  

Among the stories of malfeasance and financial loss, it is clear that distributed ledger-technology is here to stay, and crypto acceptance remains steady. 

There were a lot of discussions of use cases and, crucially, how regulation needs to address some of the gaps in oversight and customer protection. Decentralised finance represents a fundamentally new way of organizing financial services and it remains a very exciting space, albeit one with a long way to travel. 

Want to learn more and keep pace with a rapidly changing market, join us in London on 4 July for the next edition of FTT DeFi. 

FTT Building Societies 

When push comes to shove, what does heritage really mean for the mutual sector? Our Rockstar speakers gathered to answer this, as well as burning questions surrounding the future, health and potential of the community finance sphere. 

Running the gamut of culture, wealth-gaps, green mortgages and even a decentralised mutual banking network, FTT Building Societies set the stage for a sector poised to move with the times. 

Watch the highlights video below and key on eye out for our full schedule of 2023 content, community, and experiences. Please get in touch with your thoughts and ideas for the Fintech Talents Festival 2023. We will be back on the Brewery, London on the 13 & 14 November.