Finovate Europe 2020: For the Better Customer Journey
On February 11-13 the Finovate Europe event took its place for the first time in Berlin. Relocated from London possibly due to the Brexit reasons, the European stage of one of the most important world fintech events has gathered new and regular public in the heart of German capital. With an obvious focus on German public, Finovate Europe 2020 gathered a huge number of fintech, banking and payment specialists from all over the region.
The new location is definitely as good as the new Finovate format with four different stages exploring such topics as digital future, open banking, payments, future tech and insurtech during the Industry day (Day 1). With lots of interesting panels and reputed speakers, it must be admitted that participants found it hard to follow all those sessions as they should have combined them with their meeting schedule powered by Brella. As stated by Finovate Vice President Greg PALMER, this year holds a record number of one-to-one meetings scheduled for the three days of the event — since 2007, the Finovate foundation year.
As usual, seven-minute demos form the main part of Finovate. This year, the demo stage was attended not only by startups but also by those like Glia or ItsCredit, which have been demoing for already several years and, like Glia, have once again become Best of Show winners. It is extremely interesting that most of the demoing companies are providing either KYC solutions or Customer support software. Thus, we can conclude that a better customer journey was the key point of the Finovate 2020 conference.
On Day 2, the Women in Tech community open gathering spread the light on another sharp subject that is now being discussed all over the world. It is the one about diversity and gender equity in the tech field. The Network Members highlighted the need for a better female presence on the top positions as far as during the industry event as the female speakers are rarely present and, according to public witnessing, very often discouraged from company representation.
One of the very few female demoers, Alina KORNIENKO, COO and co-founder of the Quppy project, an innovative AI-based financial, investment and payment ecosystem, has shared impressions about her experience at Finovate 2020:
“It is our first Finovate show and I am more than satisfied with this marvelous event. Its main strong point is that it gathers only financial and fintech professionals, forming a strong community ready to discuss, create and implement innovations. The Demo presentation itself gives the audience a better understanding of products and company vectors opening dialogs and building relationships.”
The closing panel on Day 3 was especially dedicated to startup fundraising experience. “Unicorn” and fund representatives presented the best tips and ways of attracting VC funds drawing the startup attention to their storytelling activities. As stated, depending on the investor type, the startup story should be modified and, nevertheless, the startup should imperatively be significantly present in the media to become more attractive for investors.