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LendIt Fintech USA 2019 Event Highlights

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Roger Hochschild, CEO of Discover and Douglas Merrill, CEO of Zest Finance chat with Selina Wang of Bloomberg in LendIt Fintech USA 2019 opening keynote session

Last week the fintech world gathered in San Francisco for the 7th annual LendIt Fintech USA conference. As I do every year at this time I will share many of the highlights from the keynote presentations and other parts of the event.

We kicked off the event with a fascinating discussion that encapsulated so much of what is important in finance right now. We had the CEO of Discover, Roger Hochschild and the CEO of ZestFinance, Douglas Merrill on stage talking about bank-fintech partnerships and how machine learning is helping both banks and fintech companies expand their credit box to the previously underserved. Hochschild said that partnerships are so important for banks because they can get access to talent that they might otherwise not. My favorite quote from the session was from Merrill, “There is a moral beauty in finding people who have been mistreated by the [financial] system and fixing that”.

The CEO and Co-founder of Affirm, Max Levchin, had some harsh words to say about credit cards in his session. He basically compared them to pay day loans in that in both instances borrowers are allowed to refinance their own debt in perpetuity. Their business model is based to some extent on deceiving the customer. Far better to have an installment loan where you know exactly how much you are paying with a fixed payment every month. He also talked about Affirm’s groundbreaking partnership with Walmart and how both companies, while very different when it comes to scale, have a very similar customer-centric approach. He appreciated Walmart no longer offers a deferred interest payment option, something that Levchin dislikes intensely. He said that 2019 will be the year of big partnerships for Affirm both within finance and outside.

Sallie Krawcheck is the CEO of Ellevest and previously ran the wealth management operations for some of the largest Wall Street firms. She talked about an amazingly underserved investor segment: women. Investment management is such a male dominated industry with 90% of mutual fund managers and 95% of hedge fund managers being male. She made the interesting point that we have been socialized to think that something “for women” means it is inferior and likely just a marketing ploy. Women have not made the progress either in finance or other industries that we all expected a couple of decades ago. The gender pay gap is decades away from closing and one of the ways to help close this gap is to help women invest in a smarter way.

Sallie Krawcheck of Ellevest talks with Kat Utecht of Core Innovation Capital at LendIt Fintech USA 2019
Sallie Krawcheck of Ellevest talks about empowering women investors with Kat Utecht of Core Innovation Capital
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Wrap-Up of LendIt Fintech Europe 2018

Key themes and discussion topics that emerged from LendIt Fintech Europe 2018, our two day event held in London last week

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Last week the European fintech industry gathered in London for the fifth annual LendIt Fintech Europe event. While there were many key themes that emerged from our 2018 event, given the state of politics in the UK right now, one big theme hovered over them all: Brexit. As we got underway last Monday at the Business Design Centre it was not clear that the UK Prime Minister would make it through the day with her job intact.

Of course, the industry moves on regardless of the political events of the day so all the attendees got down to business just like they have done at previous events. Key themes that emerged over the two days were the continued inroads incumbent banks were making in fintech, the maturation of bank/fintech partnerships, the importance of open banking initiatives that are in development, and why strong and sensible regulation is critical for the development of fintech. Videos of all the keynote sessions are now posted online but below is a summary of some of the key points made in each session.

Rajesh Agrawal, Deputy Mayor of London, opens LendIt Fintech Europe 2018

Kicking things off this year was Rajesh Agrawal, the Deputy Mayor for Business at the City of London. He talked passionately about the opportunity that London provides for business and the fact that there is an entire ecosystem setup here to support fintech entrepreneurs. With London you have a city that combines the best of New York, Silicon Valley and Washington DC all in one place. He made the interesting point that the future is all about connecting global cities and that cities are more important than ever before. Great cities like London can help enable these connections. He closed with the simple message that London is open for business and regardless of what happens with Brexit it will remain open.

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The Fall Fintech Conference Season is About to Kick Into Gear

A quick roundup of the major fintech conferences around the world this fall

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With fall beginning this Saturday it is time for my annual roundup of the fall fintech conferences. For fintech professionals fall is conference season with a number of major events happening around the globe. While LendIt Fintech USA happens in the spring many, if not most, of the other major fintech events of the year are in the fall. Here I bring you a brief rundown of some of the major fintech conferences happening in the next couple of months. Where we have partnership arrangements we have provided a discount code for you. I am providing this list in chronological order.

ABS East

When: Sept 23-25, 2018
Where: Miami, FL
Link: https://www.imn.org/structured-finance/conference/ABS-East-2018/
Discount code: LEND10

ABS East has been the go to fall conference for securitization for many years. This year is the 24th annual conference and I will actually speaking there on a marketplace lending panel on the Monday afternoon. My partner, Jason Jones, will also be speaking on a blockchain session. Here is what ABS East has to say about their event:

Join your colleagues from across the industry for quality content and expert insights for the largest gathering at ABS East yet. There is something for everyone at ABS East, which is a testament to our democratic process for selecting speakers that allows everyone to have a voice. Working together with our Investor Advisory Board, composed of 18 of the largest and most influential ABS investors, we select only the most high-quality speakers from across the industry. With an expected delegation of over 4,000 structured finance professionals, including more than 2,000 issuers and investors in the ABS market, ABS East is where you go to get deals done.

FinovateFall

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Key Learnings at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance 2018 Conference

Trust, financial inclusion and regulatory innovations key themes at this year’s event

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Last week I traveled to the University of Cambridge in the UK for the third annual conference put on by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. I have had a close relationship with the founders of “The Centre”, as it is known, since its inception and I really appreciate the work they do furthering the fintech industry. We have covered their global reports extensively on Lend Academy.

The Centre is the world’s leading academic research facility, at least outside of China, for the fintech industry. Their data gathering and analysis is second to none and the reality is there is simply no one else gathering this kind of data on a global scale.

Anyway, on to the highlights their event which was titled, Reimagining Alternative Finance: Global Perspectives and Local Insights. As the name implies there was very much an international flavor to the event with speakers from more than a dozen countries.

Greg Medcraft is the former head securities regulator in Australia and is now the Director of the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs of the OECD. He talked about trust and how trust in business is low today, particularly in finance. The power of the crowd is impacting trust where companies misdeeds are amplified and public opinion can turn against a company quite quickly. One of the antidotes to this is distributed ledger technology that can create networks with more trust, transparency and traceability.

We heard via video conference from Her Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands who is the UN Secretary General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development and a passionate voice for financial inclusion. She celebrated the fact that since 2011 around one billion people have moved from unbanked to banked for the first time. She gave some examples of work being done in developing countries and she called on the fintech industry to do more. As I have said before the real promise of fintech is to help the underserved in the same way that we help the already well served.

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Register Now for LendIt Fintech Europe 2018 in London

Launch pricing for the 5th annual LendIt Fintech Europe event ends tomorrow

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LendIt is returning to London for the fifth time in November for the LendIt Europe show. Now known as LendIt Fintech Europe, to reflect our broadening scope beyond lending, it will be held on November 19 & 20 at a new location, the Business Design Centre. We are expecting well over 1,000 people at the event this year.

Planning has been underway for a month or so now and we have finalized the list of topics we will be covering:

Day One – November 19

  • Future of Banking
  • Legal and Regulatory Issues
  • Credit, Risk and Identity
  • Future of Fintech

Day Two – November 20

  • Lending Innovation and Financial Inclusion
  • Blockchain
  • Investing & Entrepreneurship
  • AI & Data Analytics.

While we have expanded beyond lending rest assured that lending will still be front and center at the event. We have seen a blurring of the lines between lending and other areas of fintech as banks offer online lending, lending platforms become banks and neo-banks now partner with lending platforms. As the online lending industry has matured we are broadening our purview.

In the last month we have started reaching out to potential speakers and we will be adding new speakers regularly over the next several months.

Signature Keynote Speaker: Rt Hon George Osborne CH

I am pleased to report that we have secured a signature keynote speaker for this year, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. When he was in government he was always very bullish about fintech and he was the driving force behind the new Innovative Finance ISA. I am looking forward to hearing his thoughts on open banking, bitcoin, blockchain, AI in financial services, Brexit, the current direction of the financial regulatory landscape in Britain and more.

More keynote speakers will be announced shortly as we expect to have the best speaker lineup ever this year with many people who have never presented at LendIt before.

What Else to Expect at LendIt Fintech Europe 2018

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Wrap-Up of LendIt Fintech USA 2018

Highlights from the many keynotes and more at LendIt Fintech USA 2018 held in San Francisco April 9-11

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Peter Renton, Bo Brustkern and Jason Jones open LendIt Fintech USA 2018

Last week the sixth annual LendIt USA conference took place in San Francisco. Officially known as LendIt Fintech USA 2018 this event was, in my opinion, the best we have ever produced. As I do at this time after every LendIt event, here are my thoughts on some of the ideas that were shared by the keynote speakers as well as a summary of the rest of the event.

The opening keynote, for the second year in a row, was delivered by Scott Sanborn, the CEO of LendingClub. He gave a different kind of presentation this year. He didn’t talk much about LendingClub at all, instead choosing to focus his keynote on financial health and the looming crisis that maybe coming. He gave us all something to consider beyond just disruption, he said we should think about three key areas: financial inclusion, regulatory innovation and customer alignment. He ended with a call to action for the industry. He wanted everyone to focus on what problem you are solving and what you can do to help restore financial health to all Americans.

Scott Sanborn, the CEO of LendingClub, delivers the opening keynote at LendIt Fintech USA 2018

For the first time ever we had the CEO of Quicken Loans, Jay Farner, on stage at LendIt. Quicken Loans has become the largest mortgage lender in the country, bigger than all the banks. It was interesting to hear Jay talk about innovation. He said it is not enough today to just be faster. You need to fundamentally rethink the process, do it in a new and different way. This is where good entrepreneurial businesses will succeed because they start with a blank sheet of paper. He said there is no reason a mortgage should take longer than 10 days.

Long time readers of Lend Academy will know the name Chris Larsen. He was the co-founder and former CEO of Prosper. He left Prosper in 2012 to start Ripple, his most ambitious startup yet. Ripple is trying to revolutionize the way money is sent around the world. As he said in his discussion with Jo Ann Barefoot in finance, when it comes to moving money, we are living in a pre-internet world. It takes days to send money around the world and yet email moves instantly. It is inevitable that this will change and when it does Chris said there will be a Cambrian explosion in innovation and economic development.

Max Levchin first made a name for himself as a co-founder of PayPal but today he is most well known as the CEO and co-founder of Affirm. Affirm is attacking point of sale financing, a space that is somewhat fragmented with few big incumbent lenders. In his discussion Max said that software is eventually going to eat the credit card. We are going to move to payments made by phone but we have more work to do on the software side before that becomes the standard way people pay. Interestingly, he also attacked the APR (annual percentage rate) standard as a bad way of judging credit products. We need to reinvent a way to compare financial products that is not just focused on the APR.

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LendIt USA Returns to San Francisco in 2018

The sixth annual LendIt USA conference will take place at the Moscone Center on April 9-11, early bird pricing ends on November 3

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When we launched LendIt USA back in 2013 we were the first conference ever focused on the online lending space.  Since then we have expanded our mission to cover all of lending and in 2017 we started expanding into other areas of fintech. This has reflected the maturation of online lending as it has become part of the mainstream financial system.

In 2018, we bring you the sixth edition of LendIt USA as we are heading back to the west coast on April 9-11, 2018 at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. We will be covering financial services innovation at LendIt USA 2018 with a focus on three core areas: lending, digital banking and blockchain. The event has been open for registration for some time and early bird pricing ends this Friday.

Below are some highlights from our 2017 event.

Networking Takes Center Stage

We will have more networking opportunities at LendIt USA 2018 than ever before. We know that one of the best things about a large conference like LendIt is that everyone is there and you can forge many new connections that will help in your business.

There will be a 1-to-1 networking tool powered by Brella that will allow you to schedule short meetings with other attendees. Not only that but once you tell it the kinds of people you are interested in meeting it will actually make suggestions for you. If you are after a more curated experience then we recommend our VIP Meeting Concierge who will personally coordinate meetings ahead of the conference, available to qualified participants and sponsors only. Of course, there will also be plenty of opportunities to meet with your fellow attendees during networking breaks and the onsite cocktail party.

A Comprehensive Agenda

We are still in the early stages of putting the agenda together but we have a fantastic program planned over an expanded 2 1/2 days in 2018. We will have several big new names this year along with many popular speakers from the past and will start sharing these names shortly.

Our content tracks will be covering a breadth of topics: digital banking, consumer lending, real estate, small business lending, international fintech, financial inclusion, structured products, women in fintech, underwriting, regulation, blockchain and more.

New for 2018: The BlockFin Summit

Speaking of blockchain we are doing an entire conference within a conference focused on this topic at LendIt USA 2018. The BlockFin Summit will take place in a dedicated space within LendIt and will be focused on all things blockchain. Spearheaded by my partner, Jason Jones, the BlockFin Summit is a conference for the financial services sector with coverage of the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and tokens.

Some topics we will be covering include: enterprise blockchain using digital ledger technology, global finance built on AI and blockchain, tokenized VC and investment banking, blockchain infrastructure for markets, trading, and back office, decentralized banking and insurance, crypto-economics and more.

The LendIt Awards Dinner is Back

I think my favorite part of the 2017 event was the LendIt Industry Awards Dinner. This sold out event was a celebration of the industry where we recognized the leaders who have had the most impact over the previous year. A panel of 30+ judges selected the winners from 18 different categories. Tickets are available now for the 2018 Awards dinner and nominations will be open shortly.

Early Bird Pricing Ends Friday, November 3

Early bird pricing of $1,595 is available until this Friday, that is a $1,400 saving off the regular price. On top of that as a Lend Academy reader you receive an additional discount. Use the code LENDACADEMYVIP when you register for a 15% discount (you enter the code on the final checkout screen). While the discount code is always good for 15% off, our special early bird pricing only lasts until November 3.

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Key Takeaways From LendIt Europe 2017

Some interesting themes emerged from LendIt Europe 2017, a two day event held in London this week

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Imran Gulanhuseinwala kicks off LendIt Europe with the opening keynote

The fourth annual LendIt Europe event was in London earlier this week with around 1,100 people in attendance. Here are my key takeaways, focusing mainly on the keynote sessions.

We kicked off the event with Imran Gulamhuseinwala, the Global Head of Fintech for EY and also the head of the UK’s Open Banking initiative. Open banking is mandated to arrive in January 2018 and Imran is in charge of making sure this process goes smoothly. He delivered an optimistic message saying that open banking is simply an idea whose time has come.

He made it clear that this is all for the consumer, that the consumer is at the center of open banking. He put forward the idea that making transaction level data available to innovative fintech platforms should bring more people into the financial system. There will be one API to cover all of open banking and enrolment in the open banking directory begins this Friday, October 13. He ended with a call to action. Open banking will not be a success unless the fintech platforms embrace it and seize on this new opportunity.

Next up was Jaidev Janardana, the CEO of Zopa, who put forward his vision for the future of banking. The theme for his discussion, which ended up being a theme repeated throughout the event, was that the customer needs to be the starting point for all banking products. He chided banks today for making banking a zero-sum game where the bank wins and the customer loses.

Zopa is trying to build a bank where incentives are aligned between the bank and the customer. Every bank product should be a win-win. The reality is that our bank knows so much about us but their service is not personal. It should be. Jaidev shared that Zopa intends to offer four bank products: unsecured personal loans (something they already offer in their P2P lending business), credit cards, savings accounts and auto loans.

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Registration for LendIt Europe 2017 is Now Open

LendIt Europe returns to London for the fourth time on October 9-10 at the InterContinental London—The O2.

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I was in London last week where we officially launched LendIt Europe 2017. We are returning to the InterContinental at the O2 for the second year in a row where we expect over 1,000 attendees this year.

Our 2017 event will be a little different to last year. Similar to what we have done at our USA event we are expanding to include other aspects of fintech beyond online lending. While we will still be covering lending in some depth we also want to highlight the innovations happening in other areas of financial services. Europe continues to be a hotbed of innovation and we will be covering a number of new categories: artificial intelligence, machine learning, biometrics, blockchain and we will also dig deep on digital banking. Supporting the startup community is in LendIt’s DNA and we are excited to have PitchIt @ LendIt return for the second year at our Europe conference. Below is an agenda framework to give you some idea of what we have planned:

Early confirmed keynote speakers include Jaidev Janardana, the CEO of Zopa, Francesco Brenna, an Executive Partner at IBM Global Business Services and Shane Williams, the co-head of UBS Smartwealth. Our current confirmed speakers are here and if you are interested in becoming a speaker at LendIt Europe 2017 you can submit an application here.

Lend Academy Readers Receive a 15% Discount

The launch price of £795 is in effect until June 2nd, but as a Lend Academy reader you can receive an additional 15% discount by using the code LENDACADEMYVIP at checkout. The discount code is always good for 15% off but you will receive the best pricing if you purchase before midnight on June 2nd. You can register now on the LendIt website.

Our fourth London event I expect will be our biggest and best ever. I am looking forward to hearing from a range of industry leaders in not just the UK but from across Europe. It will be interesting to see the impact that Brexit has on the event and with open banking arriving in Q1 next year that is going to provide some major impetus for change that we will be covering as well.

Below is a video with some highlights from our event last year that was at the same location. I hope to see you at LendIt Europe 2017 in October.

Wrap-Up of LendIt USA 2017 in New York

My thoughts on the LendIt USA 2017 conference last week in New York

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Peter Renton, Bo Brustkern and Jason Jones open LendIt USA 2017 to a packed house

LendIt USA 2017 is now history. It was a great event, I think it was our best ever, it was certainly the largest with over 5,000 people in attendance. As I do every year here is my wrap-up of the event and some of my thoughts on what was shared.

For the fifth year in a row the CEO of Lending Club kicked off the conference with the opening keynote. The big difference was that this year it was Scott Sanborn delivering this presentation for the first time. He didn’t sugar coat the challenges Lending Club has faced in the past year but he is also didn’t dwell on them.

He compared the online lending industry with that of online retailing. He said that today parallels the time in the early 2000’s when online retailing was going through some early challenges. Back then we were going through the dot-com crash and many laughed at the idea that tiny Amazon could ever be a threat to the most successful retailers. Fast forward to today and Amazon was the first company to generate $100 billion in online sales and its online operations dwarfs that of Walmart. [Read more…]

ABOUT LENDIT FINTECH NEWS

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We are a team of fintech enthusiasts who have been covering the industry for many years. With a deep knowledge of online lending, digital banking, blockchain, artificial intelligence and more our team covers the daily news and writes in-depth editorials.

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