LendIt Europe 2015 is now less than four weeks away and things are shaping up well. Our second annual European conference will be held on October 20 and 21 at the Hilton London Metropole. We are partnering with the UK P2P Finance Association (P2PFA) for the second day of LendIt to bring you the first ever P2PFA Summit @ LendIt.
We have almost 400 people signed up right now and expect to reach our goal of 750 people at kickoff. If you are thinking about attending and have not registered yet I would get moving. The price goes up £300 on October 1st. And don’t forget Lend Academy readers get a 15% discount by entering the code LENDACADEMYVIP at checkout. You can register here.
Economic Secretary to the Treasury Leads an All-Star Speaker Lineup
We are opening the conference with a keynote from Samir Desai, the CEO and Co-founder of Funding Circle, the world’s leading small business P2P lending platform. Other big names speaking on day one include Karen Mills, the former head of the US Small Business Administration, Steve Pateman, the head of UK Banking at Santander, Cormac Leech, Director of Alternative Finance at Liberum and Aaron Vermut, the CEO of Prosper.
The leading speaker at the P2PFA Summit @ LendIt will be the City Minister Harriett Baldwin MP (pictured) whose title is also the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. She is the minister ultimately responsible for the regulation of P2P lending in the UK. Other speakers on day two include Chris Woolard, the Director of Strategy and Competiton at the Financial Conduct Authority, Peter Wilson, CEO of British Business Bank Investments and we will be hosting what I expect to be a fascinating debate between Cormac Leech and a senior banker at Barclays about whether P2P lending will take over banking.
Throughout both days you will also hear from leaders of pretty much every major platform from across Europe. This year’s conference will feature one main track for the morning sessions and in the afternoons the main ballroom will be split into two tracks. And as usual we will have company demos from some of the most interesting European companies running throughout both days.
The Largest P2P Lending Expo Ever in Europe
As with every LendIt conference there is a large expo for attendees to meet with the major players in the P2P lending ecosystem. In the exhibit hall this year will be around 40 companies including major platforms like Funding Circle and LendInvest as well as many of the leading players in the UK as well as continental Europe. We still have a small number of booths left but they are going fast – email bladimir@lendit.co if you are interested.
Watch the Live Broadcast
For the convenience of our global audience we will be broadcasting LendIt Europe live online at no charge. I realize that most Lend Academy readers will not be traveling to London for LendIt Europe but you will still be able to see all the main sessions live. The broadcast will begin at 8:45am London time on October 20 and will run both days of the conference on www.lendit.tv.
For those of you making the trip to London please stop by and say hi. I hope to see you there.
Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.