May 10-11 we participated in a FinTech industry event – Fintech Nexus in New York – most likely the biggest event in North America for financial institutions of the new technological era. The event was hosted at Javits Center and comprised of exposition area, networking zone, panel rooms, assembly scene and accompanying events around New York.
Among the attendees there were all the most important market players – funds, investors, banks and FinTech founders. As expected, the trend of consumer lending that evolved couple of years ago resulted in over representation of consumer lending companies and lenders/investors targeting lending companies. The number of consumer lenders was overwhelming, and no specific innovation was presented. On the basis of this part of the industry we also observed rapid development of anti-fraud solutions delivered by multiple companies. Due to lack of GDPR in the US market, the flow of personal data allowing to fully verify and score customers leveled up those companies to significant market players and made them an important partner of the industry. Even though still undervalued, anti-fraud data providers will be growing strongly within the periods to come, especially on the trend of artificial intelligence being introduced to more areas of finance.
The two day conference also touched upon very interesting topics of market niches and FinTech valuation in pre-seed and post-seed phases which led to the conclusion that at some point in time fundamental financial criteria must be applied to every start-up converting to a mature company. There is definitely a lot to look for in the future – during next Nexus Fintech conference.
