Last week I attended Finovate Fall 2019 with a couple colleagues of mine in New York.For those who’ve never been, Finovate hosts five events (Spring and Fall North America, Asia-Pacific, and Middle East) where more than 80 fintech companies present new concepts, services, or products in a rapid 7-minute demo format. No slides are allowed. Traditionally, the spring event in San Francisco features more early-stage companies than the fall event in New York City, where larger, more established providers often demo new innovations.
As a temperature gauge for the industry, it’s one of the better events. The ideas generally reflect where the industry is heading and point to major trends on the horizon.In the past 2 years, hot topics were around blockchain, artificial intelligence, chat bots, and big data.This year we were surprised to see a comeback for Personal Financial Management (PFM).See the figure below for a breakdown of demos by category/ service.
In addition to the topic areas above, we noticed a few overall trends/ themes:
