Fintech Insider: After Dark III - The Christmas Special, 2017 Round-up
Our third After Dark event was a our 2017 wrap up Christmas Special – a festive fintech event, looking back on the last year in the industry, and looking forward to 2018, with some very special guests, and the return of the Fintech Wall of Emoji!
Tuesday 12th December was our last After Dark 2017, and our biggest live audience at WeWork Aldgate yet! As such we decided to change up the format, and instead of our usual news show, we put together a year in review, giving our live audience a bumper bonanza of banking and fintech news across the whole of 2017. It was also our Christmas Special, complete with festive decorations, our Christmas photo booth and fantastic festive fancy dress. Listen to the full episode here.
https://twitter.com/ninepine/status/940672253200609281
Hosts David Brear, Jason Bates, Simon Taylor and Chris Skinner were joined by special guests Sarah Kocianski and Leda Glyptis to look back at the biggest stories from 2017, with help some very knowledgeable commentators in the audience on certain stories.
[caption id="attachment_64419" align="alignnone" width="1200"] (From L-R) Simon Taylor, Sarah Kocianski, David M Brear, Jason Bates, Leda Glyptis, Chris Skinner[/caption]
https://youtu.be/sU-F6IzoO30
2017 Year in Review - January- June
We kicked off with a look back of the first 6 months of 2017. Back in January 2017, Mark Carney warned us that the fintech “boom” could go bust if left unchecked, seemingly he was wrong. We focused on Lemonade's record breaking claim review in 3 seconds, with a comment from Deloitte's Nigel Walsh on whether or not we should believe the hype surrounding Lemonade, as InsurTech's biggest success story to date. February brought the first proposal a series of changes to US banking regulations known as Dodd Frank, Monzo reached its series C funding round but the main story up we chose is the Co-op bank being put up for sale, following massive losses and scandal with its chairman. March brought us challenger bank outages as Revolut, Monzo Starling Bank, Loot, Curve, Pockit were all hit - and over 50% of our audience were affected. However the significance was how these new challengers were able to adapt and effectively manage their communications and reassure their customers about the causes and resolution of the outages. In April it was announced that Fintech was now worth £7bn to Britain’s economy, Monzo gets its full banking licence and smashes its funding round and some records along the way while Alipay and WeChat combined reach $2.9 trillion in online payments. But what got us talking most on Fintech Insider was the news that Will.i.am joined the board of Atom Bank as an advisor. We asked our audience what they thought, opinions were mixed and no one was quite sure what Will.iam has yet done for Atom, but David Brear made it his mission for 2018 to get Will. i.am on the show to answer that very question. Help get behind the campaign! https://twitter.com/FinTechInsiders/status/940659751939182593 In May there was a ransomware cyber attack that hit 99 countries around the world including systems such as airlines and our NHS, throwing into chaos everything from major operations to air traffic control. Meanwhile in China, Ping An launched a dedicated $1 BILLION fund just for fintech innovation and investment.But the story we wanted to focus on was Open Banking, which is going to be a huge focus in 2018, and in particular, BBVA’s Open Banking Business that launched in May. Alexa Fernandez, Director of Fintech Partnerships at BBVA gave us a few words on what Open Banking means for BBVA and the steps they've taken already to get ahead of the legislation to make things easier for their partners and their customers. In June this year, Zelle launched in the US, Klarna got its full banking licence and the FCA kicked off their second sandbox. The biggest story of the month however was Stateside: the proposed Dodd Frank repeals caused a few shock waves back in February but by June the actual legislation was published for review, outlining what the repeals would entail. Chris Skinner and commentator Liz Lumley helped pick this one apart, what it means for the banks and the customer and if it is as bad as we previously thought.The Festive Fintech Wall of Emoji
We couldn't let an After Dark pass without a reprise of the Fintech Wall of Emoji, this time with a Christmas theme. With some help from Mr Emojipedia himself, Jeremy Burge, we took a look at our Christmas themed emojis, recapped all of the previous phrases and concepts from the last two shows, to see if anyone had any strong views on whether they should move categories. David, backed up by Sharon O'Dea moved Apple Pay from "nauseous face" to sit between "raised hands" and "thinking face" emoii. https://twitter.com/11FSTeam/status/940695549971501056 We also got help from our audience for 5 new concepts:- {a} fintech got funding
- Alipay does a thing
- Open Banking
- Bitcoin Prices
- Cryptokitties