Month: February 2011

As you may have seen on this blog or twitter, I had the chance to participate to Finovate Europe. Thanks to all the Finovate team for inviting me to the event. While we were 2 bloggers on the list (with @BankerVision), I believe I was the only one physically present that day. And yes blogging is what I do on Tekfin.

The event:
35 demos, 7 minutes each, only demos, no powerpoint let’s just say Finovate is a packed day.
Overall, each company made it through their time with a relatively good presentation. For some of them, I wished they had more time, especially when they are not really feature based but propose a all new business to explore. In most cases, the question of the business model is not discussed at all (more so frustrating when the presenter is a startup and not a Big Co)

Maybe there could be slightly less companies and a selection of 5-10 best of show which would have to present another time?

Thanks also to Chris Skinner for “Ricky Gervais”ing his hosting role, and overall providing insightful and funny comments.

Its a PFM world in Europe
Was it too much? Or a sign of the importance of PFM for banks for the coming months and years? Nonetheless PFM dominated the presentations with no less than 8 different companies (on 35 though). Now, it should be reminded that:
– Europe did not have a Mint. With its success story, media coverage and final sell to Intuit, Mint helped put the PFM in more minds than any competitors in the US
– A limited number of banks proposes PFM so far in Europe, especially major banks (contrary to Bank of America for example)
So it is clear the PFM should be a key item in the list of innovation banks want to push in the near future.

One of the common themes was, for providers going the white label way, the development of a specific back hand for banks to manage their communication campaigns. Most of the time it includes some kind of filter (income, existing products, socio-economic data) to allow for targeting. Also included is a tracking dashboard to provide the kind of feedback an internet based campaign has (click through rate, etc.)