Perspective.

FinovateEurope 2012: a retrospective

21-02-2012

By Albert van den Broek, CEO Worldwide, Figlo.
On 6 and 7 February a team of Figlo attended the FinovateEurope conference, held for the second time in London. Being an innovative company, Figlo always wants to stay closely connected to the latest trends and developments concerning innovations in the financial industry. That is whys Figlo applied for FinovateEurope once again. Fortunately we got selected to showcase our innovation for a second time in London. FinovateEurope is a demo-based conference for innovative startups and established companies in the fields of banking and financial technology. The event offers an insight-packed glimpse of the future of money via a fast-paced, intimate and unique format. Every presenting company gets seven minutes to do a live demo on stage. 

Besides attending and sharing information and knowledge with colleagues and other vendors, Figlo  introduced and demonstrated the brand new widget system of the Figlo Platform. Dorien van der Linden, Sr. Account Manager at Figlo demonstrated the possibilities of this new Figlo Platform ‘builder’ during a seven minute live demo at the stage of Finovate. This widget system enables financial organizations to build their own online financial insight solution, portal or platform based on the Figlo Platform. It consists of a unique, globally applicable, library of Personal Finance Management (PFM), Financial Product Advice (FPA) and Personal Financial Planning (PFP) widgets. This widgets can be used and implemented interchangeably.
Figlo received  very positive feedback on the presentation. A few bloggers and analysts also wrote about Figlo and their FinovateEurope experience;

  1. Bank innovation by Mary Wisniewski: 7 new services launched at FinovateEurope
  2. Financial Services Club Blog by Chris Skinner: The Best of innovation in Finance 
  3. Forrester Research Inc. by Benjamin Ensor: Finovate Europe 2012: Innovation In Digital Financial Services 
  4. MoneyMarketing: Ian McKenna: The New Waves of FS tech

What I concluded after visiting conclude is the following:

  • Finovate is (still) mainly about solutions and innovations regarding (mobile) Payments and security solutions related to these.
  • The solutions I’ve seen so far are more or less focused on transactions, and how to make life easier for consumers as well as for the banks in this respect.
  • Leveraging social media is getting more and more a hot topic for the financial industry.
  • Finovate is predominantly targeted to, and consisting of Bank representatives.
  • Innovations regarding the financial advisory industry are somewhat missing. This seems to be strange, as the whole financial industry (and not only the banking industry) is currently being challenged by issues like customer engagement, compliance and transparency.
  • In relationship to the previous point: there’s (almost) no representation and/or innovation concerning the insurance industry.
  • PFM wasn’t as much represented as on the previous Finovate conferences.

This being said and concluded, it is not surprising that I agree with the following, for us the most striking conclusion as mentioned in Benjamin Ensors blog (shortened): “Not one exhibitor was trying to solve a problem in insurance.” And “Surprisingly few firms were focused on the opportunities presented by tablets, particularly to improve collaboration between customers and advisors.” 

Actually, this is exactly in the heat of what Figlo brings to the table for the global financial industry: integrated solutions, enabling the financial industry on different form factors. The above experience and conclusions are challenging Figlo to be even more explicit and clear on what we bring to the financial industry next time. Would it not be an idea to challenge the presenters at Finovate, including Figlo, to showcase solutions solving the following global financial industry topics:

  • How to increase customer engagement?
  • How to leverage social media?
  • How to deal with issues like compliance, transparency and regulatory issues like the increasing prohibition of fee based product advice and selling?
  • How to leverage the different form factors currently available?

These are issues for banks as well as for insurers and the financial (advisory) industry as a whole. We from Figlo would love to be part of this discussion and are hereby challenging Finovate, vendors and the financial industry to highlight that next time. We look forward to yet another edition of Finovate(Europe).



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