For the next 5 days, I set up shop in my former home of New York City for FinTech Week NYC. Hosted by Bank Director’s FinXTech in conjunction with Empire Startups, the week can best be understood as a confluence of conferences, round-table discussions, demo days, meetups and networking events across the city.
If you’re not familiar with the various events taking place, here is a quick snapshot of three we’re primarily involved with starting today and running through Friday, the 28th.
- This evening, Bank Director’s FinXTech and Empire Startups hosts an invitation-only kickoff reception at Rise New York for the partners, delegates and key-players making FinTech Week NYC happen.
- On Wednesday, we host a sold-out FinXTech Annual Summit at Nasdaq’s MarketSite that explores what the changing nature of banking today portends for the future.
- On Thursday, we welcome technology leaders and bank executives to an exclusive Financial Services Leadership peer exchange hosted at and with Latham & Watkins.
The common thread throughout each of these days? A desire to help leaders in the financial sector to better understand how when/where/why to engage with emerging technologies.
Given our cultural mindset to help make others successful, we’re kicking things up a notch with our on-line efforts. Indeed, we’re “taking over” BankDirector.com and loading the site up with strategic issues and ideas that a bank’s CEO, board and executive team can immediately consider. In parallel, we’re developing even more content to benefit technology companies keen to work with financial institutions and have some really interesting things planned for our FinXTech.com. Three examples of this free content:
- On BankDirector.com, Tips for Working With Fintech Companies by our editor, Naomi Snyder, provides insight from executives at Wells Fargo (one of the country’s biggest) and Radius Bank (a very strong community bank) on how they handle fintech partnerships.
- On FinXTech.com, Advice for Fintech Companies Working with Banks by our editor-in-chief, Jack Milligan, shares suggestions from SF-based Plaid Technologies and Chicago-based Akouba as to how banks and tech companies can set realistic expectations in terms of cooperating to their mutual benefits.
- Finally, I authored a piece on a major challenge I see confronting banks when it comes to their digital futures with A Roadblock That Ruins Futures. As an optimist, things aren’t hopeless; you will see I find inspiration from the CEOs of U.S. Bancorp, PNC and Fifth Third.
About That Ratio 