Banking & Fintech Conferences

A deeper dive into some of the recent events we attended

Earlier in the year we attended the world’s largest blockchain conference, Consensus 2018. It was an incredible couple of days to get the world’s blockchain and cryptocurrency thought-leaders and enthusiasts together to discuss the current state and future direction of blockchain & cryptocurrencies with big focal points being around regulation and interoperability between chains.

However, many attendees were predominantly VC’s, Crypto-investors and pre-ICO startups from a broad array of industries all looking for investment, reinforcing our sentiment that whilst these conferences are vital to attend to have our finger on the pulse of the future of blockchain and the cryptocurrency space. We have decided that our immediate and ongoing focus needs to be on bringing value to our token holders & community by finding our future customers at conferences specifically in the financial services sector and working to position ourselves as a credible thought-leader and future partner in the blockchain space.

As we continue to build our relationships with financial institutions and position Ivy as a credible blockchain solution, banking & fintech conferences play a vital part in building the Ivy brand and familiarizing the sector with our team and our mission.

Below are a few updates from recent conferences:

Digital Banking 2018 — Austin, TX

(June 8th-11th)

Digital Banking 2018 last week saw over 1200 senior-level executives from financial institutions, credit unions and FinTech providers from both the US and around the globe attend the forward thinking three-day event. International experts both in-and-out of the industry shared their insights on what the future of digital banking will look like.

For Ivy, it was an opportunity to hear about the state of banking, learn about fintech innovations and how they were being implemented, and an opportunity to network and share the Ivy story with institutions large and small.

Here are two key takeaways from the conference:

Takeaway 1: A lot of talk about blockchain, but not much blockchain (yet)…

There is a lot of talk about the opportunity of blockchain to change the financial services sector but with the exception of the biggest banks in the US and globally, who are actively exploring the space and trialing use-cases, the vast majority of banks (there are over 6000 banks in the US alone) still do not yet fully understand what blockchain is (something we now plan to address at many of these conferences) and how it can be implemented for use in the financial services sector. Most banks are only now embracing API’s and Open Banking and many admitted services like blockchain and AI are on their radar, it is still a little way off and for many, dependent on how the big banks embrace it.

For the large banks, their thoughts on blockchain and cryptocurrency ranged from being against it — the CTO of Bank of America said is much in her keynote; to carefully trialing in the European market — Credit Suisse presented their recent lending transaction success and look forward to doing more; to fully embracing all aspects of fintech and blockchain — JP Morgan’s MD of Technology, Alex Carson gave a surprisingly fintech positive presentation for such a large institution and are eager to trial a lot more fintech solutions. You can read more on his thoughts here

Whilst this means that it could be some time before we see blockchain solutions become the norm for the majority of banks, we see this as an opportunity to continue to lead and innovate blockchain opportunities in the sector and fast-track some use-cases and services not only for financial institutions, but potentially directly to consumers as well.

Takeaway 2: Fintech is one word on everyone’s lips, but Regtech is coming.

Regtech isn’t that new but with both blockchain and cryptocurrency in the sights for regulators it is set to grow rapidly. Regtech companies are helping banks & financial institutions navigate regulatory challenges in the financial services sector through technology like blockchain, with the goal to help them comply with regulations efficiently and inexpensively. There were multiple interesting sessions that addressed Regtech. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) presented a session on the changing face of compliance with AI & blockchain. We had the opportunity to chat with Beth Knickerbocker, the CIO of the OCC who not only recognized that we were from Ivy, she invited us to meet in Washington later this year for further discussion off the back of our meetings with the FDIC, which had some OCC employees in attendance.

Through our meetings with regulators we believe this is another interesting area for us to explore in the not-to-distant future as we continue to meet with banks to explore their specific needs & use-cases.

Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference — Chicago, IL

(June 11th-13th)

This week, Gary presented a Blockchain 101 session to a packed room at Bank Director’s Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference. The session was one of the most attended sessions of the conference and brought a large contingent of bankers, regulators and auditors to discuss more about Blockchain and learn about Ivy at our booth.

An empty booth — everyone is at Gary’s Blockchain 101 Session.

Gary presenting at Bank Director’s Bank Audit & Risk Committee’s conference.

Gary is currently in transit to:

Fintech & Beyond Summit — San Francisco, CA

(June 14th)

Gary is heading straight from Chicago to San Francisco today for Fintech and Beyond Summit. He will be one of the highly reputable panelists for the day’s final session discussing ‘Virtual Currency and the Blockchain’ on Thursday.

Virtual Currency and the Blockchain

4:55 P.M. — 5:45 P.M.

Panelists:

Greg Brogger, CEO & Founder, SharesPost, Inc.

Gary Fan, President, Ivy

George Prokop, Strategic Threat Management and Corporate Intelligence practice co-lead, PwC

Josh Stein, CEO & General Counsel, Harbor, Inc.

Juan Suarez, Vice President of Legal, Coinbase

Jen DePalma, Counsel, King & Spalding (moderator)

We will be providing an update from this summit next week after we get a chance to sit down with Gary.

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Watch this space

We will bringing you more updates about conferences we will be attending and speaking as well as updates post-conference in future posts.