Wahid visits the CXC Fintech Conference 2017

I’d never been to a Fintech event before so I didn’t know what took place in one and what sort of format it would be. So when I was offered a ticket to this spectacular 2 day event in London, I was very keen to check it out. 

My interest in the Fintech sector stems from when I began investing in cryptocurrencies and digital assets at the start of 2017. This is when I began doing research into Blockchain technology and how much things like smart contracts may affect many industries in the next couple of years. I’d heard of Bitcoin back in 2013, but that’s when people were afraid of it and less people had heard about it. It wasn’t as prominent in the news as it is now. Now we see Bloomberg, the Financial Times, Forbes and CNBC amongst others causally talking about Bitcoin as if it were like stocks and shares. With fintech being an emerging financial services sector I know there is lots of room for growth and improvement. I strongly believe the Blockchain is one of the most promising new technologies for the future and it has the potential to disrupt and change industries for the better. 

Now, what I know about fintech is mostly on the Blockchain side of things, but I knew very little about how important customer experience is in fintech. 

I learnt a lot about customer experience and I didn't previously think it had that much of a big impact in the Financial Services sector. 

From day one of the conference, I have to say my favourite talk has to be from Christine Loft Hunderup from Nordea, and how she spoke about the small team of 8 she requires to quickly launch great new ideas, products and services week in week out. It was interesting to see how a big company like Nordea still managed to scale up their lesser known ventures at the speed of a start up. Having start up ideas myself, this really helped me think about different ways of approaching a problem.

From day 2, my favourite talk has to be from Oke Eleazu from Bought By Many, and I was very inspired by his journey and how he went from giving advice to seeing it from a customer's point of view whilst working at Sainsbury's, and now actually using it himself and putting it into action. And I found his analogy about the perceptions of Aldi/Lidl compared from 5 years ago (when many people didn’t want to be seen shopping there) to now (where people openly say ‘Hey, I got that from Lidl’) especially interesting. It shows how much has changed in terms of attitudes in the span of a couple of years.

I also got to use the two days to network with others in the fintech industry which was a great way for me to have insightful conversations and make new connections.

In summary, CXC 2017 was a great place to learn about Design, Customer experience initiatives, Artificial intelligence, Data and Analytics all from a technological and customer-centric point of view from both individuals from established finance companies and also from those who are still learning along their journey working at a start up. There aren’t many places which offer such a diverse range of speakers from so many backgrounds. I took a lot away from it and I’d definitely recommend it. 

Special thanks to Ed Wells, Nick Dennis and Pen Partnership, it was a pleasure to attend and I thoroughly enjoyed it.