It has been WAY too long! 

I may be a little late to the party, but I was really surprised at what a delight it was to be back in a crowded room full of people talking about the latest trends in fintech and marketing at the inaugural in-person FinTech B2B Marketing Conference.

I never thought I’d be pleased to be handed another lanyard and goody bag, or grab a paper cup full of tea. How wrong I was!? Maybe one day we’ll figure out how to capture the real essence of a face-to-face forum, but right now there’s nothing quite like it.

Thanks to Chartis, I got the opportunity to hold a discussion session with Nick Vitchev on some of the trends and “Big Bets” that are prevalent in fintech, taking a couple of audience polls to test the wider sentiment and getting some lively feedback and questions.

A key topic of our discussion was the role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and that ran throughout the whole conference. The marketing legend Dr Dave Chaffey presented the opening keynote and highlighted the growing use of machine learning specifically in marketing.

Everywhere you look these days there’s AI enabled devices and services. You can ride an AI-enabled exercise bike or listen to excruciating music created by a computer. Nick and I discussed how you can separate out fact and fiction with a technology that has ultimately been around for well over 50 years and operationalised at scale for over 30 years. Start by looking at the bounds of reality. It’s not always the case, but most of the time machine learning requires good input data - ideally data with tags and labels which can be used for training. Be wary of technologists performing magic.

On the topic of AI and machine learning, we asked the audience which was the trend that would be most impactful to their business - between AI, Cloud, Covid 19 and geopolitics. I think we were expecting AI or Covid 19 to win out, but 40%+ went for geopolitics and related risks. I knew it was an important topic in my company, and clearly the fintech ecosystem and specifically their marketing specialists are also attuned to the risks and opportunities.

So what about Covid? We discussed a number of important factors for business and highlighted a number of Rs - Retention, recruitment, resources remote working and I should maybe add remuneration. It is going to be very interesting to see how fintechs navigate the next few months and years. Our lifeblood is talented software developers, designers and architects and we are now competing with our customers and a huge variety of others to attract and retain talent. Successful companies need to find a way to balance the needs, desires and ambitions of their individual developers with their own.

We concluded with audience questions about Metaverse. How important and disruptive is it? Are Chartis and Ripjar planning on taking part. It felt a little dissonant talking about new virtual worlds, when we’re just getting back to in-person experiences. Is Metaverse truly new. Nick remembered banking conferences devoted to Second Life. We will have to see if Metaverse breaks some of the habits of innovation theatre.

One way or another there’s a lot to think and talk about as we get back to the new normal.