Friday marked the first FinTech North Manchester seminar, held at our offices at Neo and it’s fair to say it was a great turnout. With upwards of 100 attendees and speakers from various business backgrounds discussing our region's opportunities in Fintech – along with a bit of breakfast and networking too! The event was chaired by Luke Freeman, Director of Whitecap Consulting, who are the co-founders of Fintech North.
The first speaker was Rob Thickett, from Building Societies Association, who spoke about the history of building societies and the way customers prefer to have the ‘human contact’ side of customer services – rather than just having the internet to deal with. Rob also talked about the impact of AI on the financial services industry.
The second talk was given by Luke Stubbs, Legal Director from DLA Piper. He talked through some interesting points from DLA Piper’s report on digital transformation in financial services. The report covered various statistics such as ‘72% of organisations have revised their customer experience’ in relation to the way their digital and contact centres interact. And that ‘82% of respondents were worried about cyber security issues.’
We then heard from Oliver Chesher from Galibier PR who spoke about how reputation, risk and ownership are the three main things for businesses to focus on in the digital world. Oliver told us how important a business' activity online really is, “when you go quiet, the market assumes you’ve shut up shop.”
The fourth and final speaker was Steve McCarron, from gyro, Manchester. He spoke about SMEs and how they manage their finances and how FinTechs may help smaller businesses across the UK. Steve told us that SMEs make up 31% of private sector turnover and 60% of small business owners are in charge of their own finances. He mentioned that FinTechs such as Tide and Anna may well be the answer to helping SMEs in the future.
The speakers then moved to the panel discussion where they were joined by Rachel Eyre from Midas and discussed topics from regulatory challenges to the use of cash with FinTech companies, to consumer brand loyalty.
FinTech North’s Manchester seminar was a great event and gave a lot of great insight into FinTech in the region.
Network Marketing are proud to have been a part of such an interesting seminar and hope everyone that attended gained a lot of useful information – we also hope you enjoyed the croissants too!
