The Financial Services Roundtable hosted its inaugural FinTech Ideas Festival (FIF) on January 9-10, 2017 in San Francisco, bringing together world leaders at the CEO-level in financial services and technology. Rather than being a trade show of new technology, the FinTech Ideas Festival envisioned long-term, big ideas in areas such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, big data, tomorrow’s workforce, financial inclusion, biometrics, cybersecurity and others that will impact the way consumers interact with their finances.

As member of the Technical Advisory Council of the FIF I had the pleasure and honour to co-host three private salons on the ‘Future of Fintech’ where CEOs and Speaker/Moderators led intimate discussions. This event truly proved to be the gathering of who’s who in both the US Finance and Tech industry. Over 200 CEOs attend this 2 day event at the Bently Reserve including Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet, Sue Desmond-Hellman, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM and Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. These private salon sessions where held under Chaham house rules so, I cannot report on those discussions but, the sessions on the main stage were broadcast live by CNBC to an audience of 350 million worldwide -this resulted in the FIF being the #1 trending topic on Twitter – and all presentations can be found on the FSRoundtable website where you can find a video recap.

Now the FIF is an invitation only conference aimed at bringing together CEOs and their CIOs working with the larger Financial Organizations and Technology companies. At the conference I have discussed with the FIF organization the interest to invite European CEOs and CIOs to attend as well. This suggestion was applauded so, CIONET members who want to know more about attending FIF’18, please contact me at Frits Bussemaker.

* The Financial Services Roundtable represents the largest integrated financial services companies providing banking, insurance, payment and investment products and services to the American consumer. Member companies participate through the Chief Executive Officer and other senior executives nominated by the CEO. FSR member companies provide fuel for America’s economic engine, accounting for $92.7 trillion in managed assets, $1.2 trillion in revenue, and 2.3 million jobs.

[gallery columns="2" size="full" ids="22596,22597,22598,22599"]