AltFi Festival of Finance 2023 Conference Review

The AltFi Festival of Finance 2023 was a great showcase for how our thriving fintech sector can innovate for consumers during the cost-of-living crisis.

Earlier this spring our UK Sales Director Michael Henderson attended the AltFi Festival of Finance 2023 in London. With speakers and delegates from the UK and European fintech and alternative finance sectors, the two-day event explores innovation and opportunities in fintech, banking, and lending. Back for its fourth year, the 2023 event was all about exploring the new opportunities of our post-pandemic world and the new crises presented by a global economic slowdown and the rising cost of living. 

We caught up with Michael to see what he thought about the event. 

“I was keen to attend the AltFi Festival of Finance to stay in tune with the latest opportunities and challenges in the consumer credit market and to hear from other fintech organisations about how they’re growing their business. With senior leaders attending from providers like Zopa, Abound, Snoop, Plend, JaJa and Klarna, I had plenty of opportunities for insightful conversations.  

In tune with other events recently, the key themes were access to credit and general market conditions, and how fintechs are working to help customers during the cost-of-living crisis.

There was a lot of focus on Open Banking. The next phase of Open Banking development in the UK had been published the week before by the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee, and providers gave it a warm welcome in their early responses.

I took away two main insights from the event. The big one was that the UK fintech sector is alive and kicking and we can look forward to more innovation on the horizon, particularly in Open Banking. Lenders using Open Banking already believe they serve more of the UK population than those working with traditional credit scores - according to Abound, there are 7 million thin file customers in the UK. Defaults have been lower than expected too.

Chat GPT was another hot topic – particularly its potential use in an operational context, or to help automate financial advice & education.

My biggest takeaway was really a reaffirmation of what we’re already doing. Monevo is committed to working with all forms of lenders, including Open Banking lenders, as part of our mission to facilitate consumer access to credit, and that’s never been more important than today.”