Bank Innovation 2014 In Seattle

I had the privilege to be invited to the Bank Innovation 2014 event in my home town. I loved the theme – “The future, in focus”. The theme was beautifully illustrated by a photo of Seattle’s Space Needle partly in clouds (the photo is mine, albeit similar to the one of the conference). I found it very catchy – now that I’m used to the weather of Seattle, I know that very often a day may begin in fog and end up in bright sunshine: Good metaphor!

The organiser and host of the event was JJ Hornblass. JJ has been a longtime follower of Innotribe, and we maintain over several years a dialogue about innovation in financial industry.

JJ invited me to come over for a “fireside chat” – a relaxed format where we indeed talked about a wide range of subjects and also invited questions from the audience. I loved the format. We did prepare for it but we also let the inspiration of the moment prevail, so the result was, I think and hope, entertaining and fresh.

I was very honoured by the way JJ introduced me – he retraced briefly my career at SWIFT, and emphasised the Innotribe experience. He then briefly explained my current job at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and wanted to explore the perpectives on the financial industry from these radically different perspectives. Thank you very much JJ!

Here are some links resulting from the fireside chat –

• in search of volume growth: open banking and API banking
• getting outside of the castle: building a digital bank in a sandbox
• a video with my call for a safe and reliable financial platform for the poor

The event was very well attended (my estimate was about 250 people), very rich in topics – I appreciated a lot the focus on the fin-tech startup community. It was also very lively on Twitter (#BI14) and I made a lot of Twitter-friends.

Finally, it was also a  pleasure to meet Matteo Rizzi, my fellow Innotribe co-founder and dear friend. We haven’t seen each other since we took off on our respective ways after SWIFT, and it was such a thrill to have him visit my new home town!