Christophe Langlois 
On Tuesday, I was aiming to cover the first ever Finovate event organized in Europe ‘live’ on the Visible Banking blog and especially the Visible Banking page on facebook. Unfortunately, the limited bandwidth prevented me to interact live on the day…
This was my fourth Finovate event after Finovate 2007 (NYC), Finovate Startup 2008 (San Francisco), FInovate Fall 2009 (NYC).
Congrats to Jim, Eric and the rest of the Finovate crew who, once again, delivered a superb event.
Top Demoing Companies
Ben Ensor, Research Director at Forrester summarized very well the big themes of this first European edition of Finovate (please note that a few demoing companies didn’t fit in those key categories, hence missing from the list):
* Money management: Figlo, IND Group, Linxo, Lodo Software,LoveMoney.com, Meniga, Strands Personal Finance, Yodlee.
* Security: Business Forensics, miicard, SilverTail Systems, SolidPass,Voice Commerce.
* Social investing: eToro, Hopee (from Cortal Consors), StockTwits,Unience.
* Online and mobile payment: Boku, eWise payo, Mpower Mobile,SecureKey Technologies.
* Online small business banking: Capital Access Network, Ixaris Opn Card Guardian, Liqpay, Xero.
Well done to the 35 demoing companies which all did their best to fully leverage their 7 minute slot. Congratulations to the 4 Best of Show winners:eToro, Finantix, Liqpay.com and Meniga.
Please find below my 5 favourites demoing companies:
* Backbase: adding a wysiwyg layer which enables you to modifiy ‘on the spot’ the look and feel of your online banking environment.
* Cortal Consors: with 30k+ members Hopee / Sharewise is one of the only online community for personal investors launched by a major banking group.
* Fidor: Matthias Kroener and his team constantly push the boundaries of banking and empower their members with innovative features such as trading precious metal with other members or buying virtual currencies.
* Liqpay: increase the online visibility of your Small and Medium Enterprise clients by setting up in a few clicks a e-commerce presence on facebook.
* StockTwits: I’ve been following this initiative for a couple of years. I love its simplicity, it cleverly leverages twitter, the amount of visibility they give to their most active contributors, and the ecosystem they successfully built (microblogging, blogs, video channels…).
I also enjoyed the demos from eToro, Finantix, Strands, Yodlee.
Videos
I invite you to watch the three videos I shot during the event to give you a good feel for this excellent networking opportunity.
Pictures
Please find below some pictures from the stage and the exhibition hall. All those pictures are available on the Visible Banking facebook page.
I am keen to speak with you about social media, twitter, facebook, customer reviews & social commerce in banking, financial services, and insurance.
Don’t hesitate to call me (0044 7736 446 357), send me an email (christophe.langlois@visible-banking.com), or DM me (@Visible_Banking).
