Innovate Finance Director of Partnerships and Associate Director of Membership & Growth Adam Sokratous and Rashee Pandey attended the Singapore FinTech Festival. The world’s largest FinTech Festival welcomed the global FinTech community. Ours was well represented, with members such as Onfido, CurrencyCloud, LexisNexis, Block, Paymentology, and the London Stock Exchange Group meeting with us. 

We had the privilege of hosting our first ever event in the APAC region in partnership with Hogan Lovells, whom we thank for hosting us and our community. Topics included regulatory barriers to entry, FinTech as a force for good, impact investing, and the future of FinTech in debt capital markets. We are (slowly but surely) cementing our presence in the region.

Here are some of our takeaways from the week. We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the festival. Your words will feed into how Innovate Finance continues to scale into the region, so please don’t hesitate to reach out by emailing international@innovatefinance.com.

The Innovate Finance x Hogan Lovells Roundtable

1. The size of the festival

The Singapore FinTech Festival holds the mantle of world’s largest FinTech festival. This year it welcomed over 10,000 organisations. This includes some of the world’s largest heritage financial institutions looking to meet FinTech partners; regulators & central banks from all five continents; technology companies from Amazon to GitHub; and, of course, FinTechs of all shapes and sizes.

The truly gargantuan nature of the Festival on full display on the main stage

2. The UK Presence there

These FinTech firms included the 25 companies brought to the Festival by the UK Department for Business and Trade as part of the UK’s government trade mission. The Department, along with London & Partners and Scottish Development International, sponsored the UK stand, with the UK High Commissioner, Kara Owen, providing the welcoming address. 

The UK High Commissioner to Singapore, Kara Owen, giving a speech at the UK Pavilion

3. Foreign Governmental Presence

The UK was joined in hosting pavilions & delegations by a host of other countries. Most came with a booth (obviously none as grand and glorious as the UK’s 😉). Again hailing from all over the world, this serves to emphasise the huge interest and impact of the Festival.

4. Looking to next year

If you’d like to take part in next year’s UK delegation to the Festival, or if you’d like to claim your Innovate Finance member discount for festival tickets, please email international@innovatefinance.com , and we’ll keep you updated with next year’s developments.