CHARLOTTE – Fintech Generations—a popular conference attended by hundreds of fintech entrepreneurs, professionals and investors every year in Charlotte—is going virtual for the first time ever.

The two-day event, held June 3-4, will feature over a dozen talks and panels with regional, national and international leaders in banking, financial services and insurance discussing technology’s role in advancing the industry.

The theme of the 2020 program is “Journey,” focused on how fintech is addressing new issues as they arise, from COVID-19 to democratization to big data.

Queen City Fintech Co-Founder and Director Dan Roselli says that hosting the conference virtually helps the organization tap into a wider audience across the U.S. and Canada, as COVID-19 continues to upend traditional ways of networking.

“With changes happening daily and likely to continue happening well after the conference ends, we saw a need to keep the conversation going,” Roselli adds. “We now have the opportunity to gather an international audience and keep them engaged in conversations beyond the two days of Fintech Generations. These continued conversations will lead us through one of our greatest challenges and QC Fintech gets to be at the forefront of that.”

This year, the conference is adding an entirely new breakout track focused on insurance technology. Insurtech has been a key target for Queen City Fintech as it works to expand support beyond the broad fintech definition. At the 2018 Fintech Generations conference last June, Carolina Fintech Hub and QC Fintech hosted a concurring Insurtech Summit.

“Fintech Generations has established itself as one of the premier fintech thought-leadership conferences in the country, [which] has helped the fintech ecosystem in Charlotte and the southeast accelerate its reputation as one of the leading global regions for fintech innovation,” Roselli said. “Our goal is to use the Fintech Generations platform to help do the same for insurtech.”

Roselli says he hopes to have around 800 attendees tuning in from across the U.S. and Canada, which would be the largest Fintech Generations turnout ever.

Hosting the event digitally, Roselli adds, has allowed Fintech Generations to bring in speakers that don’t normally speak at conferences. He cites Mike Cagney, the founder and former CEO of San Francisco startup SoFi and current CEO and founder of Figure, a blockchain-based lending startup that began in 2018. Cagney will be a keynote speaker in the event, discussing how blockchain challenges the status quo.

“This new virtual conference environment allows for a lower barrier to speak,” Roselli says. “Mike doesn’t do a lot of conference speaking because it involves travel time and at least a full day, [but] now it’s just 60 minutes of his time. This has allowed Fintech Generations to produce a very ‘fresh’ schedule of content.”

Other speakers in the two-day program include executives from Truist, JP Morgan, Mastercard, Wells Fargo, Citi, Credit Suisse, Fifth Third Bank, U.S. Bank, Oracle, Cognizant, State Farm, AllState, Northwestern Mutual, Accenture, Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, Paris’ Sia Partners, Swiss Re, Fintech Montreal and SoftBank Ventures Asia.

The agenda also features speakers from a few North Carolina companies, including Raleigh-founded retail investing startup Groundfloor, as well as Charlotte-based Levvel (a consulting firm) and Cloosiv (an order-ahead app for coffee shops).

The program serves as a demo day for the 12th class of startups in the Queen City Fintech accelerator. The teams will present six-minute pitches, along with companies from Georgia Tech’s ATDC fintech startup incubator in Atlanta.

The event will be hosted on Brella, a networking platform that Queen City Fintech has used for previous conferences. Roselli says Brella offers a higher production value than other platforms such as Zoom, more closely matching the in-person experience of the conference. Attendees will also be added to an exclusive event conversation on QC Fintech’s community Slack channel.

Queen City Fintech is offering free tickets to high school and college students. (Tickets cost $99 for all other attendees.) Roselli says free access for students is part of QC Fintech’s ongoing effort to “drive top student talent into the fintech innovation ecosystem.”

https://wraltechwire.com/event/2020-fintech-generations/