Report from Finovate 2007: Next Generation Financial Services

Posted by Patrick Gannon :: October 6, 2007 @ 8:24 am

Lending Club was privileged to present this week at Finovate, a one-day conference focused on innovative companies that are creating the next generation of financial services. Kudos to Jim Bruene and NetBanker for a meeting that let each company demonstrate its offering to an overflow audience of press, bloggers, bankers, techies, and beyond.

At a high level, there were two kinds of companies at the conference: Web 2.0 and Mobile. The mobile technology available to banks and consumers is becoming more and more impressive with time – allowing people to manage everyday finances directly from their mobile devices. Someday, we will all be paying bills with our cell phones.

The Web 2.0 lineup was great as well. The participants included loan companies, personal finance companies, and even a virtual collection agency. Every company had a good presentation – most all of them were able to show the new and improved experience that financial services customers can have thanks to recent innovations.

We had the pleasure of talking with executives from all across the industry about possible deals and new ways to apply our technology and services. We spoke with bloggers and reporters, who put up a video blog and an article about Finovate.

I am particularly proud of our 7-minute demonstration of Lending Club where John Donovan explained our company's approach and market strategy while I lent $500 to 20 different borrowers using our leading edge LendingMatch™ technology. Each of the borrowers got great rates, the audience response to our p2p lending platform was excellent, and the overwhelming interest after the demonstration was great to see. We think making loans to people at great rates using our p2p lending approach will be a big and growing part of financial services going forward.

Thanks again to Finovate and congratulations to all of our co-presenters on moving financial services into the future.