ICT Spring Europe 2019 Conference
At the 21st and 22nd of May 2019, the ICT Spring Europe Tech event took place in the European Convention Center in Luxembourg. The event is the largest event of that type in Luxembourg with more than 5000 attendants. I was lucky enough to be one of them. The conference gave space to plenty of exciting sessions grouped into various summits including Fintech, AI/Digital, Space Forum, IS Day, Funds Event and Pitch your Startup. While it is impossible to condense this big event in a single article, I would like to share with you a few of my key highlights and key takeaways:
- Insightful Talk by Claude Marx, General Director of CSSF: The regulator is actively looking into AI, Machine Learning and NLP and open for the topic. They have recently published a whitepaper on Artificial Intelligence and AI definitely worth a read.
- Finologee is an interesting Luxembourg based FinTech/RegTech specialist, providing apps & platforms for digital identification & onboarding, SDDs with e-mandates, multi-channel messaging and PSD2 compliance for banks, using its FinTech Acceleration Platform. It provides API based building blocks which are legally fully compliant with regulatory requirements. This makes it interesting for digital solutions which require onboarding of new clients in a digital fashion.
- Microsoft for Startups (Scale Up Programs) is an interesting program for startups and Microsoft helps to connect them to VC, potential clients etc. The admission is very low <2% - so harder to get into than Harvard: This Startup Program Is Harder To Get Into Than Harvard And Has Helped Entrepreneurs Raise Billions.
- Is it FinTech or TechFin? In China, entrepreneurs coined the term TechFin, as technology is the main driver of business behind banking and finance transactions – the main enabler of new innovative financial products. China is becoming the centre of innovation worldwide with impressive results in the TechFin space. On the singles day in 2018, 1 Billion USD alone was transacted through Ant Financial in the first 90 seconds. With the aggressive growth over the last few years, tech companies see the need to rebuild their core systems every 3-4 years. Banks are usually in >20 years cycles of renewing core banking systems.
- The growth of China in tech also comes with strict discipline and hard work: "996" is the working model. Most people work from 9 AM to 9 PM for 6 days a week.
- In the Internet of Everything, core networking infrastructure is essential. Networking infrastructure is an element often taken for granted but will stick out to be (and already is) key to making all digital business models work. Investing in Mobile and Backend Networks will remain a priority for many, even beyond the rollout of 5G.
Copyright Farvest
The conference gave a good overview of the technology scene in Europe and gave some opportunities for networking and technology scouting. The focus on AI and FinTech made it an interesting event to attend and I can recommend attending it next year.
Video
Last but not least, I want to share a link to RTL Today who interviewed me at the conference.
Conference Materials
- Some of the presentations will be published at https://www.ictspring.com/
Impressions
