Fintech Inn 2021: 5 takeaways from the Baltics’ largest fintech conference - Fintech Inn Lithuania
2021-10-29

Fintech Inn 2021: 5 takeaways from the Baltics’ largest fintech conference

The 5th edition of the Fintech Inn conference, the Baltics’ largest fintech event, delivered two days of stimulating discussions, expert insights, and valuable networking opportunities, all available for free to participants online. Over 1,000 attendees gathered online to hear nearly 70 industry-leading speakers address the major and emerging issues across the global fintech ecosystem.

In line with its slogan “Spin the Energy of Fintech”, Fintech Inn 2021 invited attendees to examine how fintech might recharge global finance through digital acceleration, transformative technology, improved risk management, and greater sustainability. The discussions largely focused on the effects of the pandemic on the industry, as well as on ways for fintechs to get ready to meet client, regulatory, and societal demands of the future.

Here are 5 takeaways from fintech leaders speaking at Fintech Inn 2021.

Nimble fintechs need infrastructure to pioneer new Open Banking applications

It has been nearly four years since the EU’s Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) came into force, setting up the stage for widespread adoption of Open Banking practices. Yet Open Banking is still struggling to take off, which means missed opportunities for both customers and companies who might have created new products and services. 

The slow uptake has been partly attributed to the foot-dragging by some of the large financial institutions who may have perceived Open Banking as more of a threat than an opportunity. But the current unsatisfactory situation might be remedied by innovators free to experiment with open data.

Speaking at Fintech Inn 2021, Rolands Mesters – co-founder and CEO of freemium open banking data platform Nordigen – highlighted the need to set up conditions for risk-taking innovators to explore the possibilities of Open Banking.

“This ability to have fun and to play around is absolutely necessary for future innovation. When we think about the future of Open Banking, the already operational infrastructure is being rapidly adopted by large financial institutions, but not enough developers,” he said. “The latter also need a playground where they can have fun – if it’s not fun, they’re not going to be able to build anything that’s good.”

To unlock the true value that Open Finance can provide, the upcoming years should see better communication between market participants, especially between the fintech space and the banks, said George Parks Davie, Open Banking Product Director at payments provider Klarna.

“I also wish for more trust to be created,” he said. “Take the often unresponsive open banking APIs or inconsistent data of the big banks – they will soon taste their own medicine when using the lacking APIs of other banks. So we need a much closer dialogue with everyone in the Open Banking game.”

Behavioural analysis is the future of AML

The UN estimates that the amount of money laundered around the world is 2-5% of global GDP every year, and to intercept even a small fraction of these transactions, financial institutions are harnessing more and more data. At the same time, consumers and regulators, especially in Europe, are putting more pressure on businesses to be compliant with data privacy laws. 

Staying compliant on both AML and GDPR fronts is a challenge for financial institutions, big and small. What might help marry both approaches is behavior-based analysis.

According to one of Fintech Inn 2021 speakers Taavi Tamkivi, co-founder and CEO of AML platform Salv, the future might hold a shift from a focus on fighting fraud based on wrongdoers’ identity to a focus on their actions.

“Currently, actual behavioural monitoring is heavily under-prioritized. If we become better at behaviour detection with AI and other new technologies, the approach will shift from ‘who the person is’ to ‘what the person does’. This ultimately decreases the pressure on privacy data processing and puts more emphasis on more complex AML investigations,” Tamkivi said during the conference.

Green finance presents a big opportunity for fintech

Sustainability is on everyone’s lips these days, and the financial world is no exception. Steeped in innovation and technical expertise, the fintech sector seems to be uniquely positioned to generate solutions that help businesses to evaluate and reduce their environmental impact, and investors to channel their operations towards more sustainable assets.

One of Fintech Inn 2021 panelists, Tee Pruitt – Head of Partnerships at Doconomy, an impact-tech developing digital tools for climate impact calculations – said that innovative and progressive financial institutions see sustainability as the new ‘digital’ – the biggest seismic change to hit finance globally in their lifetime.

“Sustainability is a huge vector for finance. The change is accelerated by the market draw around ESGs as well as consumer pressure. Also, the impending regulatory structures like the EU’s green regulation will force financial institutions to understand their exposures and do something about them. Financial firms have a dual mandate to get their own internal operations in shape while helping their existing clients and partners to be more sustainable as well,” Mr. Pruitt explained.

Data shows that ‘sustainability’ already is among the top investment categories for newly launched VC funds. But to truly prosper, green fintechs should offer high risk-high reward investment opportunities, said Dominykas Stankevičius, Investment Associate at LaunchPad Capital.

“I believe that the next big test for sustainable fintech is breaking into the retail investment market. But retail investors are usually attracted to the possibility of high yields in short periods of time, so green fintechs should provide retail investors with opportunities of high risk and high return,” he explained.

CBDCs will disrupt the crypto space, but are unlikely to push out stablecoins

It appears that Decentralised Finance is not just a fancy term for blockchain but rather an emerging alternative to finance as we know it. As the technology behind such decentralized blockchain networks as Ethereum and Solana progresses, consumers and businesses increasingly embrace digital currencies, and investments in crypto assets continue to gain ground.

With the rapid rise in circulation of stablecoins over the past couple of years, central banks have stepped up efforts to explore their own stable digital currencies. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) projects have emerged all over the world, including in Lithuania, where the Bank of Lithuania introduced the world’s first blockchain-based digital collector coin. 

“CBDCs are definitely the missing part of DeFi. We all have and still use cash – an asset that is not yet digitized or tokenized. We need CBDCs in this market, as some participants need the “solidity” they offer,” said Vytautas Kašėta, co-founder and CIO of SUPER HOW, a private DARQ technologies lab, and president of Crypto Economy Organisation.

The arrival of CBDCs, however, is not likely to completely overtake the role that stablecoins enjoy today. The regulation of these digital currencies are bound to make monetary transactions more transparent albeit less private.

“If CBDCs were used like stablecoins, which I think they could be, I doubt that the regulators would be willing to issue CBDCs that could not identify the holder. I think it’s not going to take off in a way that we expect, and will live on parallel private blockchains, where the identity of holders will be known,” Vytautas Karalevičius, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange SpectroCoin, said during Fintech Inn 2021.

Decentralized identity is a critical enabler of DeFi

The recent emergence of decentralised digital identity (DDID) solutions promises to give users full control of how, when, where and what information on their identity is being shared. But in addition to self-sovereignty over identity data, DDID has the potential to create seamless, accessible, and verifiable DeFi ecosystems by solving the identity verification issues on privacy-preserving blockchain networks.

According to Barbara Hałasek, Head of Regulatory Affairs at Coinfirm, a AML platform for crypto assets, the worldwide reach of the blockchain-based financial ecosystem makes traditional KYC checks obsolete in DeFi.

“Customers of DeFi platforms can transact in seconds from different corners of the world, but at the moment, decentralized finance does not use AML/KYC controls to the extent it should,” she explained. “This situation should change with regulators looking into developing a good framework to impose AML obligations on DeFi. And due to the global nature of DeFi, I don’t think that traditional IDs would work here – DDID is the way forward.”

The Fintech Inn conference was jointly organised by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of 

Economy and Innovation, and the Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA), with support from compliance platform Ondato, API management platform Sensedia, and Vilnius-based ROCKIT – Home of FinTech and Sustainable Innovation.

 

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22 October | Main Stage | GMT +3 /
Time
Topic
Speakers
10.05-11.05
INVESTING IN CRYPTO / DIGITAL ASSET COMPANIES (VENTURE CAPITAL PERSPECTIVE)

Sumit Kishore (moderator), Head of Operations @ Consensys
Uldis Tēraudkalns, CEO @ Nexpay
Sang H Lee, Co-Founder and CEO @ VegaX and Konstellation

11.05-12.05
NEOBANKING’S NEXT TRICK: GETTING BIG, STAYING NIMBLE

Remco Veenenberg (moderator), Head of Partnerships @ Perfinal
Sarp Demiry, CEO @ European Merchant Bank
Mantvydas Štareika, CEO and Member of the Board @ SME Bank
Esther Groen, Advisor to the Board @ Holland FinTech
Andrius Bičeika, Deputy CEO and Member of the Management Board @ Revolut Bank

12.05-13.05
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: THE NEXT ERA OF FINTECH

Jarosław Sarwa (moderator), Community Partner @ FinTech Connector, Digital Leader @ QGroup
Jennifer Reynolds, President and CEO @ Toronto Finance International
Liudas Kanapienis, Co-Founder and CEO @ Ondato
Anton Zujev, Head of Business Development and Sales @ Forbis
Siri Børsum, Global VP Finance Vertical Eco-development & Partnerships @ Huawei Consumer Group

13.05-13.25
THE SUCCESS STORY BEHIND GROWTH OF LITHUANIA’S FINTECH ECOSYSTEM AND WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE ?

Liutauras Žilinskas, Investment Advisor for Technology @ Invest Lithuania

13.25-14.35
DIGITAL IDENTITY & DECENTRALISED IDENTITY: CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES

Liudas Kanapienis (moderator), Co-Founder & CEO @ Ondato
Audrius Ramoška, Co-Founder and CEO @ Soverio
Kalev Pihl, CEO @ SK ID Solutions
Jon Ølnes, Product Manager Trust Services @ Signicat
Barbara Hałasek, Head of Regulatory Affairs @ Coinfirm

14.35-16.05
WORKSHOP: STARTUPS, PR AND THE MEDIA IN 2021

Mike Butcher, TechCrunch’s Editor-at-large
Julija (JJ) Jegorova (moderator), Founder and CEO @ Black Unicorn PR

16.05-16.15
CLOSING

Louis Zezeran, moderator

9.00-9.05
OPENING

Louis Zezeran, moderator

9.05-10.05
IS ALTERNATIVE FINANCING BECOMING MAINSTREAM FINANCING?

Mindaugas Mikalajūnas (moderator), CEO @ SME Finance
Tomas Mačiulaitis, CEO @ FinBee Verslui
Diego Perez, CEO @ the Fintech Association of Brazil – ABFintechs and Co-Founder @ SMU Investments

Michel Breeuwer, General Manager Benelux @ Mambu

21 October | Main Stage | GMT +3 /
Time
Topic
Speakers
10.25-11.30
EMPOWERING GREEN FINANCE. BIG CHANCE FOR FINTECHS?

Alex Gibb (moderator), Partner @ Katalista Ventures and Advisor @ Sumup
Dominykas Stankevičius, Investment Associate @ Launchpad Capital
Tee Pruitt, Head of Partnerships @ Doconomy
Akvilė Bosaitė, Partner and Co-Head of Banking & Finance Practice Group @ COBALT Legal
Rosvaldas Krušna, Chief Specialist @ the Bank of Lithuania

11.30-12.35
DATA PRIVACY vs. AML/KYC

Martynas Bieliūnas (moderator), Managing Partner @ Privacy Partners Group
Domantas Čiuldė, Co-Founder and CEO @ Idenfy
Faisal Islam, Head of FC/AML @ Sentinels.ai
Marios M. Skandalis, Director Compliance @ Bank of Cyprus
Taavi Tamkivi, Founder and CEO @ Salv

12.35-13.10
120M AUDIENCE – THAT FINTECH ECOSYSTEM HAS OVERLOOKED

Vaiva Amulė (moderator), Head of Fintech Hub LT
Sandra Golbreich, Co-Founder and CEO @ Baltic Sandbox

13.10-14.10
DeFi AND THE FUTURE OF FINANCE

Ash Costello (moderator), Member of Expert Panel @ EU Blockchain Observatory & Forum
Vytautas Karalevičius, Co-Founder @ Bankera and SpectroCoin
Vytautas Kašėta, Co-Founder & CIO @ SUPER HOW?
Chia Hock Lai, Co-Chairman @ Blockchain Association Singapore
Patryk Walaszczyk, Blockchain Consultant @ IBM

14.00-15.00
POWERING THE POTENTIAL OF PAYMENTS

Daumantas Dvilinskas, CEO & Co-Founder @ TransferGo
Marcilio Oliveira, COO & Co-Founder @ Sensedia
Marius Galdikas, CEO @ ConnectPay
Airidas Puodžiūnas, General Manager @ Contis

14.55-15.45
CYBER SECURITY: BEST PRACTICES TO OPTIMIZE INCIDENT HANDLING

Tomas Martinkėnas, Director of Security and Privacy @ Vinted
Mario Galatovic, VP Products & Alliances @ Ultimaco
Jessica Ramos, Head of Regulatory & Oversight Affairs @ EBA CLEARING
Marius Pareščius, Vice President @ Paysera

Tomas Beinaravičius (moderator), Senior Consultant @ Transcendent Group Baltics

15.45-17.00
FINTECH & AI: BREAKING DOWN FINANCE VERTICALS AND IN SEARCH FOR NEW HORIZONTALS

Jung Seok Kang, Founder and CEO @ AIZEN
Mariane ter Veen, Director, Lead Data Sharing @ Innopay
Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, Founding Chairman & CEO @ Global Risk Management Network

18.10
CLOSING

Louis Zezeran, moderator

9.00-9.10
OPENING

Louis Zezeran, moderator

9.00-9.15
WELCOME ADDRESS
9.15-10.25
MOVING FROM OPEN BANKING TO OPEN FINANCE. WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?

Ronalds Mesters, Co-Founder & CEO @ Nordigen
Aleksėjus Loskutovas, CEO @ NEO Finance
Gibson Nascimento, Head of Solutions EMEA @ Sensedia
Shaul David, Growth & Head of Banking @ Railsbank