Our annual meeting went off without a glitch and we now have a very diverse board which is brimming with experience and excitement about the year ahead. Welcome and congratulations to both Carmen Vicelich from Valocity and Leeaanna Kohn-Hardy from Finappster, I am really looking forward to working with you and a huge thanks to Tim Larkin from Dacreed who was great to work with, I hope he will remain actively engaged in future projects and events.
Although the year is nearing its end, there is no sign of a slow down, we are in the final stages of securing the Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE) and the Digital Council as partners on our Open Banking project and Middleware, ANZ and Denton Kensington Swan are all confirmed which is great news. But wait there’s more, we still have room for a few more partners, if you are keen to be involved, please get in touch.
We are continuing to see great success stories like ANZ and Aider working more closely together, this is a true reflection of incumbents being supportive of new innovation.
A special mention to one of the founding members of FinTechNZ Binu Paul who now heads up FinTech for the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), this is another example of a forward thinking regulatory who is keen to support innovation not hamper it. This is a huge win for the FinTech community and I look forward to working very closely with Binu in 2021.
Since we launched our Golden Ticket program this year, we’ve supported one ambitious start-up each quarter with great success. Why stop there? We spotted an opportunity to empower more emerging businesses with a sharpened focus on specific challenges. As we drive forward with Tranche 3, the Scale-Up Lab will now provide two more applicants, in addition to our Golden Ticket holder, with the expertise they need to accelerate. More details to follow on the Scale-Up Lab in the coming weeks. If you haven’t applied for the program, now’s your chance (applications for Tranche3 close Nov 27) you can apply here – www.goldenticket.Nz
The University of Waikato is hosting an event AI and the Future of Finance Summit on the 30th of November if you are in the Hamilton area.
We held our event Raising the Bar of Cyber Security in New Zealand yesterday and discussed how we can raise the awareness of Cyber security and the professional and personal risks people face here in New Zealand. Despite most CEO’s believing their company needs cyber security only 4% believe they need it personally. A big thank you to our host Marsh & McLellan with speakers from Redshield, Beneficial Insurance and Digisure, a very interesting debate and great to see so many new and old faces.
Our last event of the year is with AMS and will be on Open Banking which ties nicely into our project due to commence in 2021.
I just wanted to say a personal thanks to everyone for the support over the year and your commitment to continuing to support our cause, it’s not been an easy one and it will be one we remember for many reasons. However, let’s finish the year strong, set the plan for 2021 and look forward to a well deserved break over the festive season. We are already building our calendar of events for 2021 so if you want to speak or host then please do get in touch.
James Brown
General Manager
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