EXCLUSIVE: “The Conference That Listens”

Money20/20 Europe’s Head of Content Gina Clarke tells Tim Goodfellow how the premier event stays evergreen by constantly refreshing that feedback loop

There are a wealth of industry conferences with slightly different focusses, but not many that can claim to have royalty and whistleblowers on the same bill. It’s the sort of daring content we’ve come to expect from Money20/20 Europe, though – and this year it’s more than lived up to its reputation.

To maintain its status as the mecca for fintech and financial innovators, a lot of creativity goes on behind the scenes, and former financial journalist, now Money20/20 Europe content director, Gina Clarke, has a big hand in that.

“It’s like putting a story together,” she says. “I am contacting all the key players and finding the background in lots of research. But instead of writing the story, I see it play out on stage.”

The European iteration of the Money20/20 event, which takes place in Amsterdam, has a broad regional focus, and, as a result, catering to various jurisdictions and stakeholders can be a challenge. What apparently isn’t, is the organisers’ penchant for surprises

Think flash-mob brass bands and an inland beach this year. That certainly shakes up the networking. The show invited Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands, a vocal supporter of the local startup sector, to open the 2024 event and take part in the first discussion, while the main keynote speaker, ex-French President Franćois Hollande, reflects France’s rising standing in tech, particularly AI.

Then we come to that whistleblower – a one-on-one slot billed as ‘What the Wirecard Whistleblower Did Next: Pav Gill’s Confide’ with the man who uncovered one of the most significant financial scandals in European history and went on to found his own startup to help avoid another. Confide makes it easier for employees to call out company wrongdoings – and for companies to act before a story hits the media.

Talking of fraud, a free signed advance copy of journalist Geoff White’s new book Rinsed (released June 13) about money laundering in the modern age came with the entry ticket price this year – a healthy indication of the organisers’ willingness bto welcome all sides of the ecosystem.

CONTENT FOR EVERYONE

If you’ve never been to Money20/20 Europe, USA or Asia, it’s hard to put into words the scale of these events. The RAI conference centre in Amsterdam is filled with colourful stands, booths and stages. Plus there’s plenty of other mini-events going on around it. There’s some showmanship in all this, clearly, but the content itself is paramount.

“We get our crystal ball out every year and try to predict what trends are coming up,” says Clarke. “I think this year, we’ve done a pretty good job.”

For Clarke and her team, the feedback from the previous year’s attendees plays a big part in the decisions they make in organising the next event.

“We’ve listened and what they said was they want to book their time around the content. So we chose five big topics for 2024, programmed back to back.”

The clear structure meant people could make the most of the awesome networking opportunity that is Money20/20.

“We always think ‘how do we top last year?’. For me, it was about finding a place for everyone”

“We always think, how do we top last year? For me, it was about finding a place for everyone,” says Clarke. “We know that networking is so high on people’s priorities, so we looked at adding it into the content, which we did with the Singularity Stage.”

These first-come, first-served deep dives on particular topics, give opportunities for networking around a single topic focus – ‘to hear some fabulous content and meet
people who are also interested in the same content as you’, as Clarke explains it.

With any Money20/20 there’s also content that isn’t listed on the programme, including behind-closed-doors events that aim to ‘bring in the retailers, the insurers, the wealthtech people’. All this is in the service of finding that ‘something for everyone’, which is a tough task when you have 100 countries represented, 8,500 attendees and 2,300 exhibitors. It’s one Clarke’s been willing to accept, though.

“The difficulty of being such a prominent European event is there’s different regulatory practices to think about, and different organisations with different needs,” she says.

“Obviously, there is harmony in regulation for Europe, but from an implementation perspective, the UK is very different. And then you add what’s going on in LATAM or Canada or Australia. We’re trying to tell that whole story as a bit of a journey.”

The location for Money20/20 Europe helps, says Clarke. “Amsterdam is such a vibrant city and a banking hub in Europe, being in good reach for many high-profile European banks.” And that’s not just the established players, many of whom have speaking slots at the conference, but the challengers too, which, she argues, aren’t really challengers at all any more, but an established part of the ecosystem.

Regardless of how many countries may be represented in total, it’s notable that Clarke admits: “When we look at our audience breakdown, the majority do still come from the UK.”

Of course, proximity helps, but their presence en masse is possibly indicative of the UK sector’s desperate need to stay in the European loop. That’s especially the case when you have the European equivalent of Open AI – Mistral AI – being grown in France and the upcoming, world-first EU AI Act being introduced.

THE AI REVOLUTION

And that brings us to the overall theme at the heart of the 2024 conference, Human X Machine. Clarke says AI leaked into planning for every aspect of the show this year, but it was thoughtfully managed, attempting to cut through and provide some clarity about the technology to attendees.

Among of the five sub-themes, Signal vs. Noise was designed to help them ‘choose which path to follow’ and provide useful case studies, explains Clarke. Meanwhile, after a year when venture capital was less than adventurous, The Business Of Money sub-theme was designed to address ‘the whole profit-versus-growth conversation’, and another, The Customer Universe Of One, put the focus on customer centricity.

There’s obviously a keen awareness of the stuff that really matters, and Clarke also talks about the balance the show strikes between deep dives and something more high level. As she puts it: “It’s OK to hear CEOs on stage deliver the headlines and get an idea of where the industry is going, but if you’re already embedded in that, you really want some tangible takeaways.”

That’s where the deep dives come in, talking about the slightly less sexy (but no less discussed) topics of digital identity, regulatory compliance and cybersecurity. What stands out is that the team really builds the show around their customers – practising what should be an industry standard. So, if you want a conference that listens, this could be the one for you.

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue 32, Page 4-5