How to create a fintech product that people will use daily? To get an answer to this question, we invited the top experts from the fintech industry – Revolut, Starling Bank, Funding Circle, Monese, Tide, and OakNorth – to our Disruption Forum. To spice our event up, we've also invited Lloyds Banking to take part in the discussion.

Global e-commerce sales have exceeded $2 trillion, and they are going to double by 2020. That said, there's no surprise in saying that e-commerce is one of the most optimized tech sectors. Still in this ultra-optimized sector, only three years ago, Tobias Buxhoidt, Anton Eder, and Julian Krenge found yet another way to improve customer experience and increase online stores' revenues and retention rate.

  There are few places on earth as rich in primary energy resources as Canada. The country’s oil reserves make up 10% of the world’s total (see Graph 1). Canada’s also the world’s fourth biggest natural gas producer (see Graph 2). The industry, conservative in its nature, has been slowly adapting to new technologies, especially regarding mobile solutions.

Fed up with the low level of banking services in France, two entrepreneurs decided to have a crack at business banking. Since the launch in 2016, the Qonto team has grown from the founding duo to 80 people. They have attracted over 20,000 small businesses to their bank and closed two funding rounds, pocketing about €12m.

When they started, back in 2012, hardly anyone knew what insurtech was about. Neither were many people aware of the young German startup. Fast forward to 2018, Simplesurance, a German fintech company, is backed by both investor and e-commerce giants (Allianz and Rakuten, respectively), and has also partnered with OnePlus, Huawei, and Revolut.

From this interview, you will learn: How ad-hoc teams could work like companies, improving their workflow and collaboration standards. What the 7 things are that every team on a planet needs to have to operate efficiently. Why John Furneaux, CEO of Hive, doesn’t believe in big organisations as a smart way to achieve goals. What the most insane competitive advantage is that any company can gain if they reinvent themselves in terms of team collaboration

Inn Style was founded in 2011 by Adrian Melrose, Chris Waters and James Kindred. The property management system (PMS) streamlines an accommodation owner’s workload by automating many of the processes that they would otherwise be doing manually. Today Inn Style is used by over 1,000 accommodation owners, and more than 364,000 reservations have been made through the platform.

I believe there are various ways to tell the story of Raisin. But let me take a shortcut. Here are some numbers behind the Berlin-based company that aims to build a leading one-stop shop for savings and investments in Europe.

We’ve talked to Eddie Dubiel, a representative of Finstreet, about the future of one of their project, the difficulties of operating in the highly regulated German financial sector, and about bringing innovation into large fintech organisations. The insights we gathered shed light on doing business on this highly desirable and competitive market.

We’ve all been there. A usual Saturday at home, you’ve got your vacuuming done, and you’re in the middle of making pie crust now. With your hands covered in dough, you look around searching for a salt shaker. And then you hear the vibrant tone of an incoming call you’ve been waiting for the whole morning. A crazy race around the house commences. You’re running around spilling dough on the floor, looking for your phone in desperation. Your dog is running after you, making even more mess. Luckily you find the phone and pick it up. Then another ordeal starts – talking on the phone holding it between your arm and head with a dog tripping you up is never a good idea. What if we told you you could bring some peace into this chaotic scenario? Image a home robot that would answer the call for you and let you talk to people hands-free. Here comes the Israeli company, Roboteam, that used to make life saving robots for the defence. Now, it can save millions of domestic heroes during their home battles with their new product: temi, the personal robot.

A typical day at Netguru looks as follows: One team is building an app for one of the biggest banks in Europe. Another team is working with Volkswagen to help them create a unique customer experience for their first boutique store. Yet another team is sitting at one table with a group of designers and developers experienced in creating cutting-edge unmanned ground vehicles.

ClickMechanic brings a revolution to the car repair and automotive industries. People uncomfortable with their lack of knowledge when leaving their car at a garage no longer need to worry thanks to ClickMechanic’s vetting system for mechanics and a fixed price for repair services. Mechanics can sign up to the platform to get more work and save on the costs of customer service. The result? 18,000 mechanics already on board and prices 50% lower than those of franchise dealers. I had the chance to talk to Andrew Jervis, ClickMechanic’s founder, about what inspired him to create this project, what they offer to customers and mechanics, and how they stay competitive on this highly specialised market.

From this interview, you will learn: How Peter Grosskopf, solarisBank’s CTO, scaled up a tech team How having no financial background was actually the prerequisite in his leading role in the banking platform What Lego bricks have in common with digital banking What the recent investment by BBVA might mean for the Berlin-based fintech startup. For anyone not yet familiar with the company: solarisBank is a Berlin-based, 150-person tech company with a full banking license, serving 60 corporate customers. It all started with the concept of building solarisBank as the first banking platform native to the digital economy – a platform that would enable any company to offer financial services. A few years ago, fintech startups used to working in the agile way, were struggling with lengthy and inefficient setup processes with traditional banks.

Insurance, a travel startup, and insurance again. That would be the shortest description of the professional career of Tim Kunde, a 38-year-old German on a mission to disrupt the insurance industry.

ChaperHome is a simple mobile app, but it could save the life of someone you love – or your own. Based on research and user feedback, ChaperHome is a safety companion, connecting you to a network of ‘protectors’ – your friends and family. You can easily set up scenarios and the app will send a notification to your loved ones as soon as it registers something going wrong. The point is that it will happen without any input from you. In a situation where you might not have time for more than a single tap, ChaperHome has your back.

The Policygenius story goes as follows: back in the day, two McKinsey consultants were advising insurers on growth and marketing strategies. They found a repetitive pattern: the insurers didn’t have a clue how to engage with customers online. So they decided to start their own company to tackle that challenge.

China earned its reputation for copying, but it would be naive to let this “can’t innovate” myth persist. “You can no longer lose sight of what is happening in the East”, warns one of the largest consulting companies. And this is especially true for the financial and insurance industry. China, with almost 800 million Internet users, propitious regulators, and behemoths such as Alibaba or Tencent, is quickly becoming the world's largest innovation incubator. To crack the Chinese secret code, I spoke to Mikołaj Bołtuć and Marcin Nedwidek of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

 

“No one else does it the way we do.” said Asaf Navot, the founder of Home Made, when I asked him about his company’s unique selling point. “We bring the quality of service of a top-notch traditional estate agency, but for a low flat fee,” he added. Yet, it’s not easy to compete on such a demanding market. Thousands of other real estate agencies, complicated regulations and dealing with owners of multi-million pound homes are just a few day-to-day challenges.

Millennials and the frenzy around social media are alone enough to force banks to rethink strategies. Invite the PSD2 directive to the party and you’ll get the message: 2018 will bring serious change to the financial sector.