On the 29th of October, we will be hosting, in partnership with Deloitte and Beam, a night of debate, discussion and drinks. (Previous event seen in the photo above.)

We are very excited to be hosting this event with our strategic partner and investor, Deloitte. We are also thrilled that we can support Beam, a charity that lets anyone help a homeless person for the long-term by funding their employment training.

The debate will focus on the motion of the night, “Be it resolved, non-bank brands will lead to the democratisation of business financial services”.

Moderator

Helene Panzarino: Associate Director, Centre for Digital Banking and Finance

Confirmed speakers

Richard Radley: Head of Customer Engineering, Financial Services, Google Cloud

TBA: Senior Payments and Financial Services speaker, Facebook

Catherine Wines: Director and co-founder, World Remit

Pinar Emirdag: Pioneering Technologist

Roisin Levine: Head of Banks, Flux

Philippa Martinelli: FinTech at the Department for International Trade

Opening words on the night

tomaot pay (formerly Fractal) CEO and co-founder: Nicholas Heller

Beam CEO and founder: Alex Stephany

Final speakers to be confirmed over the following days.

The reason for why we are debating this particular topic - subconsciously or not, everyone has an affiliation to one or many brands. It could be the clothes you wear, the brand of food that you buy, or even the software that you use.

The same goes for financial services - everyone has loyalty (even if it isn’t unfaltering) to a particular brand for products such as banking, insurance or international payments.

It is no secret that traditional financial services continue to neglect its customers, especially small businesses. One example - the global small business funding gap is estimated to be £3.98 trillion.

Enabled by government initiatives such as Open Banking, the ease of accessing data will allow these non-bank brands (fintechs, big tech and completely non-financial brands) to dis-intermediate traditional financial services.

By making many different data sources public, non-bank brands could offer seamless financial experiences and apply their deeply customer-centric approach to revive the industry. Soon we could be living in a world where there is an API for just about anything.

Non-bank brands have been working hard to disrupt their own industries and now they have come to break up traditional financial services, despite their longevity and global brand power.

We will explore through this debate, if these new non-bank players were to successfully democratise the business financial services, what impact could be made on society for better, or for worse.

For an invite, please contact Lisa Leid at lisa@tomatopay.co.uk

Or you can go get a ticket here.

You can see more on our previous event here.

Remember to sign up for early access to our developer portal here.