LAS VEGAS–Still dismissing fintechs? Those CUs that have played down or even dismissed the warnings over the threats to their member relationships as presented by financial technology companies will want to take a hard look at the trade show of one conference here, which is five times the size of the largest event in the U.S. credit union community and which is wall to wall with companies eager to put the “disintermediate” in member “disintermediation.”
The Money 20/20 Conference is taking place in Las Vegas this week and has drawn a crowd of more than 11,000 attendees, although only a small percentage are credit unions. Those CU leaders who are in attendance are encountering not just fintechs who want a piece of their members’ wallets, but a huge conference agenda that in some cases feels like it could fit right in at any credit union get-together—and that includes discussion of inclusion and serving the underserved—but which also is an indicator of where the market is headed.
Scenes from Money 20/20 meeting, including main general session, center, waiting for crowd to arrive.
500+ Companies
The more than 500 companies on-hand in the trade show that dwarfs that at CUNA’s annual GAC in Washington range from start-ups to established brand-name organizations that are rebranding themselves as fintechs, and all offering a menu of niche and broader solutions ranging from account opening to anti-fraud to credit cards-as-a-service to payments to identity authentication to data analytics to crypto offerings and more.
Not all of the companies are looking to grab members away from credit unions—some of those with whom CUToday.info had discussions indicated they would like to partner with credit unions to become their backoffice or offer white label solutions. That issue was the subject of one discussion by a panel of CUs held at a separate event, the Underground Collision, prior to the opening of Money 20/20, as CUToday.info reported here.
Map of trade show booths, presentation areas and more at Money 20/20.
Familiar Themes
Meanwhile, spread across five floors of meeting space at the Venetian Hotel conference center is an agenda that includes more than 75 different sessions over each of its four days. Topics of discussion in many cases will ring a bell with credit unions, including a series of sessions under the heading “Building Tomorrow’s Bank in Today’s Turmoil”; Leveraging AI in Digital-First Marketing; Women and Financial Disparity, From Main Street to Wall Street; Customer Experience, the Ultimate Marketing Tool; Cannabis Banking from the Front Lines: How it Started, How It’s Going and Where It’s Headed; Anti-Money Laundering: the Hidden Bombs; the Key to Mitigating Emerging Fraud Vectors? It’s In Your Hand; Machine Learning Models for Servicing and Delinquency; Building Trust Online: For the Business, For Your Customers; Designing Relevant and Inclusive Payments Products for Local Markets, and more.
Future Topics of Attention
Other session topics seem likely to land on credit union meeting agendas, such as Token-Gated Commerce is What’s Next for Brand Loyalty; Metaverse: What it means for Money and the Keepers of Identity; The Cloud Changed Everything, But What Now?; An Embedded Revolution: How Platforms and Marketplaces Will Reimagine Financial Services; Fintech & Data: Changing Sustainable Finance for Good & Forever, and more.
Other topics of discussion sounded as if they were borrowed from credit unions (It’s Time to Turn Your Customers into Shareholders), or ran counter to the views often expressed at CU meetings, such as a panel discussion on buy now, pay later solutions in which the BNPL providers said it is their companies that are acting in the best interests of consumers, unlike credit card issuers that trap cardholders in debt (CUToday.info will have coverage of the session).
One of the t-shirts available at Money 20/20.
Words Missing, But Not Attention
As noted above, the full agenda is significantly larger than what is given an overview above. Worth noting is the words “Credit Union” do not appear in any of the session titles. But that doesn’t mean credit unions should dismiss the threat posed by fintechs.
As Brian Kaas of CMFG Ventures noted during the Underground Collision meeting, “Fintechs are starting to gain marketshare and big banks spends billions and billions of dollars and guess what, they are going after your members. They are not going to let up and it’s not going to get any easier.
“Funding for fintechs last year exceeded $130 billion. The tech budget for the credit union industry combined is $6 billion,” he continued. “The number of fintechs in North America now outnumber credit unions two to one. My guess is we will see that number decrease by a little bit, but the fact is there are a lot of credit unions out there. Fintechs have knocked credit unions out as the number-one source of unsecured personal loans. Today, fintechs have just shy of 50% marketshare, and there are more fintechs now hungry for other loans.”
CUToday.info will have ongoing coverage of the meeting.