Post-review of the conference "Money of the future"

On November 12, the conference “Money of the Future” was held in Moscow, dedicated to financial innovations, including how the financial and IT sectors of world economies interact with each other in the modern world. 

The event was held as one of the central events of the Russian Internet Week (RIW), a forum-exhibition affecting “three industries” at once: the Internet, Media and Telecom. RIW, by the way, was held for the seventh time. 

The history of the b2b conference “Money of the Future”, focused primarily on people somehow connected with banks/payment systems, is a little shorter. It was held for the first time in 2012. Among her guests were Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group, and Brett King, founder of Moven.

This year, too, it was not without stars, but about everything in order. 

The event was held in a format not quite standard for conferences. There was almost no habitual approach when one speaker captures the attention of a large audience for twenty to thirty minutes, and then gives way to the next one. More precisely, several important guests, including Lindsay Clinton from SustainAbility and Alexa Von Tobel so they did, but it was rather an exception.

“Money of the Future” was divided into sections lasting, on average, an hour, during which their participants (from two to seven people, excluding an actively participating moderator) shared their own opinions and experiences about certain trends in the modern finance market. In principle, here, rather, we can talk about the format of mini-reports with discussion. Such an approach, firstly, kept the audience itself in a constant tone, no one was bored, and secondly, the speakers themselves were forced to speak strictly to the point. 

Vladislav Solodky, Managing Partner of Life.SREDA, one of the organizers of the “Money of the Future”, opened the conference. The main figure of his speech is the forecast, according to which the volume of investments in fintech for the whole of 2014 will be about $ 5 billion.

Speaking closer to the middle of the day, Oleg Tinkov from TKS Bank made a loud statement. According to him: “This year all banks will lose money. I emphasize everything. Except for us.”

The event ended with a speech by the already mentioned Alexa von Tobel, founder of the personal finance planning service LearnVest, who spoke about the importance of a business plan (when she raised investments, it took about 75 pages), but also noted that it is still preferable for “angels” to invest in an already working business than in let it be a very tempting, interesting idea.  

In general, the conference turned out to be good and interesting. It gathered more than 800 participants.