This past month, the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab at Ivey Business School continued to display leadership in the Fintech space by sponsoring two international events and running a specialized course for practitioners:
Toronto FinTech Conference
On October 20-21, we held the inaugural Toronto Fintech Conference. This annual academic event will be the go-to conference for Fintech scholars doing cutting-edge research across the fields of strategy, entrepreneurship, finance and economics on topics such as cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer lending, robo-advice, cognitive banking, and blockchain. Thirty-five universities from around the globe were represented. Participants heard two amazing keynote presentations by Ryan Zurrer, HBA ’06, Principal and Venture Partner at Polychain Capital, and Joseph Villamizar, Director, Fintech partnerships at Scotiabank. Go here for photos, and the names of the winners of the Best Fintech Paper Award.
Hack Western 4
On November 17-19, Western University welcomed more than 500 students for Hack Western 4. In teams of four and in only 36 hours, participants worked on building amazing web, mobile and hardware applications – anything from robots to blockchain-based payment apps! This event is about team creativity and finding clever solutions (“hacks”) to real-world problems in a short amount of time, while learning new things, having fun…and not sleeping much. With more than 2,100 applicants and 500 hackers selected, we ended up with 105 projects submitted at the end of the weekend. With the support of the Lab, the Scotiabank Digital Factory sponsored two prizes this year: Best Fintech Hack and Best Startup Idea (in partnership with Western’s startup incubator Propel). Go here for more details about the event and the winning teams. For photos of the event, click here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.
Mastering Fintech: Strategies for the Future
On November 23-24, Ivey faculty taught the inaugural two-day executive education program “Mastering Fintech: Strategies for the Future”. The course was attended by 20 finance and industry professionals at Ivey’s Tangerine Leadership Centre in Toronto. Participants learned how Fintech is transforming lending, crowdfunding, robo-advice, and payments; how to identify and respond to disruptive vs. architectural innovations; what strategies incumbents are pursuing in responding to or partnering with FinTech startups. The course featured presentations from Cato Pastoll, HBA ’14, co-founder and CEO of Lending Loop, and Randy Cass, HBA ’93, MBA ’98, founder and CEO of Nest Wealth. Participants also met with entrepreneurs at IBM’s Bluemix Garage to learn about the power of the cloud, artificial intelligence, and corporate accelerators.
We would like to thank all the people who supported these initiatives at Ivey and Scotiabank, as well as the Hack Western student organizing committee! They played a huge role in making the magic happen.
In the future, the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab (@IveyFintech) will continue to support initiatives around research, student engagement, and outreach to remain a leading voice in the Fintech ecosystem.