With Finovate Fall soon upon us, our crack team of fintech marketing experts assembled a short list of trends (and associated companies) to watch for at the show. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!

So without further ado…

1. Blockchain emerges beyond bitcoin – Blockchain technology is mainly known as the technology underlying Bitcoin, but this year it will emerge on its own with varied applications across the enterprise. Companies like Blockstack (www.blockstack.io) are offering public and private blockchain options for financial services organizations.

2. Startups treading into deeper regulatory waters – The regulatory landscape has meant that many disruptive financial services organizations have formed at the edges, where regulations are less intensive. However, the opportunity to ease those regulatory and compliance headaches is too big, and companies like Voitrax (www.voitrax.com), which helps ensure Dodd-Frank compliance, and Ldger (www.ldger.com), which develops platforms for alternative lending products, are wading further into the deep end of the regulatory pool.
   
   
3. Emerging Unicorn look-alikes – There are lots of companies attempting to follow in the path of those new fintech giants (aka “unicorns”), that recently crossed the $1B mark. These include BizFi (www.bizfi.com/) and LiftForward (www.liftforward.com) which are chasing parts of Lending Club’s business, Knox Payments (www.knoxpayments.com/) with its take on payments a la Square or Stripe, and Walletron (www.walletron.com/) which, with its Passbook-based billing and payments approach, has its sights set on companies like Mozido. These players are all looking at the spaces dominated by these big players and seeing room to gain marketshare from them and expand the market overall at the same time.
   
   
4. Startups looking to drag banks into the 21st century  – Banks have been in the crosshairs of startups for a while, and now some of these bolder players are moving into new areas previously considered core and off limits to outside vendors by financial institutions. Advisor Software (www.advisorsoftware.com/) is pursuing what is the cash cow for many banks, Wealth Management, while Dyme (www.dyme.co/) is attempting to insert itself between the customers and savings accounts with a simpler interface that includes more options for the user. There are a number of companies presenting this year, like D3 Banking (www.d3banking.com/), that have complete banking platforms or act as a digital layer between the old legacy banking systems and new, modern interfaces.

5. Innovations in investment and trading – With companies like Trade It (www.trade.it/) delivering a single mobile interface to multiple brokerages, or Kapitall (landing.kapitall.com/home/), which is staking out its claim as a simple, self-directed brokerage alternative, there is pleanty of movement in the investment and trading space. With efficiencies in place and costs for consumers dropping, it may end up being a race to reach scale against many competitors.

6. Everything mobile – Mobile is not an option any longer, it’s a necessity and quickly becoming the primary channel for most financial services consumers – and employees. Companies like Finanteq (www.finanteq.com/) develop mobile apps for specific industries (banking) and activities (payments, finanical management), while others such as Hypori (www.hypori.com/) specialize in making mobile applications secure for the enterprise. It will be rare to find any company at Finovate that doesn’t have mobile as part (or all) of their solution set.

7. Security and verification solutions – As financial services have pushed out from the branch or broker to the web and mobile, the need for security and verification solutions has increased dramatically. These security solutions are becomming more sophisticated, like Behaviosec (www.behaviosec.com/) which relies on user behavior to create a digital fingerprint, or ID Analytics (www.idanalytics.com/) which focuses on identity risk and creditworthiness. These security solutions are becoming more and more an essential part of the financial services landscape as fraud continues to grow as a problem.

So that’s CSTMR’s 7 trends to watch for at Finovate Fall 2015. Interested in discussing these or any other financial services or marketing topics in person at the conference? Contact me to set up a time. See you there!