Boston FinTech Week is making its return later this month, with Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson among the financial services and technology executives set to speak at the event.
The gathering, typically hosted annually by Boston-based FinTech Sandbox, did not take place last year because of the pandemic. While it will be back from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, it won’t be in the form its organizers had originally hoped: Because of the Covid-19 Delta variant, many events will be held virtually rather than in-person.
It wasn’t until about three weeks ago that organizers made the call to shift much of the gathering online, said FinTech Sandbox co-founder Sarah Biller. In 2019, FinTech Week attracted nearly 4,000 people to Boston from around the world, she said. The plan now is to have about 90% of the sessions available through livestream, with the remaining sessions small in-person events.
Even with so many sessions online, “we want to make sure we continue to beat the drum for Boston as a place where fintech leaders can gather,” Biller said.
One of the main attractions will be Johnson, whose public appearances are still relatively rare, even though she had been making more of them before the pandemic. Johnson was a headliner at FinTech Week in 2018, when she spoke about Fidelity’s eager embrace of cryptocurrency, a relationship that has only deepened in the years since that talk. Biller is expected to moderate the conversation, which will be livestreamed.
Other keynote speakers are expected to include Mike Massaro, CEO of the newly publicly traded Flywire Corp. (Nasdaq: FLYW); Silicon Valley Bank (Nasdaq: SIVB) CEO Greg Becker, fresh off his institution’s acquisition of Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc.; and Greg Shell, managing director of Bain Capital Double Impact Fund.
This year’s main theme is “financial services for anyone, anytime, anywhere,” a reflection in part of FinTech Sandbox’s increased emphasis on sustainability and inclusivity. The gathering’s second day will focus on that subject, which is growing in importance as fintech is increasingly embedded in industries like health care, renewable energy and transportation, according to Biller. She pointed to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s acquisition this week of a large stake in Volkswagen’s payments business as one such example.
