With a growing attendee base causing data issues, Fintech Week London forged a partnership with event management software provider Cvent to find a solution.
Fintech Week London is a week-long series of events highlighting and celebrating the fintech industry in London. The annual event included a two-day-long flagship conference with over 900 senior decision-makers from leading fintech companies, banks, investment firms, regulatory bodies, media companies and service providers present.
Its second event welcomed the likes of Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, to speak of Chicago’s fintech industry and economic development. Tuang Lee Lim, assistant managing director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore also spoke at the event. Joined by over 100 other speakers, and spread across two stages, the event covered topics such as CBDCs, the metaverse, open banking and more.
Fintech Week London’s first edition took place in 2021, after the founders noticed an opening in the London event space around fintech, despite the industry booming. In 2022, the conference grew to welcome a far greater number of attendees, speakers, partners and sponsors.
The event followed a hybrid format in 2021 to accommodate ongoing pandemic restrictions. The 2022 event followed a fully in-person format, supported by some digital networking options. A range of free, but separate, technology platforms supported the first event. These platforms had different software behind ticketing, email and other functions.
Raf De Kimpe, CEO of Fintech Week London, explained the need to unify these processes. He said: “This approach was very affordable but the processes and data were very dispersed. The team had to manage a range of different systems, which was complex and inflexible when changes had to be made.”
Simplifying and streamlining in-person event management
In an effort to simplify the complicated process from the previous year, the event sought an alternative solution. Raf explained: “Having used Cvent in the past, I had seen what it could do. My main motivation was to implement a solution that covered almost everything related to event management.”
With restrictions lifted, Fintech Week London was keen to offer a fully in-person experience. The conference used Cvent to deliver its registration, appointment scheduling, event app, event website, check-in, badge printing, lead capture, virtual networking and on-demand content. It also integrated Cvent with its Hubspot CRM. “Our priority was doing everything we could, end-to-end, within Cvent to avoid the need to use various different systems,” Raf explained.
Raf laid out the full Cvent process for the event: “As soon as someone landed on our event website, they were already on Cvent, and from there could register and purchase their ticket. Onboarding, invoice, app download and visa invitation emails were then all dispatched. The mobile app provided a QR code which was used at CVENT’s check-in scanners, to print badges. Our exhibitors had the opportunity to get a lead scanner and gain immediate access to the lead data they collected. After the event, we sent an email to all registrants with details on accessing the session recordings, all of which were available on-demand.”
Complementing in-person experiences with virtual add-ons
Fintech Week London used ‘Cvent Attendee Hub’, a full virtual event platform, to also offer virtual networking options and on-demand access to recordings of the conference’s sessions. Having sold out of in-person tickets, they used registration paths to permit latecomers to participate virtually, further extending the event’s reach.
The event ran seamlessly and received strong feedback from participants. “One partner told us that across the two days they had twice the number of valuable meetings than at another, much larger conference,” Raf shares. “We use the app to ensure people can book their meetings but also incorporate a lot of time for them in the event agenda. All these factors combined with the vibrancy of London’s fintech community made the meetings very fruitful and efficient.”
In the future, the event is looking to expand on the event’s virtual aspects. “While we feel that there’s no alternative to in-person connections, a focus for us next year will be ensuring that the event experience is consistent across both in-person and virtual attendees.”
They also expect to further develop their use of registration paths to minimise additional processes even further. Raf said: “We used discount codes to allow our speakers and exhibitors to bypass the need to pay for a ticket, but it would be more customer friendly to build a bespoke registration path where they are never even prompted for payment. We’re also planning to begin using the ‘Speaker Resource Centre’ to onboard our presenters and expand Cvent across our event portfolio.”
