While the fintech scene has shown tremendous growth, with continuous developments in areas like security, insurtech, pensiontech open banking and regtech this year there are several key challenges for the financial industry. These will form the heart of our programming in the next twelve months. Based on you feedback and trends in the market, we have developed five key themes to focus on.

• Customer in Demand: The dialogue with customers is changing and an increasing number of service providers, has no direct client access. How is this changing the game and what do you need to comply with current customer expectations.

• Data is Everything: more than ever we are we gathering data and using it to fuel business decisions and growth through AI, deep learning, machine learning etc.. It is key is to understand how to maximize the value of data, and use it to serve customers better, in accordance with regulations. expectations from customers.

• Beyond Compliance: new regulations create a severe burden on market participants, just like regulators are experiencing increased demand to support innovation. RegTech and SupTech enable parties to turn the challenges into an advantage.

• Security and Trust: In an ever growing digital world, we find that there are increasing security threats and fraud cases, threatening the trust in the economy and financial system. How to collaborate to protect our common interest and keep our clients confident and safe.

• Societal Relevance: we have long passed the time that all a company had to do was making a profit. Society and customers demand active participation to solve societal challenges, like poverty, financial literacy and global warming, and that each business is run according to current social standards, reflected in vivid CSR.

These five themes will form the heart of our 2019 agenda and will drive the development of new programs, events, publications, and services. All four themes will be touched upon and discussed in an array of events and publications. Besides that, we will create access to our network and knowledge, new technologies, talent, investors and regulators.

For now, we want to wish you happy holidays! Our team is looking forward to a new successful year in fintech together, with you!