On June 3, 2015, Vancouver, British Columbia, will host “Digital Finance 2015,” Canada’s first fintech and banking innovation conference, at the Vancouver Club on West Hastings in the city’s trendy West End.
Digital Finance 2015 will feature two keynote speakers:
- Peter Vander Auwera, co-founder of Innotribe innovation will talk about “Innovation in banking: from tactics to strategy.”
- Sam Maule, emerging payments expert with Carlisle & Gallagher, and one of the “top innovation influencers” will talk about “FinTech’s Disruptive Force in Banking.“
Other speakers include representatives from Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Citi (New York), and Overstock (New York).
White Paper on Women in Fintech will be released
Organizer Christine Duhaime of the Digital Finance Institute is one of the authors of the “White Paper on PowerWomen in FinTech,” a study that highlights women’s contributions to developing financial technologies for financial services.
The Digital Finance Institute partnered with Innotribe and Carlisle & Gallagher Management Consultants to gather data from around the globe on how women are playing a role in the development and adoption of new financial technologies, particularly cryptocurrencies.
Christine Duhaime is a lawyer and an author and speaker in Toronto and Vancouver. She is a counterterrorist financing and anti-money laundering legal specialist with expertise in financial regulation, digital financial services and products, terrorist financing, bribery and money-laundering law.
“The ‘White Paper on PowerWomen in FinTech’ is the culmination of months of research and an important milestone in the industry globally,” Duhaime said. “We wanted to honor many of the incredible and impactful women in fintech by releasing the whitepaper at Digital Finance 2015.”
Ambitious Agenda Covers a Wide Range of Issues
The conference is targeted mainly at venture capital firms, banks, innovation labs, entrepreneurs, financial technology companies, AML-compliance teams, digital currency companies, payment processors and government regulators.
“By launching Canada’s first fintech conference, our aim is to be the catalyst for venture capital and other key investments and partnerships to move the industry forward in Canada and foster growth of fintech and innovation in emerging and disruptive payments,” says Duhaime.
The conference will cover a wide range of topics, including the future of money, new financial models, bank innovation, blockchain technology, Bitcoin, anti-money laundering, and payment solutions for disaster relief.
Digital Finance Institute
Duhaime is executive director and founder of the Digital Finance Institute. It was founded in 2014 as the first Canadian institute devoted to fintech, financial innovation and financial inclusion.
Because there has been so much interest in this conference, the institute will hold a similar conference in Toronto in November 2015 and has already lined up a speaker from The Wall Street Journal.
“The conference is rewarding for me because it’s the culmination of a number of goals I wanted to accomplish in fintech after I was the only woman speaking at my first Bitcoin conference in 2013, which is to highlight women in fintech and to encourage innovation in Canada,” says Duhaime.
