The best and brightest in fintech and finance will be crowned at FF Awards 2023

It’s entering its third year. It’s bigger than ever. And it’s brought to you by a team of passionate, friendly, and committed individuals. No, it’s not the latest series of Ted Lasso. It’s the FF Awards 2023, brought to you by JobsOhio. Members of the fintech community will descend in their hundreds on the Old Billingsgate in London on 28th November 2023, for the biggest fintech awards show in the world. It’s our third year putting on the event, recognising and celebrating the best and brightest that fintech has to offer. It all began in 2021. We had Ed Gamble hosting the awards night, with an appearance from Liberty X and many more special guests. We went even bigger in 2022, with 500 people joining us from as far as USA, Canada, South Africa, Jordan, India and Australia. Alex Brooker presented. John Bercow was there. And a raft of exciting finalists and winners in multiple categories were showered with praise. It was a party and a half. And we’re doing it all again this year. But as fun as all that is, it's not what makes these awards so special! Our vision behind FF Awards is that they’re genuinely worth winning and shouting about. They mean something. And it is resolutely NOT play-to-play. It’s not what we’re about. We want to see the true trailblazers and titans of the fintech industry celebrated for what they do, and it will be the brightest brains in the industry deciding who gets the gongs. Our diverse and talented panel of judges will be watching your 3-minute video submissions (that’s right – your entry will need to be punchy) and will decide who truly deserves to be recognised in each category. Here’s some of the fantastic companies that have graced the stage in the last two years.

Who’s won an FF Award?

We’ve got a whole range of categories covering the entire Fintech spectrum, recognising all conquering consumer banks, open banking platforms, achievements in embedded finance, the best ID verification tools, cross border and mobile payments champions, AI pioneers, Insurtech innovators, and much more. You can see the full list of categories here. The winner of our Consumer Banking category last year was none other than Starling Bank. They reported their first full year of profitability almost a year ago, and since then they’ve become almost unbeatable in the space, recording a pre-tax profit of £195 million in March 2023, a 6x increase from 2022’s figure of £32 million. Revenue more than doubled and it was the most switched to bank not to offer incentives throughout 2022. Founder Anne Boden, departed as CEO in June 2023 with her head held high. Wise were our 2022 winner in the Cross-Border Payments category, and reached an impressive milestone with 16 million customers served this year. Our winners in the wealth management category, Temenos, have experienced record high transactions in 2023 and have announced numerous partnerships with companies using their core banking platform. They include Mexican group BanCoppel, Australian bank Alex Bank, global provider of DLT, R3, and Switzerland’s first digital private bank, Alpian. 2021 winners in the ID Verification category Fingerprint Cards AB recently collaborated with biometric wearables startup Flywallet, to develop and launch biometric wearable products for the European market. It’s an exciting prospect for a company that surpassed the 1.5 billion sensor milestone after the acceleration of biometric adoption. Nordic open banking provider Neonomics have won our open banking category on both occasions (can they make it a third?) and have been leading payments tech in the Nordic regions by introducing their Checkout solution in Denmark and Finland. In 2021 and 2022 they opened partnerships with Banqsoft, Digipost, Huawei, Comarch and Worldline. 2021 Embedded Finance winner Currencycloud is another company that have followed their win with an impressive couple of years, topped off by a recent partnership with all-in-one accounts payment platform Nook who are using the former’s API technology to expand their invoice processing capability to more than 35 different currencies. In a show of strength for Blockchain and DeFi, our 2022 winner in that category, Nuvei, extended their reach to new regions through an expanded partnership with the Plaid data network. Untied won our 2021 business banking award and have gone on to partner with Virgin Money to offer tax capabilities to Virgin Business account customers. Winners in multiple categories Mambu have been busy expanding the reach of their cloud banking platform collaborating with Google, AWS, Visa, Orange Bank, Allica Bank, Western Union, Brim financial and more. They really are all over the place and have also partnered with the likes of EY and Deloitte to deliver cutting edge insight into payments and cloud banking migration. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more winners, startups, and established companies that we’ve been delighted to recognise across our awards shows so far. You can see all the winners for 2021 and 2022 on our dedicated website. All these companies won but first they entered the awards. Which begs the question…

Why submit an entry to the FF Awards?

Our awards show celebrates the ‘WOW’ moments in fintech; products, services or ideas that bring meaningful change to the financial services sector. We’re talking true innovation. Changing the way businesses and consumers do things for the better. If you’re a startup, or company that is doing that, then we want to help spread the word. As a finalist in each category not only do you get to showcase what you do to a room full of influential leaders, thinkers and founders on the night, you’ll also get talked about across all FF News entire online platform. We’re talking:

• A LinkedIn audience of 70,000
• 150,000 visitors to the website every month and year on year audience increase of 400 per cent.
• An online magazine with a average readership of 319 per 1000 impressions
• 885 clicks per email newsletter campaign
• A global audience including across Europe, the Americas and APAC.

It’s a trusted and respected platform that you will want to be a part of. And it’s a free opportunity. We don’t want your money! (not for this anyway…) We’re keen to separate ourselves from the crowd. A crowd that too often rewards those with the deepest pockets. If our independent panel of judges think your product or service is genuinely worthy of recognition, then you could be in with a chance of winning. You just have to take a bit of time to submit a convincing entry video. You never know who could be watching in the world of fintech and finance and be wowed by your achievements and capabilities. We’ve had judges from Barclays, HSBC, Zurich, Virgin Money, Lanistar, BBVA and more.

A worthy partner

We can’t go any further without mentioning a company without whom none of this would be possible. This year we’ll be partnering with JobsOhio to deliver this year’s FF Awards. For a show all about linking up and celebrating the fintech ecosystem, what better partner than an organisation devoted to furthering and developing one of the most exciting ecosystems in US fintech? JobsOhio act as a catalyst for high-growth business investments and accompanying jobs in the state of Ohio, which is home to the fourth largest financial services sector in the US. They’re perfectly placed to power our event and we’re delighted to have them on board. Submit your entry now So, what are you waiting for? We’re looking for the next fintech stars to be awarded at our biggest awards show yet. Entries close on 28th August 2023. Our judging panel is growing and looking like a mighty medley of money masterminds who are excited to be a part of this unique event. You can enter on our dedicated FF Awards website by submitting a concise, creative and captivating 3 minute entry video. Previous winners of our awards all blew our minds with their submissions so make sure every second counts. Here’s a rundown of last year’s event and winners to give you an idea of the competition and if you’re not already convinced that you need to be there on the day, check out our highlights video of last year’s event to give you a flavour of the night. We can’t wait!