#FinTechCA Montreal: A booming community

On October 13, the MaRS #FinTechCA Series landed in Montreal, Quebec, to bridge the gap between Montreal fintech at home and abroad.

“We feel as though we’re doing a lot of good work here in Montreal,” says Jay Ferst, managing director of Ferst Capital Partners. “How do we now build that bridge out? We need to span across this country and we need to actually go across the world.”

Held at Scena in the Old Port, MaRS partnered with Ferst Capital Partners for an event that featured Mike Senechal, COO of Zenbanx, as the keynote speaker. He highlighted different trends and insights from his experience in Canadian fintech.

“From the consumer side we’re really starting to hit…the third wave,” says Mike. “Our first wave was a lot of regulatory changes that came through and better technology, which powered a lot of the initial investment that happened in consumer fintech. The second wave is where we are right now. And the third wave, which I really do believe we’re on the cusp of, is consolidation. The industry’s starting to combine different models together and have what was fintech and disruption start to become a lot more mainstream within banks themselves.”

The event also featured a panel that discussed the strength of Montreal’s startup community. Moderated by Adam Nanjee, head of financial technology at MaRS, the panel featured François Lafortune, partner at Power Financial Ventures and founder of Diagram Ventures; Abdo Mazloum, VP of OPM Pros; Jeff Mitelman, CEO of ThinkingCapital; Jay Ferst, managing partner at Ferst Capital Partners; and JC Titus, director of market solutions at Ingenico Canada.

#FinTechCA Montreal gathered fintech innovators, local entrepreneurs, venture capital firms, corporate partners, innovation communities and Quebec-based financial institutions. The MaRS #FinTechCA Series will be back in 2017 to foster collaboration, provide networking opportunities and help build bridges within Canada’s fintech ecosystem.

Watch the recap video:

https://vimeo.com/191484842