Unveiling the first wave of speakers at our Fintech Summit

The countdown to our Fintech Summit EMEA on 23 October in London is underway and we’re delighted to announce the first wave of speakers who will be taking to the stage.

With Q4 fast approaching, the more positive fintech momentum we started to see earlier in the year is now gathering pace. Across Europe, Dealroom figures show fintech funding for 2024 to date has now hit $7.2B, continuing to keep pace with funding levels in 2023 ($8.4B) and 2020 ($10.4B). With 87% of the 717 fintech deals taking place at the pre-seed, seed or A stages, it’s clear there’s a new generation of innovative startups emerging from the region, while Europe’s more established fintech champions continue to scale, attract more customers and hit profitability.

Innovation is underway across many areas of the financial service universe and our Fintech Summit will see our speakers navigate discussions on hyperscaling from Europe, embedding AI into product offerings and operations, building SME champions, changing consumer expectations, the journey to IPO, payment and infrastructure developments, and more.

We’re thrilled to have Monzo CEO TS Anil, Trade Republic co-founder Christian Hecker, Qonto’s co-founder and CEO Alexandre Prot, and Zepz CEO Mark Lenhard join us to discuss the fintech opportunity that lies ahead.

You can find out more on each of our speakers below and more will be revealed next week...

If you’d like to join the event, please email the Accel team here

‍TS Anil, CEO, Monzo

TS Anil is CEO of Monzo, the UK’s leading digital bank with more than 10M customers. He’s a highly respected financial services and payments leader, with over 25 years of retail banking experience having worked at Visa, Standard Chartered, Citigroup and Capital One in roles that spanned the world. He has a wealth of experience launching new products, developing innovative payment technologies and transitioning existing businesses towards new growth opportunities.

Alexandre Prot, co-founder and CEO, Qonto

Alexandre Prot is the co-founder and CEO of Qonto –  the leading European business finance solution. After graduating from HEC and INSEAD, Alexandre started his career with Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company. In 2013, he founded Smok.io together with Steve Anavi – the first connected electronic cigarette and experienced the frustrations of business banking. His banking experience was time-consuming and complex. Therefore they decided to found Qonto, the business finance solution energizing SMEs and freelancers, simplifying everything from everyday banking and financing to bookkeeping, invoicing and spend management. Qonto has raised €622 million from the world's largest investors. The company now serves 500,000 clients in 4 countries (France, Italy, Spain and Germany) and has over 1,600 employees.‍

Christian Hecker, co-founder, Trade Republic

Christian Hecker co-founded Trade Republic in 2015 and scaled it to become Europe's largest savings platform. He raised $1.3B by investors such as Accel, Founders Fund and Sequoia. Previously, Christian worked in Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Investment Banking division. He was involved in numerous capital market transactions in the technology sector. Christian holds degrees in Philosophy and Business Administration from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich.

Mark Lenhard, CEO, Zepz

Mark Lenhard is CEO of the Zepz Group, the parent company of leading global payment brands WorldRemit and Sendwave. Prior to the Zepz Group, Mark was the COO of Bill.com, which acquired Invoice2go, the company he was running, in 2021. During his lengthy financial services career, Mark spun Magento out of eBay, later selling it to Adobe, and held exec roles at JPMorgan Chase and Paypal.