As one of the biggest stages for innovation in financial services, FinovateFall brings together banks, fintechs, and technology leaders to showcase new ideas and tackle the industry’s toughest challenges. This year’s event in New York City was no exception.
What we heard in the halls
Paul Davis at Bank Slate captured it well in his recap of FinovateFall. AI dominated the headlines, but there was also strong attention on risk, identity, and compliance moving higher up the stack. Cybersecurity, authentication, and scam defense were featured across multiple demos, while banks and fintechs looked for ways to launch products faster without ripping out core systems.
Customer experience and growth also surfaced as priorities, especially around deposits and small business lending. The through line across all of it: trust, data, and AI are no longer buzzwords, but shaping how financial institutions plan to scale in 2026 and beyond.
On stage: Rethinking business identity
Our Product Director, Andrea Hong, opened her keynote with a simple truth: “Every time you approve a new business customer, you’re taking a risk.” She reminded the audience that while most teams think their decisions are backed by reliable data, the reality is often incomplete or outdated information. The cost of that gap, she said, shows up in fraud losses, slow operations, and missed opportunities to serve great customers.
From there, Andrea walked through the blind spots that make today’s identity workflows fragile. Sole proprietors, the fastest-growing type of business, often leave behind little more than a name and home address. Fake businesses and shells present clean filings and basic websites but mask hidden operations or money laundering. And then there are suspicious addresses: “We’ve seen hundreds of businesses tied to the same mailbox in Delaware,” she noted, or clusters of fraudulent loan applications all pointing to the same shared workspace.
The answer, Andrea argued, is a better model, what she called the Golden Triangle of business identity. By aligning what a customer submits with authoritative government records and real-world web signals, teams can cut through the noise and catch risk earlier. She pointed to a Middesk customer in banking that applied this model to small business loans. Manual reviews dropped by 40 percent, fraud was flagged earlier in the process, and onboarding became smoother for legitimate customers.
She closed on a challenge: “Imagine what your business could achieve if identity wasn’t a drag, but an accelerator.” Smarter identity, Andrea emphasized, isn’t just about reducing risk. If used strategically, it’s a growth lever.
Around the table: Building trust at scale
Over lunch, I had the chance to lead an interactive session called Trust at Scale. I wanted to explore a simple question with the group: how do we design trust into business systems from the ground up?
We started with the basics. I shared how trust shows up in everyday life — from the origins of the handshake in ancient Greece to the small moments of vulnerability, like returning a lost wallet to a stranger. From there, we zoomed out to business, tracing how banks in the 1800s built safeguards into telegraph wires to make the first money transfers believable.
Then it was the group’s turn. Participants worked through guided exercises in their workbooks, reflecting on where trust is earned or broken in their own organizations. The conversations were lively, from late fees and data misuse to privacy and transparency, with examples ranging from Blockbuster to Tesla to Apple.
The same themes kept coming up: speed, safety, and scale. And when we circled back, I reminded everyone that trust isn’t just a value — it’s a system you can intentionally design. Build it into your workflows, and suddenly businesses can move faster, take smarter risks, and grow with confidence.
Closing thoughts
FinovateFall made it clear that trust and data are shaping the future of financial services. From pragmatic AI to sharper fraud defenses, the focus is on reducing risk while driving growth.
For Middesk, it was a chance to show that business identity isn’t a hurdle, it’s a growth lever. Andrea’s keynote and our workshop both underscored the same idea: with better data, you can move faster, say yes with confidence, and scale trust by design.
We left New York energized by the conversations and grateful to be part of what comes next.
Couldn’t catch us at FinovateFall? Let’s change that.
We’d love to show you how smarter business identity helps banks, fintechs, and credit unions reduce risk and grow with confidence. Talk to us here.
