My partner, Jason Jones, is in China this week launching LendIt’s Chinese conference known as the Lang Di Fintech conference, which will be held in Shanghai on July 17-18, 2016. We chose the name Lang Di, which stands for “Enlighten Inspiration,” because it sounds like LendIt and it is has a positive message to associate with the Fintech industry.
Jason along with LendIt Chief Marketing Officer, Paula DeLaurentis, held a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday to talk not so much about LendIt but the future of the fintech industry. Jason talked about how fintech has been a positive influence on society providing much broader access to financial services than ever before.
Several other themes came out of the press conference. China leads the world in the adoption of mobile technology in finance. China will dominate fintech in the next 18 months with the pending IPOs of Ant Financial, Lufax, and Zhong An – each one of these companies is worth more today than virtually any U.S. fintech company. While the Chinese Internet Finance market has been hit with some serious fraud recently, it is set to rebound despite being challenged by investor skepticism.
Lang Di Fintech will be a broader conference than LendIt events in the USA or Europe. When we speak with people in China we found that there is real demand for an international fintech conference covering topics beyond lending. So we will be covering all aspects of fintech including lending, payments, wealth management, blockchain, insurance, machine learning, and securities.
We will have a large contingent of western speakers making the trip to China with executives from Prosper, Funding Circle, Orchard, OnDeck, Realty Mogul, First Associates, LendInvest and the UK P2PFA already confirmed.
For people who are seeking capital (lending capital or venture capital) or who want a truly immersive experience into the Chinese Internet finance sector, LendIt is offering the China Executive Tour that includes a four-city tour of leading financial centers in China: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Shanghai. Tour participants will meet with lending capital providers, investment banks, securities firms, venture capitalists, and many of the leading companies in China’s Internet finance industry including CreditEase, Hongling Capital, Ant Financial, Dianrong and more (the list continues to grow). The tour will conclude with the Lang Di Fintech conference in Shanghai on July 17-18.
Registration for both the Shanghai conference and the Executive Tour is now open on the LendIt China website. And if you are interested in being a speaker at the conference you should submit an application form here.
Here is some English language coverage of the aforementioned press conference from earlier this week in Xinhua News and China Daily.
