Earlier this month, we brought together Clocktower Technology Ventures portfolio companies, clients, fellow fintech investors, and other local industry leaders for our first ever summit in Latin America! The Mexico City-based itinerary included two full days off-the-record, highly collaborative content, meals, and activities to illuminate the current state of financial services innovation in the region. Multiple themes emerged across the speaker presentations, roundtable discussions, company visits, and conversations in between: 1. Infectious enthusiasm remains around the size of the opportunity for financial services innovation in Latin America 2. Despite consensus around a challenging global overhang in VC, a sufficient and growing base of LatAm-dedicated investment capital is here to stay, even as demand from international investors ebbs and flows 3. We have barely scratched the surface on the distribution of tech-enabled financial services in LatAm. The critical building blocks of tech adoption, available data, and underlying financial infrastructure that we take for granted in other geographies are only just being built in the region 4. In LatAm, financial innovation is still synonymous with the democratization and digitization of money; there is minimal basic consumer and SMB access to credit and the average consumer is still grappling with even the most basic financial needs 5. Cash remains king in non-digitalized, informal economies - roughly 85% of transactions in Mexico are still done in cash! This presents a colossal opportunity, but also speaks to behavioral and cultural inertia that fintechs need to overcome 6. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to customer acquisition and distribution in LatAm fintech, where trust can take years to earn, scale, and deepen. #fintech is a decades-long game Clocktower Group Steve Drobny Ben Savage Adriana Saman Ned Daoro Natalie Charney Ally McCloskey Danielle Zhang Charlotte Stephens Tess Davis
Amazing event!
Access to Capital Markets for Endeavor companies
1yCan extrapolate to Africa & other EMs Alison Collier Paula Mokwena, CFA Anna Hubbell