Holland FinTech in Amsterdam

Don Ginsel founded Holland FinTech in 2014, as Silicon Canals reported when the association named a new chair. The older site, hollandfintech.com, called it "The Fintech Association for the Netherlands", published guides on PSD2 and the fifth anti-money laundering directive and kept a Dutch FinTech Map of the sector.

Under the newer name the association lists more than 80 members, more than 15 events and more than 2,000 participants a year. A board led by Peter Strikwerda and an executive director, Job Mantz, run it, and the revenue model is membership fees.

A member gets events, workshops and webinars with peers, speaking slots and media channels for its own products, help finding partners and talent, discounts for international events, places on trade missions and pitch slots at investor events.

The main conference is the Amsterdam Fintech Event at the World Trade Center Amsterdam, held in October. It comes a few months after Money20/20 Europe at the RAI, which brings the international payments industry to the same city in June.

Each summer Holland FinTech runs a two-day Executive Fintech Summer School with AI4Fintech, hosted by the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam. The program covers developments in AI and fintech, fintech business ecosystems and regulation, with speakers from banking, law and fintech, and it takes at most 25 participants.

It addresses executives, strategists, CTOs and corporate innovation teams, and it needs no technical background. For a German bank manager it is a compact way to hear how Dutch banks and fintechs handle AI under supervision.

The Dutch supervisors run a joint contact point for new business models. The InnovationHub of the AFM and De Nederlandsche Bank answers questions on supervision and rules for innovative financial products, for new and existing firms and whether or not they are already supervised. It opened in 2016 as one entry point for both authorities.

The Dutch payments market is where much of this innovation lands. iDEAL, the account-to-account scheme for online payments, is moving into Wero, as described at fintech in Amsterdam, and the same European scheme launches in Germany.

Holland FinTech is the Dutch fintech association, founded in 2014 and now called the Holland Fintech Association. It brings banks, insurers, fintechs and service providers in the Netherlands together through member events, the Amsterdam Fintech Event, trade missions and an executive summer school, and it is financed by membership fees.

The association's large annual event today is the Amsterdam Fintech Event, held over two or three days in October at the World Trade Center Amsterdam. Searches for a Holland Fintech week usually mean this event or the Amsterdam Fintech Week that the older Holland FinTech site promoted.

Through the membership page of the Holland Fintech Association. Members are organizations from the financial value chain, from startups to established institutions, and the fee depends on the membership type. Non-members can attend the Amsterdam Fintech Event with a ticket and apply for the summer school at a higher price than members.