BACK to News Five years of the LHoFT - Celebrating the drive for digitalization in Financial Services and the growth of Fintech
LHoFT I 3:08 pm, 13th July
On Friday July 8th 2022, The LHoFT held a celebration to mark its five year anniversary with nearly 300 guests. The LHoFT was officially registered as a Foundation in Luxembourg in April 2017 and the event on Friday highlighted the Foundation’s achievements and looked to its future. The LHoFT Foundation was set up to federate knowledge and access within the Luxembourg financial services community, and to help ensure the centre’s future competitiveness through digitalization.
H.E. Yuriko Backes, Luxembourg’s Minister of Finance said: “Over the past 5 years, the LHoFT has become the beating heart of the Luxembourg Fintech community, connecting the financial centre with innovation. We now have a solid foundation to take LHoFT to the next level and support the rapid digital transformation of the financial services industry. Over the coming months and years, the LHoFT, as a private-public partnership, will be an important tool to help us attract and develop new talent in Luxembourg and connect financial technology with sustainable finance. It will help our financial sector to seize new opportunities in an evolving regulatory landscape and support the development of mutualized solutions to address current and future challenges.”
Some of the achievements of the LHoFT were highlighted by the speakers at the celebration on Friday and through a special video with testimonies from the people that have engaged with the LHoFT and its initiatives over the years, both from Luxembourg and abroad.
- 84 companies currently resident at the LHoFT, with a further 86 Fellow members, over 250 Fintech firms in Luxembourg, employing over 5000 people.
- Over €1 billion in funding raised by LHoFT members and residents, of which the LHoFT has directly assisted in raising over €400 million through connections with private and public sources of capital
- Over the past 5 years, 146 individual companies have been resident at the LHoFT facility.
- Over 1000 press articles, of which 20% are from international media, such as Forbes and the FT.
- One of the largest social media presences in Luxembourg; over 22,000 followers across different channels
- 34 International partnerships, including being a founding member of the pan-European Fintech network – The Talent Route
- 200+ webinars with over 300 speakers and 11,500 attendees from more than 20 countries
- Representing Luxembourg in over 125 international events
- Catapult: Financial Inclusion Africa – 47 Fintechs, from 16 countries over four programmes
- Catapult: Kickstarter – 20 Fintechs from 11 countries over two programmes
- Launch of the Luxembourg Blockchain Lab
- Launch of Fin5Labs – a common due diligence platform
Going forward, the LHoFT wants to use its experience and its understanding of the needs of the Luxembourg community to focus even more on several key areas:
Education, insights and talent. Via their increasingly popular online channel, The LHoFT will deliver market driven content to help the community stay on top of trends and gain knowledge in new technologies and strategies. The LHoFT will also continue to support programmes targeted at young adults, teenagers and school children to help expose the future generation to the evolving technology environment. Connectivity with universities across Europe will be strengthened and students will be exposed to the exciting Luxembourg finance and fintech ecosystem to funnel much needed talent into the Grand Duchy.
ESG and Sustainable Finance. The LHoFT has delivered its Catapult Inclusion Africa programme for the past five years delivering positive impact on financial inclusion. This year, the LHoFT has launched a year-long campaign in relation to Gender Equality in Finance and Technology, a campaign of discussion, learning and insight. This campaign, combined with detailed research for a report the LHoFT will publish later this year specifically on technology in sustainable finance, will form the basis of a business case and strategy for ESG going forward.
Mutualisation. The LHoFT is working to implement a strategy centered on mutualized utilities for the Luxembourg financial centre, with the aim of developing areas of competitive advantage while helping to overcome key challenges for the financial institutions.
Luxembourg’s Minister of Finance, H.E. Yuriko Backes; Deputy CEO of Luxembourg for Finance, Philip von Restorff, and LHoFT CEO, Nasir Zubairi provided keynote speeches on the importance of digitalization in financial services and the role the LHoFT plays in the ecosystem. Luc Falempin, Founder and CEO of Tokeny, followed by Jonathan Prince, Co-founder of Finologee and Nadia Manzari, Partner at Schiltz and Schiltz, talked about how they feel the LHoFT has made a difference to them personally and to Luxembourg. Lisa Burke, podcaster and RTL Today host, was the master of ceremonies, ensuring the flow and energy of the event.
The event was attended by key partners, stakeholders and collaborators of the LHoFT Foundation. These guests were later joined by more as the constraints of seating capacity were lifted and the formality of the event spilled into celebration as the now legendary regular networking event, LHoFT’s Fintech Friday, took hold for a special edition to mark the Foundation’s anniversary, with music, food and drink inside and outside.
Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the LHoFT stated, “Luxembourg is a special place where everyone can make a difference. Working with amazing people from the whole ecosystem and alongside my incredible team over the past five years has been a genuine pleasure. We seek to help the ecosystem in Luxembourg adapt to challenges with new solutions and to grasp new opportunities presented through technology. We are excited for what more we can do in the next five years and beyond. We very much look forward to our continued collaborations.”
Nicolas Mackel, CEO of Luxembourg for Finance commented, “From the very beginning the aim of the LHoFT has been to foster relations between the financial and FinTech sectors, a place where these two sectors can come together to collaborate and interact. What the LHoFT has achieved in the last five years goes beyond our initial idea - it has become a forum where partnerships between incumbents and new players are forged, new ideas are built, and it has elevated Luxembourg to the global FinTech stage.”
The artist Sumo was present at the event to input his art into a digitally mapped, “metaverse”, LHoFT facility developed with Luxembourg startup, Virtual Rangers. Guests at the event were asked to leave their own mark in the digital wall.
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