Meet The People Judging The Future Of Fintech: WorldQuant's Matt Ober

The 2016 Benzinga Fintech Awards is the only event in fintech dedicated to recognizing innovation in financial services and capital markets. Ahead of the May 24th awards show and gala, meet the industry leaders tapped to determine the most innovative companies in fintech.

Who he is: Matt Ober, co-head of data strategy at WorldQuant, a Global quantitative investment firm that manages billions of dollars and has hundreds of researchers across the world. 

Why he's looking forward to the Benzinga Fintech Awards:

Ober: I'm looking forward to seeing the whole community come together. There’s not another event out there that we've seen across the world that brings together fintech capital markets companies to really showcase what they’re working on and to find out who the new companies are.

To be able to walk through an event and see hundreds of new innovative companies, it’s almost like the ability for these market data guys to walk through and find the companies they’re going to work with this year. Everybody’s looking for innovative new data and you’re going to have potentially every global company that’s got a producdt that’s exciting in one room. 

What's his favorite aspect of fintech?

Ober: I think that just the innovation and everybody--from people within the financial world that are getting into startups and disrupting, to people outside the financial world looking at it in a differnet way--creating exciting new technology and data. No longer is it just a Bloomberg terminal. You have unlimited resources and exponential growth in the data that’s out there.

What advice he'd give to someone with a business idea:

Ober: I think you’ve just got to start working on it and creating it and gathering feedback. I think the power of the network and geting out there and meeting people is tremendous in new york and also in many new cities around the world. Fintech is an exciting space and theres a lot of people form the data vendor side and ex wall street that is interested in gettting invovled. So it’s just taking that jump in and starting to work on it. 

The biggest challenge for fintech companies going forward will be:

Ober: I think in general for the fintech companies themselves their biggest hurtle is creating something that’s actually valuable, and becoming a company and not just a product. Selling into the financial world is not quick and easy--there’s a lot more regulatory and compliance hurtles you have to get through and there's a longer sales process. 

Why he's excited about the future of fintech in one sentence:

Ober: The exponential growth in data allows for unlimited amounts of opportunities. 

Are you interested in networking with Matt or learning more about Fintech? Go here to see how you can attend or sponsor the 2016 Benzinga Fintech Awards.