Frankfurt is lifting its profile as a valid option to London to the FinTech startups from Israel. A delegation from Frankfurt led by Lord Mayor of the city of Frankfurt Peter Feldmann hosted the event: Tel Aviv – FrankfurtRheinMain FinTech Summit to promote the region. The goal was to introduce Frankfurt with Feldman’s words “In Frankfurt you can stay sexy, but at the same time have a well paid job.” Frankfurt is the center of banks with the major players such as Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DEKA, DZ-group, Helaba and KfW situated here in addition to over hundred smaller banks. The German Federal Bank (Bundesbank) and Bafin (The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) have their HQ in the city. Further more the European institutions such as ECB (European Central Bank) and EU insurance supervisory body, EIOPA, are based in the city. Frankfurt is a good fit for FinTechs; the startups have the innovation, the Banks have the customers and there is a lot of money in the region.
A panel discussion: Introducing Germany’s leading Fintech hub was moderated by Eric Menges, President & CEO of FrankfurtRheinMain GmbH International Marketing of the Region and shead some light on the benefits of establishing FinTech startups in the FrankfurtRheinMain area. The panelists included Prof. Dr. Peter Buxmann, Professor for Software Business and Information Management, Technical University Darmstadt, Dr. Gerhard Kebbel, Managing Director, Helaba, Dr. Sebastian Schäfer, Managing Director, TechQuartier and Ram Shoham, Founder, Accelerator Frankfurt. To the question what is the major difference between Germans and Israelis the German panelists offered many good insights and last comment was left to Ram Shoham who had not much to add but simply said: “Doctor, Doctor, Doctor and a surfer”.
We welcome Israeli Startups to Frankfurt and are proud that in the coming program of Accelerator Frankfurt we again have three out of the nine startups coming from the startup nation. The startups will be presented on the Launch-event 29.3.2017.
