Fintech summit to bring world leaders to Arkansas

With a big fintech summit on the horizon, state and local leaders in Arkansas are preparing to capitalize on tech and banking leaders from around the globe descending on the Natural State.

The Venture Center, with support from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and a number of private sponsors, will host its second VenCent Summit on Aug. 14-15 in Little Rock. Topics on the agenda include innovation, digital banking, lending, payments, and cyberfraud. Speakers include Gov. Sarah Sanders, Secretary of Commerce Hugh McDonald, and more than two dozen domestic and global company executives and startup leaders.

In addition to the conferences and speaker lineup, there will also be a matchmaking event that will allow speed networking for bankers and fintech founders to make multiple real-time face-to-face connections.

Arkansas Economic Development Commission Executive Director Clint O’Neal and Venture Center Executive Director Arthur Orduna appeared on this week’s edition of Talk Business & Politics to discuss the summit. O’Neal said the state supports the conference because it values entrepreneurship. AEDC recently reorganized internally to better support entrepreneurship.

“Jobs are going to come from entrepreneurs, from supporting existing companies, and from recruiting new ones. So in the entrepreneurship space, some people see us from back in our old days as the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. I don’t think we have to sacrifice one priority for another,” O’Neal said. “This entrepreneurship initiative that we’ve created with a new division, small business and entrepreneurship development under the leadership of Esperanza Massana Crane is going to go out and tell that story. Everything that we do from helping entrepreneurship support organizations to standing up. Things like we did 14 years ago with Innovate Arkansas to working with the small business and technology development centers to provide those services to small businesses.”

“AEDC has been a fantastic partner of the Venture Center across its entire 10-year history. And when we are looking to support FinTech in the state, you guys are absolutely right. It’s both from the pure entrepreneur – “I’ve got a concept in my head, I need to get it out” – to existing small businesses that want to grow and accelerate, to large corporations here in the state of Arkansas at the enterprise level, that want to not only nurture the existing or new businesses, but curate the best of breed companies around the world, which is what we do, bring them here to Arkansas,” Orduna.

Orduna also said the state has been a supporter financially in several tech companies through grant programs, such as Technology Transfer Assistance and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR).

“Let’s not under understate the grants and the grant programs that Clint and his team do. That’s extremely important to help jumpstart, to help support,” Orduna added. “But the other thing that AEDC in the state is extremely helpful with is bringing industry to the table, which is also the kind of customers and partners that we work with. So it’s not just the grants, it’s also actually creating those opportunities where these corporations can say, ‘Hey, we need these kinds of problems, or we need these kinds of opportunities to solve or to meet.’ Then, the Venture Center and other entrepreneurial support organizations in the state can either develop new initiatives or go out and find somebody and bring them here into the state.”

Also by investing in the fintech startup space, Arkansas hopes to keep some of the companies here due to the working environment, labor force and quality of life.

“The conversations are taking place here. They’re getting exposed to Arkansas, to central Arkansas, to the great environment here, and so that’s our hope for sure,” said O’Neal.

O’Neal also addressed the major news last week of a Husqvarna manufacturing facility closure in Nashville, Arkansas. The tool and equipment maker’s plant closing will lay off more than 600 workers. The state is working to help displaced workers and market the plant and its labor force.

“Our number one priority is those employees in Nashville, and so they’re doing a four-phase layoff starting this November. Each of the employees will receive a severance, if they stay until their designated layoff time. So we’re working in collaboration with the Division of Workforce Services on those services for dislocated workers. And then our team at AEDC, the next morning after that news went out, we met with the plant manager with the members of the General Assembly, the mayor, the county judge, on how can we market this opportunity?” O”Neal said.

“As we know in this market, with the availability of skilled workers being at a shortage, if we can show companies around the nation that we have a place in Arkansas, where there’s a 280,000 square foot manufacturing facility, a 350,000 square foot distribution center, and 600 skilled employees, we believe we have a really good opportunity to market this for Nashville,” he added.

You can watch O’Neal and Orduna’s full interview in the video below.