Did you see our annual conference on socials? Are you wondering how you could possibly have missed it even if you wanted to? We were everywhere.
Partly because we had such an incredible mix of speakers. Partly because we attract the most wonderful people in finance who are great at supporting one another and sharing all about it. Partly because of the launch of our gorgeous new compliance switching service. And partly because, well, we were a little bit dramatic!
We started the conference, our fifth one, as we have done each of the previous years as Evolution. Great vibes, exciting agenda, buzzy venue.
However, part way during my opening address, we paused, dimmed the lights, brought them back up a few seconds later and had rebranded the entire event (including a swift outfit change for yours truly) into Transformation!
If you want to see it for yourself, here’s the video:
But, you might be wondering why did we do that? Do we just like the attention? Do we like to stretch our marketing team to their absolute limits? Or was there some deep logic to it? The answer is - all of the above!
However, let me take you back to October 2024 when we had just held our 4th Evolution conference and AI was top of the topics once again and I kept having the urge to go and learn to code so I could actually create AI myself. Because I’m silly like that.
Instead, I accepted that running two businesses and raising a child meant that I’d have to lower my ambitions and so I enrolled on a course with Harvard Business School; AI Essentials for Businesses.
The course was fascinating and very eye opening: aimed very much at business owners and senior leaders.
It wasn’t designed to go into the deepest darkest depths of AI, nor to teach you how to do it, but to understand what it means to you, your business and your future strategy.
One example given was Amazon, with Jeff Bezos spotting the direction of travel over 20 years ago and sending this, quite to the point, email to his team in 2002:
The aim here was to a) pool all their internal data and b) make them entirely API-able in future.
After 7 years of this, they had reset their entire foundations and in 2009 they began to invest in AI and, as you can see from the graph below, the moving line is their stock price and the impact on it from this transformation is clear to see:
There were many other examples but the main thing I took away from it was that, if I wanted to have a successful business in the future (which I do!) then I need to be ready for the new world.
Which involves sorting out my data and tech and processes (much like Amazon did way back when). And that simply tweaking a few bits or adding in a Head of Data would not be sufficient.
The change needed to be integrated into the business and all the people in it. Basically, a gradual evolution was no longer enough; instead, it was time for businesses, and my business, to transform.
Hence realising that our Evolution conference needed to be the starting point of that. To help business owners with the lessons I had learned and to support the finance community in coming together and ensuring this amazing profession we’re all a part of continues to thrive in the new world and we don’t get left behind.
So yes, there was a real meaning behind the drama.
Although, admittedly, the Transformers were just for the photo ops 😉
If you want to see more of the day, including the speakers, the challenges, the free guides and the photos, you can check them all out here.
And keep your eyes peeled as we will be opening up sign ups to Transformation 2026 very soon!
Cathi is the Founder and CEO at Verve, with a background in finance and special interests in AI, championing female leadership, and diversity in financial services.
