Boston Fintech Week: A Conversation with Fintech Sandbox's Sarah Biller
By Tylor Tourville
Boston Fintech Week, held this year September 22-25, 2026, is an annual collaboration between Fintech Sandbox and the broader fintech ecosystem and startup community. Finopotamus sat down for a Q&A at this year’s event with Sarah Biller, Co-Founder of Fintech Sandbox, an industry-backed nonprofit that helps fintech startups
Q. What is your 30,000 foot view of how Boston Fintech Week has grown and how it's become sort of an important event? What really stood out to you this year?
A: The first thing that really has changed over the years for us at Boston FinTech Week —this was our ninth one, so next year will be 10 — is that we have seen continued demand for our community engagement. So, though we have moved to a place where we tried to centralize a main stage because we do get speakers, very big speakers, where that no other conferences really get, and that's where you get those places where you have standing room only. But the other side of that is that we have extraordinary attendance with our community events that are programmed alongside of the fintech innovation, fintech sandboxes innovation forum, and so for me, what's been a consistent and actually a really a moment of like just complete satisfaction is that the community continues to lay in kind of lean in.
We see our old standbys from the Office of Financial Supervision, the mass banking regulatory leaders have always programmed. That's a big deal for innovators and industry executives to sit in a place and learn where it's not sort of you know again sitting across the table trying to really parse every word.
We have seen this year the establishment of an academic track under the Western New England team out of that finance department. That made me extremely happy because you saw journal worthy academicians coming to Boston Fintech Week and sharing what they're kind of researching and embracing on the cutting edge in the research environment. We saw industry participate there, and so those are those have been evolutions though to our work.
And I just again, I'm just I'm thrilled to be a place where FinTech Sandbox can bring together all of its best friends, its fintech friends, to participate in this type of environment, to participate in one that where it's learning, where there's collaboration, where there's a desire to see partnerships struck and investments be made. That to me has been both the thread that's been the common denominator across the last nine years, but also its evolution into new and important areas of research for financial services and fintech.
Q: The academic point I thought was interesting because it also it sounds like it just it also makes so much sense merging with sort of the ethos of Boston, right? Being a education hub and research hub, so that makes total sense. That feels like a really natural extension of the cohort and the group of friends that you mentioned.
A: It does. Just think about it. We have a Nobel Prize winner at MIT with Simon Johnson, and we had his co-collaborator on the blockchain seminar that they offer at MIT, Michael Casey on stage. Like this is a Boston needs to a little bit lift up and celebrate and toot the horn of these individuals who are fundamentally you know sort of improving the way that we think about innovation, but also developing the talent, the next generation of talent in their classroom, and so yeah, I kind of I pick on that a little bit because I can't believe we didn't do it sooner. I'm embarrassed. Here we are. Every everything in due time.
Q: From a content perspective, obviously AI was one of the big topics in every single one of the sessions and this undercurrent in the financial services space for the last you know few years now. From your from your vantage point, what stood out to you the most, either the most surprising thing you heard or the thing that you know is sort of coming up. What stood out to you amongst you know all the panels and sessions in terms of the content and the AI aspect?
A: Yeah, you're absolutely spot on. AI was a thread that was pulled across all of the categories from payment discussions, payments and lending, bank tech, asset management, insurance, and I thought that was a really important sort of common theme. And no surprise to any of us, we are at that inflection point where AI is no longer just sort of running alongside day-to-day activities in each of the firms and startups, but it's actually beginning to make decisions. It's not a co-creator; it's a catalyst.
But what I thought was really interesting is that all of us are looking at AI as innovators, but all of us are looking at the application quite differently, and what it achieves and where it is in its life cycle. It wasn't a surprise, I think, to anyone to hear the payments panel really talk about AI as an enable enablement, right? But I think you heard other. I mean, Abby Johnson was a great example, right? When I asked her about AI, unexpectedly she said to me, "When was the last time you called up and asked to talk to your bot?” Do you know what I mean? Like, right? So, you saw this sort of this different sort of adoption cycles, this different use or acceptance of AI, and I thought that was a very interesting outcome. And most certainly where we heard David Jagen and Hans Morris talk about their own investment thesis around AI, right? That they're investing for where the industry is going, but there is some uncertainty today on where it's going.
Q: In your work with FinTech Sandbox, is there anything that comes top of mind, what's new and exciting with the startups you're seeing, the innovations you're seeing that could have an implication for the banking and credit union folks?
A: One thing that's been really reflective or obvious for me across the past couple of years, and it's coming to light now is that the credit unions have superpowers that we're really not as much telling the story? They because they're member driven, they're client first focused. I think the willingness of the credit unions to look at innovation and how it better removes the frictions that their own members experience n their banking or you know financial lives is really a powerful untold story in this innovation cycle. So I think that's foremost. And so, when we see new innovators, oftentimes at Fintech Sandbox, their first place they're going are to the credit unions and the more sort of mid-tier community banks. We always think about the J.P. Morgans of the world as massive innovators, or the BlackRocks. You know, these firms that talk about themselves as technology first, but where are we seeing the innovation really get out of the gate and get adopted and get tested in responsible ways? It's with our credit unions. So I think that's my one of my most important observations and learnings.
it's a competitive advantage, and that there is that sort of cross credit union collaboration. Look at Constellation (Digital Partners), right? I mean, this is a leadership moment for the credit union space because the other thing I think is they intimately know their members, and they have a lot of opportunity, whereas some of us in the banking world and most certainly in the asset management world are arm’s length to those clients.
So that's one important thing I see with our startups coming into FinTech Sandbox. Of course, we work globally, so we enable entrepreneurs with data across five continents. Now it's hard to believe 20 plus companies or countries. So that that gives us a little global perspective, and I think what's also very interesting is where you see in different regions the adoption of technology sort of leapfrogging what we see domestically.
Then you begin to question how do we begin ourselves to develop a trusted relationship in the in using innovation financial services sector because for so long it has been person to person you know who's in front of you on Main Street on the sidewalk and that is no longer the case in financial services. We're having to advance very quickly to an environment where we meet people where they are, and most of their financial lives are spent online.
