The financial services landscape is highly competitive, with high-value deals and transactions at their heart. Some reports project its value in 2024 at over $33 billion, growing by nearly 8% from last year and this level of growth is expected to grow at a similar rate over the next four years.

So, the question stands: if leading global investment, wealth and asset management firms, synonymous with quality and innovation, want to remain as front runners from the competition, how do they deliver events at high execution standards?

An events space on the rise

This year in 2024, we have seen remarkable growth in the overall events space. Center Parcs Conferences & Events is experiencing its best-ever year for corporate bookings at its dedicated events venue in Woburn Forest. The company has already posted £2m more in confirmed revenue for The Venue than for its previous best year in 2019-20.

Red Bull Technology has seen huge growth in its corporate events business as it continues to evolve its offering, whileDubai won a record 349 bids to host international conferences, congresses, meetings, and incentive travel programmes in 2023. Corporate hospitality is on the up globally – with one firm in the financial services sector reported to have spent over £100 million in a single 12-month period.

This is great news for firms holding events for investor relations, to secure deals and grow their engagement with prospects. However, to truly capitalise on the growth, they must also prepare for the shifting networking trend that we’re seeing: a social media style level of engagement through event apps.

The shifting engagement trend

Historically, event apps might only have been used for hosting agendas, breakout sessions and for content to be uploaded. No more. Due to more pressure to get deals signed and transactions completed. That means attendees are demanding more from their event experiences which means more features and capabilities from event apps.

Now, attendees expect to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, share images, documents, reports, PDF’s, location meetings, and other content. They also expect to communicate through chats, react to and edit their comments, all in real time so they don’t miss the chance to engage and conduct business. This isn’t a prediction but a shifting demand that we’re seeing from our own data.

We’ve reviewed insights from three events over two years to understand this evolution. We analysed private capital’s most senior gathering, SuperReturn International, SuperInvestor, where meetings become investments and The Network Forum, the pre-eminent resource for the network management, custody and post trade community. Our analysis reported strong increases in app adoption – up from 78% to 91% from 2022 to 2024 at The Network Forum and increases of 8% and 7% for SuperReturn and SuperInvestor, respectively – but an exponential increase in the number of people using the messaging feature. At SuperReturn International, the number of messages sent via the app increased by 39% in its second year, from nearly 50,000 in 2023 to nearly 70,000 in 2024. While SuperInvestor reported over 12,000 messages sent in its first year.

Meetings overall play the most crucial of roles at events and is where the most business is completed. Our analysis from The Network Forum reported an increase of over 14,000 in meetings booked through the app in the first year of enhanced functionality, with that number climbing a further 15% in 2024. Similar exponential growth took place at SuperReturn with over a 6,000% rise in the number of meetings booked in 2024 from 2023. By moving beyond just virtual meeting functionality and offering more flexibility to attendees of these events to book them through in person, virtual and video calls we’re seeing a rising trend of interpersonal WhatsApp style engagement that we only expect to grow further into 2025.

Technology: the central role in breaking down the digital/physical divide

Events are a critical tool for many of the largest firms to engage deeper with their intended audiences. Our analysis provides a clear picture of significant change in how attendees are using apps from previous years. For example, only two years ago they were used as an information resource but now attendees are able to view sessions, engage in interactive polls and communicate in real time with connections.

This means that for any financial organisation running an event today, they have an opportunity to leverage data that will allow them to curate groups and offer hosted buyer networking options. However, their challenge lies in finding the right balance between sellers and buyers, identifying and offering the right information to create small target groups that will benefit from being part of that small, curated group and ensuring they continue to offer the features that attendees now come to expect.

The technology is here, let’s utilise it to grow this critical sector further.

Matt Ryan SQUARE HS (1)

About the author:

Matt Ryan is Chief Transformation Officer at Reef, Powered by Totem. Matt has more than 15 years of experience working with and alongside world famous brands to deliver transformation at every level. After a highly successful exit as an entrepreneur, he has since set about elevating companies ranging from long-standing NASDAQ behemoths to exciting start and scale-up businesses. His industry-agnostic success is founded on a demonstrable and innate ability to identify and understand a marketplace and its customers, often in very different and nuanced ways. This results in a strategy, a construct and a narrative that consistently deliver unprecedented results.