03/13/2020

Member News

2020 Spring Summit Cancelled

Dear AFT Members and members of the larger FinTech community:

It is with a heavy heart that we must announce the cancellation of the AFT 2020 Spring Summit scheduled for next week in La Jolla, CA. As noted in previous messages, the board has been continuously monitoring and assessing the current situation associated with the COVID-19 virus. To be clear, we did not take this decision lightly and removed our personal views to do what was best for the organization as a whole.  The decision to cancel was put to a vote; it was unanimous as a board. We have made this decision based on the facts as we know them today, and because of the responsibility and genuine concern we feel for our membership and community.  

While we recognize that this action will come as a tremendous disappointment, we have chosen this direction based on a number of factors including feedback from our FinTech community over the past few days. The message was loud and clear…safety first.

Our foremost priority is our members. To that end, we made this decision based on two primary factors:

First, we are committed to provide a worthwhile return on our members’ investment in AFT. Although we experienced declines in attendance over the past week, we were confident that this Spring’s Summit would still provide the exceptional level of networking and educational experience that our members trust AFT to consistently provide; that stated, it may not have met expectations of all our attendees and sponsors with regards to percentage of attendance by our members.

Second, and most important, our primary concern is always the responsibility we feel towards the health and well-being of our community. While the CDC and other public health organizations continue to forecast the risk to most U.S. travelers as low, the situation has been rapidly changing and guidelines for certain demographics and geographic areas have become more cautious. For this reason, we are erring on the side of caution as well.

As you know, AFT is a non-profit association and this decision will have significant financial impact on the organization because of the contractual guarantees we need to make in the planning of any summit.  Fortunately, because of decades of excellent leadership and financial stewardship, AFT has sufficient reserves to be able to do what is right for the FinTech community without jeopardizing the on-going operations of the organization.

Per existing cancelation policy, attendee’s registration fees will be held as a credit for the AFT 2020 Fall Summit.  Sponsorships will also be credited to the fall meeting.  As an exception, fees for Sunday alternative activities or the spouse / guest program will be refunded.

The AFT team will be working hard to create a successful AFT 2020 Fall Summit, September 13-15.   We look forward to seeing all of you for a successful event in Vancouver. 

Sincerely,
Brian Otte
2020 AFT President
Director and Head of Sales, ProfitStars Solutions

For those of you who were registered or already cancelled or are a sponsor:

What do you need to do:

• Cancel all of your travel arrangements as soon as possible including your air, rental car, and hotel room now
• Wait for us to contact you about Sunday activity or Spouse / Guest activity fee refunds
• Wait for us to contact you about sending the process to apply your registration credit for Vancouver
• Sponsors, expect a call to make arrangements for transferring your sponsorship to the Fall Summit