Montréal, September 22, 2025 – Finance Montréal, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, opened today the 12th edition of the Canada Fintech Forum, the country’s largest fintech gathering. Presented by Portage, under the honorary chairmanship of Paul Desmarais III (Sagard), the Forum takes place on September 22–23 at the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth and brings together more than 1,400 leaders in finance and technology, including startup founders, investors, researchers, and public decision-makers.
A laboratory of ideas for the financial ecosystem
Over two days, the Forum highlights the themes shaping the future of global finance. The first day is dedicated to open and embedded finance (platformization, cross-border payments, super apps, ESG, and sustainable finance). The second day explores enterprise infrastructure and artificial intelligence, with discussions on cybersecurity, compliance, financial crime prevention through AI, and the future of work. The ElleFintech Demo Day also showcases women-led startups.
Three hands-on workshops on the responsible use of AI in finance, business opportunities linked to emerging technologies, governance and ethics, as well as ESG-related challenges, complete the program.
Announcements and innovations unveiled
As a true hub of financial innovation, the Canada Fintech Forum is once again the stage for a series of announcements that reflect the vitality and creativity of the Canadian fintech ecosystem:
- Finance Montréal, host of the event, announced the completion of expansion work at the Station Fintech Montréal, a one-of-a-kind innovation hub in Canada. With this expansion, the Station — currently home to 36 resident startups — can now welcome about ten additional young companies. The Station also unveiled a full redesign of its acceleration programs and a new virtual offering, extending its reach to an even greater number of startups.
- Luge Capital announced it led the $3.5 million seed round for Mycroft, with participation from Brightspark Ventures, Graphite Ventures, as well as existing investors Ripple Ventures, Developer Capital, Antler, and BoxOne Ventures.
Mycroft offers an agentic AI platform that centralizes compliance, cybersecurity, and device management. Acting as a virtual Security and Compliance Officer, Mycroft enables startups and SMEs to achieve enterprise-level security and audit readiness without relying on a patchwork of disparate tools.
- Fathom4Sight, a Toronto-based market intelligence firm, launched FathomPRO, a new AI-powered market intelligence platform. Designed to transform strategic foresight in financial services, FathomPRO delivers real-time intelligence and forward-looking insights to help institutions anticipate disruption. This milestone coincides with the company’s fourth anniversary.
- Unicorne unveiled Stable, a SaaS platform developed in Quebec to optimize AWS cloud costs. Through in-depth resource analysis and prioritized recommendations, Stable helps companies — particularly fintechs — improve financial forecasting and strengthen collaboration between IT, finance, and compliance teams.
- Flybits unveiled its Agentic Banking capability, an AI driven solution that introduces conversational agents to unify cards, loans, deposits and insurance, moving financial institutions beyond static mobile apps. Built on the company’s enterprise grade data orchestration platform, this agentic AI integrates products and services into life centred journeys and is designed to help banks accelerate innovation cycles while maintaining trust, compliance and explainability. The system is privacy preserving and audit ready, orchestrating data and offerings across internal systems and ecosystem partners.
Visionary speakers and companies
Several renowned speakers and industry leaders are taking part in the Forum this year, including Jessica Tan, President of Sun Life Canada, Laurent Ferreira, President and CEO of National Bank of Canada, Shelby Austin, Co-Founder and CEO of Arteria AI, Daniel Eberhard, Founder and CEO of KOHO, Michael Pelosi, Country Manager Canada at Cohere, Parinaz Sobhani, Managing Director and Head of AI at Sagard, Patrick Surry, Chief Data Scientist at Hopper, Michael Linford, Chief Operating Officer at Affirm, Surinderjit Kaur (Jeet), Founder and CEO of Fathom4Sight, and Malik Yacoubi, Co-Founder and CEO of Nesto.
Companies such as VoPay, Wise, and Coinbase Canada are also part of the discussions, contributing their expertise on international trade, real-time payments, and the evolution of cryptocurrencies.
A highlight: the Annual Dinner
The annual dinner of the Canada Fintech Forum was held on September 22 and brought together senior executives for an exclusive conversation on the future of finance. This year’s edition, which welcomed more than 700 attendees, featured Jessica Tan (Sun Life Canada), Laurent Ferreira (National Bank of Canada), and Paul Desmarais III (Sagard), who exchanged views on the major trends reshaping the industry and the challenges ahead.
“This fall, we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of Finance Montréal and the 12th edition of the Canada Fintech Forum. This flagship event has undeniably become the go-to gathering for Canadian financial startups and the ecosystem that supports them. We are proud to take this opportunity to announce the expansion of the Station Fintech Montréal, a unique innovation hub in Canada, which will now be able to host and support 25% more fintech professionals in their growth journey,” said Jacques Deforges, CEO of Finance Montréal.
“Canadian fintech has never been stronger. The Canada Fintech Forum demonstrates that our ecosystem can lead internationally, while staying true to the values of resilience, innovation, and trust. Portage is proud to play a role in this journey”, added Adam Felesky, Co-Founder and CEO of Portage.
About Finance Montréal
Founded in 2010, Finance Montréal, Quebec’s financial cluster, is at the heart of the development and promotion of Quebec’s financial services industry and its international positioning as a world-class, growing, competitive, attractive, and innovative business hub. Through its International Financial Center (IFC) team, Finance Montréal works to attract foreign financial companies to Montreal. The organization’s areas of focus also include fintech and innovation, sustainable finance, and talent development. As a hub for the financial community, Finance Montréal mobilizes stakeholders around these pillars, embodied by the community gathered at the Station Fintech Montréal, which it manages. For more information, visit www.finance-montreal.com or its LinkedIn page.
Information
Maximilian Fiorante
514-222-9043
media@finance-montreal.com
