Launched at the height of the dotcom boom in June 2000, Finextra was a pioneer in establishing a significant community of industry participants, leaders and opinion formers in financial technology. While most of the dotcom generation crashed and burned, Finextra grew stronger year-after-year. This was achieved by building upon principals of community interest, interactivity and engagement, a full five years before such concepts became mainstream.

Over the following decade the site has become an indispensible source of news, views and analysis for the global financial technology community, as an example, last month generating over six million page views from some 110,000 unique visitors.

"Finextra is part of the bedrock of the financial technology industry," says Finextra co-founder and head of content Paul Penrose. "We have a loyal and growing global community, strong industry relationships and an unbeatable deep archive of over 50,000 news stories, all tagged by company, segment and topic for fast search and retrieval. We have, as they say these days, a very Long Tail of content resources."

Today almost 23,000 financial technology professionals receive Finextra's daily newsletters and subject-specific real-time newsflashes, featuring the latest breaking news, industry opinion, and fintech career opportunities, delivered to their desktops. Mobile services can deliver the same news to mobile devices.

"Through the Finextra community our members are able to deepen their relationship with their peers in the industry, by uploading profiles, communicating over our private messaging system, commenting on news and demonstrating their own thought-leadership and viewpoints through personal blogs," says Penrose. "It's become a launch pad for industry opinion and discussion. The conversation about fintech issues starts here." To evidence this, Finextra members have so far posted 3,588 blogs on the site, attracting 3,070 comments from industry peers and generating more than 5 million page views.

More than just a valuable news and information resource, Finextra has woven itself into the fabric of the global financial technology industry, forging strong relationships with influential industry groups, such as the EBA and SWIFT, who value being able to use the Finextra platform to communicate effectively with their members and their extended communities of stakeholders.

"We've come a long way in ten years," says Penrose. "But we're not resting on our laurels. Finextra has always put the needs of the community first. Only by serving their interests we will we continue to flourish."

"During those ten years we have been staffed by a relatively small tight team of probably fifteen or so employees across the whole decade. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them all for their passion, energy and commitment to delivering a great service to our global community.

"Mostly I'd like to thank you, the readers of this story, who are the members of the financial technology community we serve. I hope you have enjoyed the service we have provided over the past decade and I'd urge you to be proactive in communicating to us how you would like Finextra's services to evolve to meet your current needs and future requirements."