There are signs Israel is growing in importance as a fintech hub.

Bank Leumi and the Elevator fund created a Fintech Innovation Hub in Israel last April to empower local startups. Citigroup launched a financial technology accelerator last July. Also in July, Carmel Ventures, a local VC, began hosting Fintech Forums, and last week hosted its third in the Israel Conservatory of Music in Tel Aviv. The featured speaker was author and HSBC customer Brett King.

About 400 attendees showed up to hear King discuss the “Big Shift” taking place in financial services from a bank-centric view to a customer-centric view. The empowered customer is a familiar theme of King’s, and in Israel he stressed the importance of social media. The new customer trusts his friends more than banks, and banks are weak in the social space. Citibank may have more money than Justin Bieber, but the Bieb has more friends.

King concluded by saying that the employees most needed in fintech are data scientists and “storytellers.”

The Carmel event was jointly sponsored by Citibank, Bank Leumi, consulting/accounting firm Deloitte and Meitar, a local law firm. Avi Zeevi, general partner at Carmel Ventures, provided the opening remarks. Zeevi is one of the pioneers of the Israeli fintech community.

Israeli fintech companies put in the spotlight at the event included Payoneer, Personetics, SundaySky and TipRanks. Carmel Ventures has investments in all but TipRanks.

A discussion at the event highlighted the strengths of Israel’s startup community: security and data analytics.

Banks in Israel are anxious to do beta testing with local startups, but those companies often overlook local banks in favor of the larger FIs in the US and Europe. Being a small country in the fintech world seems to have a downside, apparently.