15 UK start-ups were selected for the 2016 Fintech Innovation Lab London, the fintech accelerator programme, from a leading global professional services company Accenture.
The London FinTech Innovation Lab, a collaboration between Accenture and 16 leading financial institutions such as Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, JPMorgan, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, Santander, Societe Generale, announced 15 fintech startups that will take part in the 12-week mentoring program which will help fintech entrepreneurs accelerate product development.
Six of the most promising start-ups from this initiative will be chosen to present at an investor day that will be held in April to an audience of investors from the fintech industry, reads Startups.
Stuart Gulliver, group chief executive of HSBC Holdings plc, comments: “HSBC is already working with firms from last year’s programme and we are pleased to be supporting the Innovation Lab again. Matching our experience with the creativity of the selected entrepreneurs is a proven way of developing technologies that bring real benefits to customers.”
“The disruption of financial services by FinTech entrepreneurs continues at speed,” says Richard Lumb, group chief executive of Financial Services at Accenture. “We’re incredibly excited about working with this year’s entrepreneurs to make banking better, cheaper and faster. They offer some exciting innovations and have demonstrated exceptional creativity in what has been a record breaking year for applications from more than 30 countries, confirming that London is very much the centre of Europe’s thriving FinTech community.”
“Adopting disruptive technology is a priority for the banking sector and collaborating with startups through initiatives such as the Fintech Innovation Labs is an important part of this process for Deutsche Bank. Better and faster platforms can drive productivity and enhance the customer experience,” commented Kim Hammonds, chief operating officer and chief information officer, Deutsche Bank.
Launched by Accenture in 2012, FinTech Innovation Lab has already helped its 14 alumnni firms to promote their activity and sign about 50 business contracts with banks.
So far, among the 15 companies chosen for the 2016 FinTech Innovation Lab there is the only blockchain firm to take part in the project. This startup is Crowdaura, blockchain based private placement issuance, administration and trading platform. “Crowdaura leverages blockchain as a deliberate and focused technology choice, but one that is hidden from the end user i.e. platform users and managers should not know a blockchain backbone is doing anything – just like a user doesn’t need to know that a bank’s website utilizes HTTPS/HTML5,” states the company’s FB page.
The rest of the 2016 FinTech Innovation Lab London firms are: AimBrain, Albert, AlgoDynamix, Clausematch, Contego, Cutover, PassFort, PayKey, Quotip, SBDA Group, Talent Rank, Undo, Voleo, and ZeroDB.
The FinTech Innovation Lab London is modelled on a similar program that was co-founded by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City. In 2014, Accenture launched two other Labs: the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific in Hong Kong and the FinTech Innovation Lab Dublin in Ireland.
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