BrazilAccenture selects Asia Pacific FinTech Innovation Lab start-ups for 2019
Global professional services giant Accenture has selected its latest batch of start-ups for the sixth Asia-Pacific edition of its FinTech Innovation Lab.
Having received a record number of submissions for the latest Asia Pacific edition of its accelerator programme FinTech Innovation Lab – a mentorship initiative hosted in collaboration with a number of leading financial institutions – professional services giant Accenture has whittled down the more than 170 hopefuls to just eight successful finalists, with three quarters coming from Greater China, including five companies based in Hong Kong.
“The programme is going from strength to strength, as demonstrated by the record number of applicants this year,” said regional programme sponsor Piyush Singh, a senior managing director in Accenture’s Financial Services practice in Asia-Pacific. “The programme gives startups the opportunity to fine-tune their business plans and services while enabling participating financial institutions to get a glimpse of innovations that will shape the industry for years to come.”
The participating start-ups – which include a range of companies working on industry solutions through technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain – will now embark on a 12-week schedule of development activities alongside technology entrepreneurs, industry experts, and senior executives from matched financial institutions, culminating in November with a presentation before an audience of venture capitalists, the media and financial sector execs.
Since its initial founding in New York in 2010, with a further edition launched in London in 2012, alumni of the global Lab programme have raised venture financing closing in on the $2 billion mark – with a significant share of that picked up by the Asian cohort despite the local leg having only kicked off in 2014, indicative of the region’s major standing as a global innovation and fintech. This year, six of the start-ups originate from Greater China, five from Hong Kong.
“Leading Chinese companies, start-ups and more established institutions are exploring new ideas and spurring continuous innovation to stay ahead of the game, which is building a more robust fintech ecosystem in the Greater Bay Area,” said Singh, with the sixth of the Chinese participants based out of Shenzhen, where the firm recently launched its own innovation hub. “The region can serve as a significant catalyst for growth and innovation going forward.”
With BlackRock, Credit Suisse; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered being just a small sample of the financial institutions participating this year, the eight startups have been selected for their promising innovations in areas such as financial education and planning, compliance and corporate banking. The eight 2019 participants will be BAM Fintech, Datarama, FirstHive, Interlinkages Online, LeapXpert, MediConCen, Mellow and Webot.
“There’s now widespread acceptance that the best way forward for banks and fintech startups is to collaborate where possible, creating big ecosystems that will help unlock huge value for all stakeholders, particularly consumers,” said Singh. “That’s a big focus for the Lab, instigating this sense of partnership between well-established financial firms looking for the next breakthrough technology and nimble startups eager to test their solutions and push them to market.”
