Friday 29 Mar 2024
By
main news image

SINGAPORE (Aug 22): Eight financial technology (fintech) companies on Monday are starting a 12-week mentorship programme in the third annual FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific.

Through the programme, these startups will receive senior-level mentoring from various financial services executives who will help them develop and commercialise their innovations as well as connect with potential customers.

This will be accomplished over 12 weeks through a series of workshops at Hong Kong’s digital community Cyberport, panel discussions, and coaching sessions on product- and business-development.

Five of the eight participants will be chosen at the end of the programme to present their concepts to potential investors and financial industry executives.

FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is a collaborative accelerator event between Accenture, a group of supporting banks and twelve principal financial institutions, namely: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, Generali, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Maybank, Morgan Stanley, Sun Life Financial and UBS.

Jon Allaway, senior managing director, Financial Services at Accenture, believes the startups in this year’s edition of the programme offer “innovative answers” to problems commonly faced by financial institutions today. These include difficulties in increasing efficiency, cost-cutting, and enhancing interaction with customers while maintaining compliance with regulators.

“With solutions like analytics that make wealth management advice available to more clients, we are seeing how fintech can help institutions deliver better services to their customers,” he elaborates.

“Asia-Pacific has the most exciting markets in the world for fintech startups,” remarks Edmund J. Lowell, CEO of KYC-Chain, a Singapore-based firm among the eight companies selected to participate in the lab.

“When you count the support from regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as the multinationals headquartered in both cities, Singapore or Hong Kong is the perfect choice for a headquarters.”

KYC-Chain leverages blockchain technology to streamline onboarding consensus on identity, such that frontline sales and compliance officers can interact with retail clients and financial institutions within an encrypted environment.

Predictive investment analytics platform HedgeSPA is another participating company with offices in Singapore and California. Its CEO, Bernard Lee, adds that Singapore and Hong Kong have been “extremely supportive of fintech innovation encouraging startups to build their businesses”.

The FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific was launched in 2014, and is modelled on a similar program that Accenture co-founded in 2010 with the Partnership Fund for New York City, the US$115 million ($156 million) investment arm of the Partnership for New York City.

      Print
      Text Size
      Share