Accenture invites applications for 5th annual FinTech Innovation Lab London

Accenture and other major financial institutions have invited applications for fifth annual FinTech Innovation Lab London, which is a 12-week program that helps early stage fintech startups accelerate product and business development through mentorship and exposure to top financial institutions.

According to the official release, this year’s Lab for the first time, will include a dedicated stream for insurtech entrepreneurs and is also being expanded to select 20 startups.

“Innovation is borderless. Like London itself, the Lab has become a healthy ecosystem for global fintech innovation, attracting applicants from more than 33 countries since we launched in 2012. There are few industries that need innovation more than financial services, which is why firms must keep their foot on the pedal with digital technologies. At the same time, even the nimblest of startups have much to learn from financial institutions, regulators and larger tech companies,” Julian Skan, Accenture managing director for financial services said.

Leading financial institutions participating in the FinTech London Lab include Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, RBS, Santander and UBS among others.

The participating startups will get a chance to partner with senior financial services executives, who will help them to fine-tune their developed technologies and business strategies. The Lab will begin in January 2017 and participants will be presenting their business cases during Graduation Day in March in front of venture capitalists and financial industry veterans.

Nationwide Building Society is a supporter of the Lab and it recently completed successful testing of release management software from one of 2016 finalists of the FinTech Innovation Lab London – Cutover.

“We are proud to support Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab for the third year and it is always exciting to see the cutting edge propositions from the start-ups. We look forward to forming new relationships with the next generation of FinTech start-ups whilst nurturing existing collaborations with ‘graduates’ of the programme,” Matt Cox, head of Insight & Innovation at Nationwide Building Society said.

Last month, eight leading fintech companies entered the third annual Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific, to begin a 12-week mentorship program comprising of series of workshops at Cyberport, panel discussions and coaching sessions on product and business development.