NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A select group of leading-edge financial services technology (fintech) companies demonstrated their products and services to dozens of top bank, venture-capital and technology executives today at the fifth annual New York FinTech Innovation Lab Demo Day.
Created by Accenture (NYSE:ACN) and the Partnership Fund for New York City in 2010, the FinTech Innovation Lab is a 12-week mentoring program to enhance fintech innovation and drive high-tech job growth in New York City by connecting startups with decision makers at some of the world’s leading financial institutions. This year’s Demo Day was held at Bank of America’s One Bryant Park in Manhattan.
The seven companies in this year’s lab were selected by senior technology executives from the 15 participating financial institutions and have spent the last 12 weeks receiving intensive mentoring, high-level product and business-development advice, and exposure to senior financial industry, technology and venture capital executives. The 2015 FinTech Innovation Lab participants are:
- Digital Asset Holdings – which is building next-generation, cryptographically secure distributed settlement and ledger services. The company will provide safe and efficient settlement of conventional and digital assets that eliminate counterparty risk and can reduce trade- processing time from T+3 to same-day settlement.
- EverSafe – which is a technology service focused on protecting older adults from financial abuse and identity theft. The online service analyzes bank and investment accounts, credit card activity, and credit reports for suspicious activity, and enables seniors to designate trusted advocates as “an extra set of eyes” to assist in monitoring.
- MaxMyInterest – which offers an intelligent cash-management solution that maximizes the interest that individuals can earn on the cash in their bank accounts. Max employs a novel cash sweep technology that monitors interest rates daily and automatically reallocates funds among a client’s own bank accounts to secure the highest yield while maximizing FDIC-insurance coverage
- PierceMatrix – which offers a cyber-security solution that addresses third-party risk from partners connecting into a company’s network. PierceMatrix creates a unified defense by sharing threats, learning hacker locations, and making security recommendations. It uses a distributed architecture to scale and military level artificial intelligence to automate, allowing security personnel to reduce third-party risk by processing more alerts in less time.
- Pay Your Tuition (PYT FUNDS INC) – which leverages its propriety technology platform to help low and moderate income students increase their prospects for private funding and to help address the growing funding gap for college tuition due to rising higher education costs. Through a combination of crowdfunding and philanthropy, PYT matches high-performing students with traditional financial institutions, helping students meet their education funding goals and helping banks expand their consumer loan portfolio by funding lower risk private education loans.
- Social Alpha – which provides actionable insights for traders, analysts and investment managers. Social Alpha applies large-scale machine learning and natural language processing to online news and social media sources to deliver real-time analysis of social media activity that is likely to affect financial markets.
- Ufora – which leverages sophisticated algorithms and vast hardware infrastructure to automate the expensive engineering required to work with large datasets, enabling analysts to address real-world complexity and answer a firm’s most important questions in seconds instead of months.
The FinTech Innovation Labs’ 24 alumni companies have raised a total of $176 million in financing after participating in the program, and one alumni company was acquired last year for $175 million. Financial services firms supporting the Lab are: Ally Financial; American Express; Bank of America; Barclays; Capital One; Citigroup; Credit Suisse; Deutsche Bank; Goldman Sachs; The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America; JPMorgan Chase & Co; Morgan Stanley; New York Life; UBS; and Wells Fargo. Supporting venture-capital firms include Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, Contour Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Nyca Partners, Rho Ventures, RRE Ventures and Warburg Pincus.
“The FinTech Innovation Lab is an extraordinary program that enables us to grow the next generation of successful financial technology entrepreneurs right here in New York,” said Maria Gotsch, President and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City. “The Lab continues to attract top entrepreneurs because of its tremendous value proposition – startups are partnered with the most important players in the financial services and technology sectors. Our partners, senior executives, and entrepreneur mentors help the participants identify how their products can be game-changers and play a valuable role in accelerating the process of bringing them to market. The Lab has put New York City on the map as the center of the fintech industry and this year’s class is another clear example of the incredible innovation taking place in the five boroughs.”
“The last year has been an exciting time for fintech innovation,” said Bob Gach, managing director of Accenture Strategy Capital Markets and co-founder of the FinTech Innovation Lab. “As the financial services industry continues to evolve, we are seeing a new crop of entrepreneurs and innovative technologies that have shifted from niche, vertically focused businesses to mainstream platforms that can help create ecosystems that extend beyond offering financial products. In the same vein, this year’s class showcased exciting new products and platforms that will likely have a significant and lasting impact on the financial marketplace.”
“Ally is a proud supporter of the FinTech Innovation Lab and the start-up companies we mentor. As a financial services company with a focus on digital innovation, we are committed to the FinTech Lab and the benefits it can bring to our customers,” said Michael Baresich, Chief Information Officer of Ally Financial, Inc.
“We are extremely proud of our ongoing relationship with the New York FinTech Innovation Lab and the participant startups,” said David Reilly, Bank of America Chief Technology Officer. “Our customers and clients ultimately benefit as we collaborate and learn from these select, standout companies. When we work together, we’re able to create innovative solutions to our most pressing technology needs.”
“The Fintech innovation Lab continues to provide a great pipeline of new and innovative products for the FS sector. This year’s graduating class is no exception, with products ranging from distributed digital ledgers leveraging blockchain technology to Natural Language Processing algorithms gleaning actionable insight from Social Media. Credit Suisse is proud to be a founding sponsor of the FIL and we look forward to continuing our participation in London and Hong Kong later this year,” said Scot Baldry, Chief Architect, Credit Suisse.
Philip Gilligan, Head of Group Technology & Operations Strategy, Architecture and Innovation at Deutsche Bank, said: “Deutsche Bank is committed to applying new technologies to enhance its products, services and processes. Start-ups can make a valuable contribution to this effort and the Bank is pleased to be supporting them through the FinTech Innovation Lab initiative."
“JPMorgan Chase is continually exploring the emerging technology ecosystem to find new, innovative solutions to challenging business problems,” said Larry Feinsmith, Managing Director, Global Technology Strategy and Partnerships, JPMorgan Chase & Co. “We are looking forward to work again with the FinTech Innovation Lab to mentor another exciting group of companies with innovative and disruptive ideas”
Shawn Melamed, Head of Technology Business Development at Morgan Stanley, said: “Through the FinTech Innovation Lab, entrepreneurs benefit from months of discussions, mentoring, and exposure; but, we also come away with renewed energy and inspiration to use technology in fresh and inventive ways. The financial services industry is driven by technology, and we recognize the crucial role forums like this play in identifying and evaluating innovative technology companies that can help us better serve our clients.”
“Each year, we look forward to working with and supporting the start-ups at the FinTech Innovation Lab,” said Don Desiderato, Senior Vice President, New York Life Insurance Company. “We are increasingly impressed with the innovations these entrepreneurs bring to the table and are amazed at the impactful tech solutions they offer to our business challenges.”
“Helping young companies shape their technologies to serve critical business, risk and efficiency needs of a diversified bank like ours is both rewarding and integral to how we do business at Wells Fargo,” says Ravi Radhakrishnan, Wells Fargo Securities CIO and an Executive Sponsor of the FinTech Innovation Lab.
Based on the success of the FinTech Innovation Lab in New York, Accenture launched the FinTech Innovation Lab London in 2012 and the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific in Hong Kong in 2014.
About the Partnership Fund for New York City
The Partnership Fund for New York City is the $115 million investment arm of the Partnership for New York City (www.pfnyc.org). The Fund’s mission is to engage the City’s business leaders to identify and support promising NYC-based entrepreneurs in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors to create jobs, spur new business and expand opportunities for New Yorkers to participate in the City’s economy. The Fund is governed by a Board of Directors co-chaired by Charles “Chip” Kaye, co-chief executive officer of Warburg Pincus, and Tarek Sherif, Chairman and CEO of Medidata. Maria Gotsch serves as President and CEO of the Fund.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 336,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014. Its home page is www.accenture.com.