Leading finance provider BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK has kickstarted the third year of its UK FinTech Incubator Programme in partnership with SuperTech WM and delivered by STEAMhouse, and invited 8 tech businesses to join this year’s cohort of the Innovation Lab.

Following a competitive application process, 8 FinTech businesses from across the UK have now been inducted into the Innovation Lab and this week attended the programme’s inaugural discovery event, hosted at BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK’s headquarters in Solihull, West Midlands.

The event saw this year’s cohort of FinTechs engage in a series of discovery sessions to learn more about the programme and begin exploring this year’s challenge, which is focused on how businesses can use Generative AI to enhance customer communications and insight to drive engagement, understanding and effectiveness.

Each business was given the opportunity to introduce their business and network with senior executives from BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK to gain insights into the financial services sector from a financial provider’s perspective, before meeting various programme leads from SuperTech WM and STEAMhouse, the programme’s third regional innovation partner.

The AI-driven tech businesses in attendance included: docStribute, ComplAI Solutions, RangeTeller, Aveni, Blankstate, TellJO, Snorkl, and AlignixAI.

In the coming months, these companies will collaborate, share insights and develop tangible solutions to this year’s challenge that will be showcased at an upcoming event, where their commercial viability will be evaluated. Previous iterations of the Innovation Lab have resulted in BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK supporting a selection of businesses to develop their solutions into fully-fledged products that were trialled with its customers via the myCreation app.

Stephen Hunt, CEO of BNP Paribas Personal Finance UK, commented: “I’m particularly looking forward to this year’s programme as our customer-focused challenge will provide invaluable insights as to how we improve the customer experience to make it as seamless and engaging as possible. As consumer behaviours continue to evolve, it’s essential that we in the financial services sector are evolving alongside them — and AI has a key role to play in this.

“What’s even more exciting about this year’s programme is the collaborative spirit that is fostered between our senior executives, our cohort of FinTech businesses and our programme leads — and what this means for the wider industry. Programmes like this, which facilitate open collaboration help to challenge ourselves and think outside the box to drive real impact. Not only are innovation-focused programmes essential to accelerating growth in the UK’s FinTech industry, but in hosting it here in the West Midlands, we can in turn supercharge our regional economy.”

Hilary Smyth-Allen, CEO SuperTech WM, added: “Our longstanding, strategic partnership with BNP Paribas Personal Finance not only strengthens regional innovation capabilities within the financial services industry, it also demonstrates how the West Midlands can explore and embrace opportunities from technology. This year's Innovation Lab, with a fantastic cohort and its focus on Generative AI to support customer engagement and outcomes promises to be impactful within financial services and beyond.”

Patrick Bek, Head of Service Innovation and Experimentation at STEAMhouse, explained: “We’re delighted to again be joining BNP Paribas Personal Finance and SuperTech WM in returning to deliver the Innovation Lab. The open, agile and collaborative innovation on show in previous Innovation Labs was game-changing, and we’re looking forward to co-creating even more innovative solutions over the next few months. Having such a diverse cohort as part of this Innovation Lab is fantastic, as we can explore the challenge from many angles and open up a multitude of opportunities.”