Hoxton Ventures announced the final close today of Hoxton Ventures II L.P., an early stage European venture capital fund building on the firm’s record of finding and investing in “unicorns,” which includes seed investments in Babylon Health, Darktrace and Deliveroo.

Hoxton’s strategy of finding European companies that can scale globally into large, category-defining leaders in newly forming industries has led it to becoming one of Europe’s top-performing early stage venture capital firms. The firm’s first fund has the highest ratio of unicorns to investments, according to Dealroom.

“We set up Hoxton to address a market gap at a time when few venture firms wanted to invest at the early stage in Europe,” said Hussein Kanji, a partner at Hoxton. “Success stories like Darktrace and Deliveroo show that our region can produce large, global tech winners.

"The availability of venture capital is still far lower per capita here than tech markets like Israel and Silicon Valley,” added co-founding partner Rob Kniaz. “We’re delighted to help fill this funding gap and deliver top-tier venture returns for our investors.”

The second fund saw increased commitments from investors in Hoxton’s first fund, alongside commitments from new British, Swiss and U.S. institutional investors. New limited partners include British Patient Capital, the largest investor in U.K. venture capital.

Hoxton focuses on leveraging its partners’ connections to the U.S. The fund expects most of its investments will target the U.S. market, either by opening offices in the U.S. or building a sales presence in the U.S.

“As Silicon Valley costs have skyrocketed and quality of life in the Bay Area has decreased, it makes more sense than ever to build engineering in Europe,” said Kniaz. “But European entrepreneurs cannot underestimate the importance of the U.S. market.”

Hoxton’s investments have received follow-on financing rounds from many leading U.S. venture capital firms including Accel Partners, GV, Index Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, KKR, Summit Partners, and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV).

"Entrepreneurs choose to work with us because we act as a bridge between the U.S. and European markets," said Kniaz. “We focus on making sure our companies are well connected in Silicon Valley for partnerships, follow-on funding and eventual acquisition or IPO.”

Hoxton operates similarly to many successful U.S. venture funds, running as a small team, investing across technology sectors, and working closely with entrepreneurs as a business partner. The firm only recently added a third partner, Rob Ludwig, at the end of 2019, who joined as the firm’s chief operating officer.

The new fund began investing in early 2019 and has made 20 investments across a range of sectors, including seed investments in FabricNano, a next generation enzyme business, Fy!, a homewares marketplace, Kbox Global, a cloud kitchen business, Kheiron Medical, an artificial intelligence radiology startup, and Preply, an online education company.

Approximately one-sixth of the fund’s investments were made after the start of the COVID-19 crisis.

“Some of the best companies are built in a downturn,” said Kanji. “Our patient, long-term approach means we are happy to take the long view on markets that may be early in their development but will grow exponentially irrespective of the macroeconomy.”

SteelEye, the compliance technology and data analytics firm, today published “Data-Driven Financial Services Compliance – Understanding the Opportunity”, a white paper which explores the key challenges faced by compliance teams within financial markets as they navigate regulatory change. 

Increased complexity, rising costs and significant financial, operational and reputational risk have accompanied the wave of new regulations implemented over the past decade. Add to that the pandemic which brought with it market volatility and an exponential increase in the number of market abuse alerts, and financial compliance has become even more complex. 

This white paper looks at how regulatory change is impacting compliance teams and businesses overall, highlighting the key challenges firms are grappling with. It then recommends a fresh approach to compliance, with data quality and digital transformation at its core, concluding that financial firms can no longer continue to manage their obligations in the way they have to date, but instead need to opt for a more holistic and data-centric approach. 

“The data that is required for regulatory reporting, trade surveillance and best execution is largely the same, so why do financial firms operate separate systems for these regulatory obligations?” said Matt Smith, CEO of SteelEye. “As compliance teams face growing regulations and increasing volumes of data, the industry needs to change its approach. Adopting a data-first strategy, which focuses on accurately capturing, normalising and storing both structured and unstructured data on a unified platform offers an efficient, scalable and future-proof response to regulatory compliance.”

He added, “A data-centric approach not only provides a complete picture for compliance teams to manage an increased number of alerts and operate more efficiently, but also facilitates data analysis for other parts of the firm to identify improvements.”

White paper key highlights:

- Compliance teams can solve a range of challenges associated with regulatory change by adopting an approach that’s rooted in digital transformation, and specifically, the enhancement of data quality.

- Getting the data right is foundational. This involves making sure all data is correctly sourced, ingested, cleaned, and normalised, and automating these processes through the use of technology.

- By adopting a data-centric approach to compliance, firms can meet a range of their regulatory obligations using only one data set. This includes regulatory reporting, market abuse monitoring and surveillance, best execution reporting, record keeping and more. 

- Further, this data set can be leveraged for a wide range of use cases beyond compliance, providing the opportunity for compliance teams to contribute proactively to their organisation’s overall data management, insight and analytics.

Path Solutions, a global banking software provider, was announced by IBS Intelligence as the leader in the Islamic financial services sector in IBS Islamic Sales League Table (SLT) 2020. 

For the eighth year in a row, Path Solutions was recognized the undisputed leader in Islamic Banking with more new Islamic deals signed in 2019 than any of its industry peers. The company is part of the iconic IBSI Leadership Club 2020 for back office systems, topping the Islamic Banking category since 2017.

Separately, Path Solutions was recognized as the World’s 4^th Universal Banking System Provider for the fifth consecutive year in IBS Global SLT. The dual recognition demonstrates Path Solutions’ cementing leadership position across the breadth of the financial services space.

In IBS SLT 2020, Path Solutions featured in four other categories; the Compliance, Digital Banking & Channels, Risk Management, and the Lending category, making it one of the preferred software vendors in these segments, expanding its solution footprint globally. 

The annual IBS SLT is the global barometer for sales performance of Universal Banking, Islamic Banking, Wholesale Banking, Retail Banking, Private Banking, Lending, Digital Banking, CRM, Payments, Compliance & Risk Management, Investment & Fund Management-related technology market.

Mohammed Kateeb, Group Chairman & CEO of Path Solutions, commented, “These recognitions attest to our continued vigorous commitment and rigorous execution, seeing the pace and scale in the adoption of our flagship iMAL platform. It makes us incredibly proud to be serving our valued clients with a comprehensive open banking platform, innovative and state-of-the-art digital solutions complemented by deep intelligence built into all major business segments”.

Kateeb added, “Being recognized as the leader in Islamic SLT for the eighth year running demonstrates our company’s overall ability to meet the continuously emerging complex client requirements, emphasizing the breadth and depth of our suite of solutions, as well as our ability to accelerate time to market for products and services. As our clients look at rethinking the playbook, we will continue to make industry leading R&D in intelligence and digital, to help them embrace the opportunities created by Industry 4.0 technologies and be more efficient and competitive”.

IBS ISLT spokesperson stated, “Islamic financing in recent years has seen tremendous growth spurred by more awareness, strong investments, digitalization and increasing financial inclusion in predominantly Islamic countries in the Middle East and Africa. This year’s ISLT saw close competition between top players, where Path Solutions emerged as the winner for its iMAL platform. Many congratulations once again for being at the leadership position in the Islamic Banking category”.

Path Solutions is a market-leading provider of AAOIFI-certified core banking platforms with world-class development, implementation, consulting, support, training, and outsourcing services. Its new age initiatives - Digital & Social Banking, Mobility, Business Analytics, Risk Management & Compliance solutions cater to the evolving need for speed, reach and predictability.

Path Solutions heavily focuses on innovation with significant investment in R&D. Innovation is a core value to which Path Solutions is relentlessly committed to drive digital transformations and proposes to today’s financial institutions ground-breaking solutions empowering them to efficiently deliver the capabilities customers expect.

The company’s global R&D centers are located in Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, India and Pakistan, in addition to near-shore support offices spread across the UK, Malaysia, KSA, UAE, Morocco and Bahrain, and a global business partner network stretching over four continents.

Avaloq has been named Outstanding Wealth Management Technology Implementation – Back Office partner at the Global Private Banking Innovation Awards 2020. The award is the seventh accolade or industry citation to be won by Avaloq in 2020; most recently, it won the Best Outsourcing Solution and Best Transaction Processing awards at the WealthBriefing Asia Awards 2020.

Hosted jointly by The Digital Banker and Global Private Banker, The Global Private Banking Innovation Awards look to identify and distinguish the world’s best-in-class private banks, family offices, wealth managers, wealthtech firms and service providers. Judges include representatives from PwC, EY, KPMG, and Protiviti, with shortlisted institutions or individuals reviewed by the panel through a rigorous audit-type process.

In addition, client testimonials and case studies are a key part of the selection, and Avaloq’s work with a Hong Kong-based wealth management institution was cited in particular, as a highly successful back-office technology implementation, as the project team was able to meet the client’s ambitious goals. In close collaboration with the implementation partner, Avaloq managed to launch a fully operational, cutting-edge private banking platform within just six months.

This latest win further underscores the continued, strong growth of Avaloq in the global private banking and wealth management sector, particularly in the Asia-Pacific market. Recent new clients in the region include Bank of the Philippine Islands and Indonesia’s largest banking group, Bank Mandiri. In April, Deutsche Bank renewed its wealth management contract with Avaloq in Asia and Europe until the end of 2028, one of the firm’s most significant and largest business process as a service (BPaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) relationships globally.

Also in April, Avaloq was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Wealth Management Platforms, Q1 2020 assessment. This came shortly after it was rated as an industry Leader in Everest Group’s Wealth Management Operations Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2020.

Imad Abou Haidar, Avaloq’s Head of Asia, said: “We are delighted to win this distinguished award which is showcasing our continued strength in the private banking and wealth management sector. This is particularly compelling for us as it recognises the outstanding work that Avaloq and our highly professional teams have done for a long-standing Hong Kong-based client. As we look forward, our ambition is to fast-track growth as greater numbers of financial institutions acknowledge the deep benefits of our digital operating models.”

Thought Machine, the cloud native core banking technology firm, today announced it has teamed up with RegTech leader TruNarrative to provide Atom bank groundbreaking financial crime prevention and core banking capabilities. This partnership has enabled Atom to use the TruNarrative platform to conduct a full suite of real-time AML transactional monitoring processes built on top of truly cloud native technology.

The TruNarrative platform is currently used by a wide range of regulated entities which includes banks, lenders, eCommerce and payment services. They deliver open API access to their automated decision engine, risk scoring, behavioural models combined with full case and referral management alongside and over 50 third party verification data sources.

Thought Machine started working with Atom bank in late 2018. Deploying their core banking product, Vault, into Atom’s stack. Vault’s innovative architecture is built to run any type of bank no matter the size or complexity and comes with a range of standard retail banking products as well as build-your-own tools. Their banking products include current/checking accounts, savings, loans, credit cards and mortgages. Their customers also include Lloyds Bank, SEB and Standard Chartered.

TruNarrative’s advanced decision engine, fed with real-time, granular data from Thought Machine’s corebanking engine enables banks to stay ahead of the ever-changing regulatory landscape for onboarding and ongoing transactional risk management.

This partnership will continue to deliver a new level of agility to banks, allowing for the constant evolution of their product life cycle while enabling accurate automated decisioning for a frictionless customer journey.

Previously, banks would need to design and build their initial customer onboarding and transactional systems in house, requiring bespoke development to incorporate multiple third-party data sources such as, PEPs and Sanctions and biometrics.

By delivering a complete solution like TruNarrative, Thought Machine customers can benefit from the latest in RegTech innovation, reduced development time and increased speed to market.

Both TruNarrative and Thought Machine are recognised as leading innovators within the banking and technology sectors. Both organisations focus on technology and ease of configuration, delivering transformational projects to their customers.

“There is a strong cultural and thought leadership alignment between our two companies having already delivered a successful project for a leading UK challenger bank. In leveraging a best in class compliance solution, alongside a modern cloud native core banking platform will enable a frictionless and compliant journey for end customers. We’re committed to delivering a high-quality service to our customers in the banking sector and ultimately, their end users. The partnership demonstrates our commitment to work with the latest banking technology in the UK and USA,” said Edward Vaughan, Head of Banking, TruNarrative.

Integrating the TruNarrative technology into the Thought Machine’s cloud-based platform means that customers have access to ID verification software, account and transaction monitoring, so that accounts stay secure and firms maintain compliance. Through this strategic partnership, banks will have the ability to innovate their scope of products and offerings for their customers.

“TruNarrative’s deployment in Atom’s stack provides a great use case of how Vault enables banks to seamlessly integrate with and take full advantage of the functionalities offered by leading solution-providers in the financial technology ecosystem,” said Steve Hoy, Director of Partnerships, Thought Machine.

Surecomp, the market leader in global trade finance and treasury solutions for banks and corporations, today announced the launch of its new front-office solution Fastrade™, designed specifically for small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Fastrade™ allows banks to extend trade finance capabilities to their SME corporate clients, while SMEs can now also gain direct access to and benefit from fully digitized trade finance services. The solution - which is available either on the public cloud or on customer premise - enables trade finance providers to enhance customer service and satisfaction by offering their SME clients an easy-to-deploy, intuitive and scalable multi-bank channel for their trade finance process automation.

Trade finance providers of all type and size can use the Fastrade solution, which is now embedded with state-of-the-art API connectivity and packaged as an out-of-the-box SaaS offering, to optimize customer engagement and drive growth. Transforming what is sometimes perceived as a complex process into a simplified, easy-to-follow user experience, it supports all commonly used trade finance services, with preconfigured workflows to minimize setup time. Fastrade™ mitigates the risk of human error and takes trade finance to a new level of digital banking.

By providing their SME customers with enhanced process efficiency of the trade finance lifecycle, banks are not only expanding their portfolio to new market segments, but they dramatically improve their customer experience, while reducing costs, risk and time-to-market for completing trade transactions.

“With Fastrade™, we are applying specifically to the SME market, the knowledge and expertise we have gathered over the years in enabling tens of thousands of corporates who already use Surecomp to process trade finance activities directly with their banks,” explains Gadi Komet, Surecomp’s EVP of Global Delivery & Operations. “We have responded to demand from our customers to help them better address the SME market by offering the user-friendly, fast-to-deploy Fastrade™ solution, which is exactly what they were looking for.”

FITTS today announced it was named the Rookie of the Year winner by Ingram Micro Cloud. The award was presented to FITTS during Ingram Micro’s Cloud Summit: The Digital Sessions, held virtually this year.

These annual awards spotlight Ingram Micro Cloud reselling partners worldwide who deliver platform solutions that drive digital transformation - all while demonstrating an outstanding level of innovation, sales success, performance and best-in-class utilization of Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace.

This award recognizes a new partner who has expanded their partnership with Ingram Micro Cloud, achieved outstanding growth in customer base and revenue, and emerged as a breakthrough success in 2019.

FITTS Managing Director James Haworth said: “We are immensely proud to have been recognized worldwide by Ingram Micro Cloud for having achieved outstanding growth in customer base and revenue in 2019. We have made huge strides in building our partnerships globally and leveraging support from Ingram Micro Cloud. I must credit our continued success to our extremely talented FITTS Family who have shown dedication, passion and commitment to do the right thing for our customers and building the great cloud services we offer to the market together with the Ingram Micro Cloud team.”

Cloud Summit: The Digital Sessions is the first-ever virtual event, welcoming VARs, MSPs and ISVs to interact with and learn from each other in 40+ virtual sessions as well as engage online with today’s emerging and established cloud providers and vendors.

CaixaBank is transforming imagin, Spain’s leading mobile-only bank for young people, into a digital platform dedicated to the creation of digital services, both of a financial and non-financial nature, for the younger user. Its goal is to promote the growth and loyalty of the youngest customers, who are especially interested in using new technologies in their day-to-day lives and their future projects.

The financial institution, headed by chairman Jordi Gual and chief executive officer Gonzalo Gortázar, has today launched the new era of imagin. Reflected by an inventive new corporate image, a new customer relationship model, and an offering of three new mobile applications, imagin’s new multi-service proposal is composed of: imaginKids (intended for children from 0 to 11 years of age and highly focused on financial education through gaming), imaginTeens (designed for adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age, with content and services intended for young people who are beginning to require solutions for their first purchases and to start learning how to manage their personal finances) and imagin (with a comprehensive financial and non-financial offering for users from 18 years of age).

A userbase of 2.6 million

imagin's business will be conducted through imaginTech, a new digital business subsidiary wholly owned by CaixaBank that is led by its chairman Juan Antonio Alcaraz, CaixaBank's chief business officer, and chief executive officer Benjamí Puigdevall.

imagin launches with 2.6 million customers, including users of the mobile-only imaginBank, as well as customers of CaixaBank's children and young people segment. The prospects of expanding this customer base in the short term are high, thanks to the wider service offer and the creation of various customer loyalty channels, which, unlike traditional banks, do not necessarily involve registering as a financial customer.

From mobile-only bank to lifestyle community

In the presentation, Puigdevall set out the core aspects of the new model: “imagin is taking a step forward in its evolution towards something well beyond a financial app. We went from being the young sector's leading bank, to becoming a lifestyle-oriented user community. In doing so, our relationship with customers does not start with the registration of a bank account, as is the case with most banking institutions, but instead when the user decides to download the application and sign up to the platform using their email address. Customers will no longer come to imagin just in search of financial products, but instead through an interest in worthwhile content and unique experiences”.

According to Benjamí Puigdevall, this sudden switch involves strengthening the commitment to innovation that has distinguished imagin from the outset: “imagin appeared for the first time in 2016 as Spain's first mobile-only bank and the market instantly acknowledged it as an truly innovative project. During this time, imagin has been the first bank to introduce advanced services such as the customer service chatbot, at a time in which there were practically no chatbots in the financial sector, as well as the application of artificial intelligence to help customers finance their purchases. Now we believe that the time has come to go beyond and take innovation to the very heart of the business model”.

From a user viewpoint, imagin's transformation is especially noticeable in three aspects: the product offering, which includes financial and non-financial services and which may vary according to the customer’s loyalty model; the relationship model, given that they will only need to download the application and sign-up using their email address to get on board; and the range of mobile applications available, which has been extended to accompany customers from their childhood with three completely new apps (imaginKids, imaginTeens and imagin).

imaginKids: financial education and entertainment for the littlest ones

All imagin's applications are designed for users who are children and young people, which fundamentally determines the user experience and the range of financial and non-financial services and content. Therefore, the imaginKids app – intended for the youngest age group – is designed to enable parents to decide when and how it is used, and all its content comes free of charge, even if the family are not CaixaBank customers.

The main focus of imaginKids is financial education. The app uses gamification techniques, intended to foster money saving skills and the core concepts of financial education. For instance, imaginKids has a digital challenge service, through which parents can set tasks for their children to complete, and they can link rewards within the app (e.g. unlocking episodes of their favourite series, new stickers, etc.)

The app also offers entertainment resources ranging from drawing templates to minigames, as well as digital avatars that can be customised by choosing a character, clothing, movements, and colours. Similarly, imagin has entered into agreements with partners such as Super 3, Boing, Hiru3 or La Banda, who will collaborate through adding content and offering events and experiences to imaginKids users.

imaginTeens: young people's first purchasing experiences

imaginTeens, the application for adolescents, is also intended to be directly used by young people, with resources, games, and content adapted to suit the 12 to 17 age group. It notably features memes to share with parents and friends, craft ideas, puzzles and quizzes, as well as digital news and resources related to music and gaming, and experience offers in partnership with brands of the likes of Rakuten, Meller and Regalo Original. Most of this content is available by simply signing up as a user, with no need for further customer loyalty.

With regards to financial services, the basic service has a free tool for managing family allowances. Parents can regularly or occasionally make a transfer to their children's virtual piggy bank in the application. The child can also start savings challenges to share with their relatives, or directly request money for a specific purpose.

They can also enjoy the imaginTeens financial offering, comprising a parental-control-activated prepaid card to enable parents to have full knowledge and control over the transactions carried out by their child. As a result of its characteristics, the minor cannot make purchases for an amount above the balance of the prepaid card under any circumstances. However, even so, parents have the option of establishing weekly or monthly spending limits.

For young people who hold an imagin current account contracted by their parents, there is an option to connect to the imaginTeens application exclusively to enable the teenager to view their balance, without making transactions.

imagin: accompanying young people's lifestyle and projects

From its origins as a purely banking app intended for people over 18 years old, imagin has become a platform that includes financial and non-financial services, such as digital content and experiences.

Part of this offer is available for any user signed up to the platform, regardless of their degree of connection to the bank. There are, specifically, three user profiles, according to the level of loyalty to imagin:

• The imaginers are those users who download the imagin mobile app and sign up to the platform using their email address. They can access the “Enjoy” section, with a selection of the most featured digital content and experiences offered by the app, as well as the exclusive imagin&Split service to share expenses with friends.
• The imaginers reload are those users who – in addition to all the basic advantages– want a card with exclusive advantages for travelling abroad (including, for instance, free withdrawals at European ATMs and no-fee currency exchange). It is the imagin Reload prepaid card, which can be contracted without having a bank account.
• The imaginers infinity are users with an imagin bank account. Besides having an account and card with no fees, they have full access to all the digital content and experiences in the imagin world, as well as to the full financial services offering.

As soon as they enter imagin, the dashboard visible to all users – no matter their level of connection – will display the new features in the “Enjoy” section, which covers the non-financial services (digital content and experiences).

The imagin digital content is organised around four core fields: music (imaginMusic), video games (imaginGames), trends (imaginCafé) and technology (imaginShop):

• imaginMusic features fully-digital content (video podcasts, live streams, video interviews, online meet&greet, news, playlists...) as well as in-person experiences, such as concerts, showcases and the chance to meet artists.
• imaginGames offers agreements with benchmark organisations and companies in the gaming sector, giving imagin customers special advantages. It notably features the partnership with Mad Lions, the PVL winning team in League of Legends, one of Spain's major leagues. imagin customers who are keen gamers can get a prepaid card featuring this team's badge and access prize draws to play with Mad Lions members, coaching sessions and discounts on purchases, among other advantages. imagin has also reached agreements with video game developers, such as IGG, to offer special conditions on downloading new games.
• imaginCafé is the physical and virtual space promoted by imagin to provide backing for the creation and development of new trends. In doing so, imaginCafé also joins the new era with an image overhaul at its physical headquarters, located in Barcelona, and a fully remodelled online presence. Thus, the content generated at imaginCafé (concerts, workshops, conferences, etc.) will be integrated into the app and available to imaginers.
• imaginShop allows users to purchase cutting-edge technology, such as new smartphone models, at highly competitive prices, and features financing options and free delivery. The devices on offer will be updated weekly and it will also offer the possibility of purchasing refurbished products.

The experiences offered to imagin customers are based on a strategy of agreements with leading companies in the digital environment to provide special advantages, in areas such as travel, featuring agreements with Booking, eDreams and Hoteles.com, and urban mobility, with eCooltra, Rentalcars, Reby and Bip&Drive.

Lastly, the imagin application develops financial products offered to meet the saving and financing needs of young people reaching adulthood and those beginning to receive their first income and carry out their own lifestyle projects.

In all cases, imagin upholds the key features that have made it the banking leader for the millennial public: mobile-only banking (services provided exclusively through the app, with no branches and no website, which solely fulfils an informative purpose), with no fees for the user and its own simple and clear language, especially suited to directly communicating with young people.

The current product offering, which ranges from a free account and card, to insurance and loans, is strengthened with new features, chiefly linked to payment methods and investment:

• imagin&Split, a digital tool to create friend groups and split expenses. Unlike other available choices on the market, it includes the possibility of settling payments from the app itself. Users can organise the payment of various items for a specific project (e.g. a trip, a present or a holiday), covering variables such the fact that not all the group's members participate in all expenses. P2P and mobile payment tools are available to imaginers to send money.
• imagin also features a digital wallet that can hold all kinds of cards, so users can keep their financial cards and loyalty cards in a single section.
• The first digital advisory service for investments especially designed for young people is available to imaginers. It is a robo-advisor service enabling anyone to obtain customised investment recommendations, starting from €500.

A new logo for a new era

The new era of imagin is showcased to the market with a new corporate image. Green becomes the brand's core colour and the main logo is transformed into an infinity symbol, representing movement, dynamism and vitality, as well as life and energy flow.

Similarly, infinity is also related to the endless possibilities created through blending imagination with technological innovation. For the brand's application, the imagin team has designed an exclusive typeface, visually linked to the concept of infinity and the idea of “flowing”.

Open innovation model

imagin has a team formed of around 50 professionals from different specialisations. It follows a start-up-like work philosophy, based on service design, a type of organisation whose main goal is to create and develop the best services and the best user experience possible.

The company has also applied agile and design thinking methodologies to identify the user profile as best as possible and adapt the product to their needs. Co-creation sessions have been held with more than 200 actual users.

With regards to innovation strategy, imagin has created a new technology architecture which can incorporate – together with its own offering – third-party technologies and products, opening up a means of partnering with other fintech companies and start-ups. In doing so, it is worth highlighting imagin's partnership with Plug and Play, the world's main innovation platform and most active venture capital firm, to identify disruptive fintech proposals from entrepreneurs all over the world.