The call for participation for ideas is now open through the “Fintech Hacks” initiative which aims to identify pain points in the delivery and consumption of financial services, and solicit ideas using the application of technology to address the gaps.

The Fintech Hacks call for participation is part of the Bank Negara Malaysia’s effort to involve the public in contributing their ideas and experience to spur and inspire the development of fintech solutions that have the potential to revolutionalise the way financial services are delivered to consumers in Malaysia.

"At Edward Jones, we view technology as a way to enhance the relationship with our clients by making their experience outside our branch offices just as emotive and productive as it is when they visit a financial advisor for a face-to-face meeting in a branch," said Ferrari. "Our relationship with SixThirty gives us an opportunity to look outside the firm for the best ideas in financial technology to help us achieve our goals."

SixThirty invests in eight to 10 FinTech start-ups each year from a globally diverse pool of more than 325 companies that seek investment. As part of the investment, the start-ups participate in the business development program focusing on mentorship and networking opportunities with some of the leading financial services institutions in the region and across the country.

As part of the partnership with SixThirty, Frank LaQuinta, a general partner with Edward Jones, has joined the organization's Investment Committee which evaluates the investment pipeline and selects FinTech startups that SixThirty invests in. 

Atul Kamra, SixThirty's managing partner, noted St. Louis has established itself as one of the fastest growing startup cities in the US, thanks in part to corporate partners who recognize the potential to attract entrepreneurs to the city. When that happens, he said, the local talent pool is strengthened, jobs are created, innovation blossoms and economic growth accelerates.

"SixThirty is building on what makes us (our region) unique: the breadth and depth of our financial services, and a culture that notices and nurtures founders," Kamra added. "Edward Jones is a leader in financial services and synonymous with nurturing talent, consistently being recognized as among the best places to work in the US. We look forward to working with them to attract and grow the most promising FinTech ideas and, in turn, sustain our competitiveness in an industry in which we have inherent strength."

The test success, undertaken in partnership with the leading European bank Intesa Sanpaolo, makes Dovetail the first vendor able to offer a fully tested solution ready to support future users of the new EBA Clearing system in sending and receiving payment transactions complying with the SEPA Credit Transfer Instant (SCT Inst) Scheme of the European Payments Council. The EPC Scheme and the EBA Clearing infrastructure platform will go live on the same date in November 2017.

Martin Coen, CEO of Dovetail, commenting on the news said, "All Dovetail solutions are based on the Dovetail Transaction Architecture, built to support real-time payments. We continue to expand our support for real-time schemes worldwide as markets and our customers require. Our range of solutions can be deployed alongside existing payment systems, as a Smart Gateway Solution, or provide complete payment processing as a Payment Solution - supporting one or more schemes globally. Being the first in adding SCT Inst to the growing list of real-time payment schemes we support, demonstrates Dovetail's readiness to provide banks across Europe with leading edge best-in-class solutions that deliver a critical market advantage -- now and into the future."

Nava will initially recruit five IT developers from a range of levels to help support the growth of its platform. The company secured authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority earlier this year and will begin offering unsecured personal loans to UK borrowers in Q2 2017.

Chief Technology Officer, Andrew Jones, has more than thirty years’ experience in global financial IT services. Andrew will lead the team of developers in the ongoing development and testing of Nava’s platform. The new team employs high-demand skills including Java SE / EE 7, JBoss WildFly Application Server and Java Server Faces 2.2. 

Nava is built on deep credit analytics, which enables it to offer loans to a broader range of borrowers than many banks and building societies are capable and at more competitive prices. Nava was co-founded by Joseph Dlutowski, Abhai Rajguru and Richard Lee, who between them have over 75 years’ experience in financial services, particularly in consumer credit and early stage high-growth businesses.

Commenting on Nava’s expansion, Andrew Jones says that as an innovative, forward-thinking financial services business we want to attract the very best IT and fintech talent the UK has to offer. Building a presence in Milton Keynes will certainly help us to do that. From our research of the area we see a prevalence of skills including PrimeFaces JSF, HTML5 and Web-Services (Soap/Rest) which match the profile of people we shall be recruiting. 

The town has a highly skilled workforce and great transport links, which over recent years has helped Milton Keynes to establish itself as a leading technology hub. We already have a huge amount of expertise in the team and want to build on that with the next wave of appointments in our new technology development office.” 

Andrew continued: “This is a good opportunity for someone to join a growing sector in financial services, a recent report by think tank Cebr and Nava - The Perfect Borrower? - shows demand for personal loans is continuing to grow strongly.

P2 is backed by Lonsdale Capital Partners (“Lonsdale”), a private equity firm that focuses on the smaller end of the UK mid-market, following a management buyout in December 2016; and this acquisition forms part of their active buy and build growth strategy for the firm. 

Increasing national and international regulation change is placing a challenging compliance burden on financial institutions and their day to day operational activity. For example, in May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) will come into effect, placing greater responsibility on financial institutions to proactively put in place governance measures and report breaches to the relevant supervisory authority. Failure to do so will lead to fines of up to 4% of turnover. Furthermore, by 14 July 2017, UK financial institutions are required to respond to the Bank of England on their plans for Brexit. FS101 helps its clients to strategically and operationally respond to these changes, and the acquisition will enhance P2’s capabilities in this space.

Led by founder Phil Rolfe, FS101 is a specialist consultancy advising blue chip financial service businesses in the UK on how to shape their financial crime and regulatory strategies at time when anti-money laundering, financial crime and regulatory change is becoming increasingly important and they face stringent compliance requirements. 

Since the management buyout in December 2016, P2 has maintained its impressive growth trajectory, which is underpinned by favourable market drivers that include increasing levels of regulatory and government change, digital and technological disruption and M&A activity. P2 has grown its annual turnover through organic growth, with FS101 representing the first step of an active acquisition strategy. 

P2’s CEO Doug Elliott commented: “We have known and worked with the team at FS101 for a number of years and their depth and breadth of knowledge in the financial crime and regulatory sector is unparalleled. We look forward to Phil Rolfe and his team joining P2. Over the past few years anti-money laundering, financial crime and regulatory change has become increasingly important to our clients and following this acquisition, we will be a position to provide them with an even stronger service proposition.”

“This acquisition is also part of the plan to turbo charge our business and comes just three months after our management buyout. With the support of our growth partner Lonsdale and the added expertise and drive of the FS101 team, we are well equipped to fulfil our growth ambitions.”

Phil Rolfe, Director of FS101, commented: “The FS101 team has for a number of years provided a range of specialist Technology, Compliance and Operational support services focussed on AML, Sanctions and broader Financial Crime. We will continue to deliver these as part of the P2 family, where we now have the support and backing of a highly experienced team capable of delivering large scale complex transformations.” 

James Knott, Director at Lonsdale Capital Partners, commented: "FS101’s proposition is very complementary to P2. P2 already has a number of financial services clients and having Phil on board will only further strengthen our proposition in this area. We are keen to make further acquisitions going forwards in this fragmented space, cementing P2 as the go to provider for Programme and Project Management solutions.”

● Hufsy is a banking platform tailored to startups. It is a one point entry and therefore an easy and timesaving way for small businesses to handle finances.  
● Hufsy utilises artificial intelligence to give users the best financial overview. ● 45% of startups think financial institutions lack flexibility. 
● 30% of German startups are located in Berlin and the region have 177,000 small businesses which is why Hufsy focuses on Berlin as their first market. 
● Hufsy is founded by software engineer, Rafal Lipinski, and entrepreneur, Maria Flyvbjerg Bo. 
● Former CTO of Fidor Bank, Frank Schwab, is the chairman of Hufsy.  

CEO and founder at Vehiculum, Lukas Steinhilber “A dashboard that gives me an overview of how our business is doing, is definitely a feature that is valuable to have when running our startup. That instant overview of my business’ financial health will save me a lot of time.”  

CXO at Hufsy, Maria Flyvbjerg Bo “Hufsy is a banking platform and financial tool for startups, developed by a startup. We know the pain of handling finances, doing accounting and reporting tax, which is why we believe we can do it better than the traditional banks.”  

CCO & Co-Founder at solarisBank Marko Wenthin “Especially in the beginning, startups are well-advised to focus mostly on their product. To work with a banking partner, who takes care of all regulatory and industry specific tasks while having the same startup mindset, is a huge advantage for young companies. We are glad to empower innovative solutions like Hufsy as their fully licensed banking partner.” 
Fintech expert and Hufsy Chairman Frank Schwab “A couple of years ago most fintechs focused on consumer banking. This trend has changed and we now see more services targeting businesses. The SME segment has been neglected but this is changing.”

US banks will now be able to benefit from Icon’s Instant Payments Framework’s (IPF) templated processing flows, and its pre-configured gateway to access TCH’s real-time payment scheme. 

Built on open source technologies, IPF is an agile software product that will expedite US financial institutions’ participation in real-time payments. Leading industry analysts predict that it will provide the lowest TCO option on the market.

IPF also provides the speed of delivery execution US customers demand today to rapidly incorporate with Fintech partners. Through its highly scalable, reusable Open API processing layer that supports digital services, it is designed to futureproof for the demands of tomorrow. 

IPF already supports the processing of real-time payments in Europe and was specifically designed to meet the needs of financial institutions who find the cost and complexity of payment hub adoption, or enhancement, excessive to the RTP business case. 

Tom Hay, Head of Payments at Icon Solutions said 
“We foresee a high demand for IPF in the US. Connectivity with TCH will revolutionize the way that financial institutions think about the value proposition for real-time payments. With IPF, there is no longer a need to build, buy or enhance a core payment hub and engine. In our experience, many institutions get left behind because they cannot justify delivering a fully-fledged Faster Payments solution based on the business case and client's willingness to pay for RTP services. 

We built IPF to address the underserved community who need to provide RTP services, justify their business case and ensure low TCO post deployment. We are therefore delighted to support TCH's vision of providing RTP solutions designed to achieve ubiquity.”

Steve Ledford, Senior Vice President, Product and Strategy at The Clearing House said
“We are excited that Icon Solutions is developing a real-time payments solution that will facilitate connectivity to our RTP system. The IPF initiative’s goal is to provide US banks of all sizes with a means to access real-time payments, which will ultimately help us reach our goal of ubiquity.” 

The call for applications is focused on sourcing scalable technology solutions applicable to diversified financial services and related industries. The aim is to grow disruptive startups and connect them with dynamic corporates, providing both with an opportunity to collaborate and build the African tech ecosystem. 

The launch of this first Startupbootcamp Cape Town programme in Africa comes post a trend analysis that found 161 applications to the global programme to have originated from African teams in 2016. Additionally, there were 5 South Africa FastTracks in 2015 and 3 in 2016. To date, Startupbootcamp has invested in 8 teams from Africa in total, 3 of which are in the current InsurTech cohort.

With this new and unique program, Startupbootcamp brings together top startups from around the world, a mentor network of renowned industry experts and entrepreneurs and major players in banking, insurance, consultancy, leasing and technology as founding partners. From a pool of hundreds of applications, Startupbootcamp Cape Town will select the 10 most promising teams, and will provide each team with EUR 15,000 100+ highly engaged mentors from the FinTech, InsurTech and RegTech industries, free office space, a convertible note, access to funding and a network of industry partners, investors and venture capital firms. The 3-month programme will kick off in September 2017.

Philip Kiracofe, co-MD of Startupbootcamp Cape Town highlighted: “The African tech and digital landscape is growing exponentially, and we firmly believe that the future of innovation will come from Africa. Cape Town is one of the most vibrant and creative hubs on the continent and we are both excited and humbled to contribute by attracting global expertise here. “

The accelerator is anchored by strong corporate sponsors that will support and grow the programme and selected startups. Global sponsors include Google cloud, Amazon web services, Intel, and Cisco. 

Natacha Baumann, the Head of Innovation and Transformation at BNP Paribas Personal Finance for South Africa, the UK, the Nordics, Belgium and Germany said, “We are engaging in various open innovation initiatives around the world which is part of our transformation strategy. Like RCS, BNP Paribas Personal Finance is looking for innovative technologies to enhance the customer experience and to improve systems and processes. We are very enthusiastic to start the partnership with Startup Bootcamp in Cape Town what answers both our willingness to boost the cooperation with start-ups and will help in leveraging the potential of the African continent”.

Paul Mitchell, Fintech Lead for PwC South Africa said "We are very excited to be part of Startup Bootcamp's first foray into Africa. Our clients recognise the disruption potential of fintechs and other startups, and we are helping many of them to harness the opportunities arising from this. Startup Bootcamp provides a great way for the industry incumbents to connect to startups, and to learn about their impact."

To kick off, startups from all over the world are invited to present their ideas to the Startupbootcamp team at a series of ‘FastTrack’ days between May and July 2017. These FastTracks are being held globally in cities including Accra, Amsterdam, Cairo, Cape Town,Doha, Dubai, Johannesburg, Kampala, Lagos, London, Nairobi, Paris, and Tel Aviv. 

Alan Winde, Minister of Economic Opportunities, welcomed the accelerator to Cape Town: “Startupbootcamp’s decision to launch their African programme in Cape Town speaks to the business confidence they have in the Western Cape. The region has emerged as a centre for venture capital activity in South Africa. The majority of the country’s start-ups are based here and 75% of venture capital deals were concluded in this province. The onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is dismantling the barriers to entry in most industries, generating an increase in the number of people who can meaningfully participate in the economy. This is why we have prioritised the support of entrepreneurs in the Western Cape, and expanding access to affordable public internet. Startupbootcamp will play an important role in growing innovative entrepreneurs.”