Ten financial technology companies have been selected for Accenture’s 12-week mentorship program in the fourth annual Fintech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific.

The startups participating in this year’s Lab have developed a range of innovations leveraging blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Their aspirations are to help financial institutions improve efficiencies, increase cyber-security, and provide more user-friendly customer services.

The Fintech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is modelled on a similar program that Accenture co-founded in 2010 with the Partnership Fund for New York City, the $150 million investment arm of the Partnership for New York City. 

Banks Backing

Launched by Accenture in Hong Kong in June 2014, the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is a collaboration between Accenture and leading financial institutions.

The principal financial institutions are: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Macquarie Group, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Societe Generale, Sun Life Financial.

In addition, supporting financial institutions and investment firms include: China CITIC Bank International, China Construction Bank, Manulife, Maybank, Point72 Asset Management, Siam Commercial Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG).

Real World Challenges

The selected startups will receive senior-level mentoring to help them commercialize their innovations and connect with potential customers at top institutions.

«The financial institutions in the Fintech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific select startups who are trying to address in a practical manner current real-world fintech challenges facing the industry,» said Piyush Singh, Accenture’s Senior Managing Director of Financial Services for Asia-Pacific.

The Top Ten

The 2017 FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific participants are:

Blocko – is a blockchain infrastructure provider in South Korea offering customers digital identity, digital signatures and smart contracts. 

CoverGo – is a tech platform that consolidates insurance policies from different providers in one place for customers and automatically analyses them to highlight gaps in coverage. 

FutureFlow – aims to help banks fight electronic financial crime. This U.S. based company looks at financial transactions and assigns them identities, which allow banks to share transaction information with each other without breaching client confidentiality and other data protection rules. 

KapitalWise – has built a cost-effective micro-investment platform for financial institutions. 

microUmbrella.com – is a Singapore-based micro-insurance buying and claiming platform that offers instant, low-cost, on-demand coverage. 

Red Pulse Technologies – is a Hong Kong and Shanghai-based market intelligence platform covering China’s economy and capital markets. 

Sherlock Garden – provides software with cognitive capabilities to help financial services companies automatically detect compliance, ethics, and confidentiality breaches. 

Starling Trust –  is a US-based applied behavioral sciences RegTech startup. Its augmented risk intelligence tools help manage culture- and conduct-related risks, and also identify areas for performance improvement within financial services firms.

Stash – is a Singapore based healthcare and insurtech startup that provides a single health claims platform for patients, health care providers, and insurance companies. 

Tymbals – is an Australia-based insurtech startup that has created a probability network to calculate enterprise risk.