As of April 9th, 2018, application is officially open for Accenture’s Hong Kong-based acceleration program. This year’s FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific will take place against the backdrop of surging fintech investments in Hong Kong.
Marking its five-year anniversary, the FinTech Innovation Lab Asia-Pacific is a 12-week program designed to help fintech companies in different stages with product and business development. The Lab seeks companies that offer technology or solutions for the financial sector, especially in areas such as big data, analytics and cognitive computing, insurance solutions, security and identity management, risk management and compliance, digital marketing and social media, cloud, payments, blockchain technology and talent management applications.
Application is open until May 11th and the program’s official kick-off is scheduled for July 30th . Up to 10 applicants will be selected to join the Lab by executives from financial institutions that participate in this acceleration program.
Participating financial institutions for 2018’s Lab are: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Macquarie Group, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Société Générale, Standard Chartered, Sun Life Financial and UBS. Additional support is provided by BlackRock, China CITIC Bank International, China Construction Bank (Asia), Citi Hong Kong, Generali, Maybank, Siam Commercial Bank, ZhongAn International and Zurich Insurance.
Piyush Singh, a managing director at Accenture and the company’s financial services lead for Asia-Pacific and Africa, stated that “Financial institutions have come a long way in recent years, discovering the value that fintechs can bring to the table and how startups can help more traditional firms innovate. They also understand they need to change their internal culture and adapt their workforce to meet these new requirements and technologies in the digital era”.
