Zurich/Basel, 31 October 2019 – UBS successfully held the Future of Finance Challenge for a third time, awarding winners in Zurich, Singapore and New York. The open competition for financial technology (fintech) start-ups and tech entrepreneurs from around the world showed a range of innovative technological ideas and solutions that address specific challenges to support the transformation of banks for the future of finance.
Fintech start-ups Nivaura, Solidatus, Diveplane and Genivity were each selected as winners of the UBS Future of Finance Challenge in the categories of Digital Transaction Rails and Tokenized Assets, Smart Risk Management as well as Deepening Client Relationships and Technology Enablement, respectively. The events, held in Zurich, Singapore and New York, invited ten start-ups at each location pitching their solutions to a panel of UBS and external experts.
"Working with fintechs is an absolute priority for us. The quality of pitches we've seen from everyone was outstanding," said Mike Dargan, UBS Group Chief Information Officer. "Collaborating with these companies brings us the right combination of deep product knowledge and fresh thinking while combining it with UBS's vast experience, resources and global reach. This is what corporate innovation should look like."
The UBS Future of Finance Challenge allowed participants to present their ideas and solutions in a global competition with cash prizes and opportunities to accelerate worth over USD $200,000, including over 150 hours of dedicated coaching from UBS experts, mentors and partners.
It is UBS’s aspiration to support the competition's winners to further commercialise and scale their ideas and technologies using its significant global presence, deep expertise in global banking and eco-system of innovation partners.
"Innovation is about the art of the possible, not just what we can accomplish today," said Sabine Keller-Busse, UBS Group Chief Operating Officer. "If you think about all of the people who had a chance to participate, from the business, operations, and technology, any of the many exposures can spark an idea for their work. It's those sparks that we're triggering, and the UBS Future of Finance delivers that with enthusiasm."
The UBS Future of Finance Challenge was delivered in collaboration with Deloitte and the innovation agency 100% Open. This joint approach offered commercial and technical expertise to the innovators participating in the competition.
In Zurich, the top 3 startups for of Digital Transaction Rails and Tokenized Assets were:
1. Nivaura: Nivaura streamlines and automates the primary capital markets issuance process by offering an end-to-end automation platform for structuring, signing, registration / tokenization and execution.
2. Finteum: Finteum is creating a global financial market that enables banks to borrow and lend for minutes or hours at a time instead of overnight.
3. Proof of Impact: Proof of impact provides end-2-end impact investing using Blockchain technology, which measures the impact over time.
In Singapore, the top 3 startups for Smart Risk Management were:
1. Solidatus: Solidatus uses a novel technological approach to model and present regulatory obligations across a company, to enhance transparency and assist in the demonstration of implementation and compliance.
2. Sedicii: Sedicii's solution allows for secure data sharing within financial institutions and between FIs, using cutting edge encryption methods.
3. Tookitaki: Tookitaki is focused on AML transaction monitoring, using a combination of supervised and unsupervised machine learning to deliver real-time anomaly detection with actionable analytics and model explainability.
In New York, the top 3 startups for Technology Enablement were:
1. Diveplane: Diveplane Synthetic Data Generation builds data models without the usage of private information.
2. Noonum: Noonum is solving information overload by summarizing and contextualizing unstructured data through a continually evolving semantic knowledge graph using AI and NLP.
3. Yellow Dog: Yellow Dog is the only intelligent predictive scheduling and orchestration platform developed for multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud and on premise infrastructure.
In New York, the top 3 startups for Deepening Client Relationships were:
1. Genivity: Genivity is a dynamic client engagement tool that predicts family and lifestyle-based health risks to help advisors provide more comprehensive, targeted advice to clients, and better communication with next generation heirs.
2. Stratifyd, Inc: Stratifyd, Inc is an AI powered analytics platform that is built around the customer feedback loop to enable enterprise companies to transform structured and unstructured human textual data into immediate actionable insights.
3. Glassbox: Glassbox (formerly Clarisite) empowers organizations to manage and optimize the entire digital lifecycle of their web and mobile customers, leveraging unparalleled big data, behavioral analytics and record-replay capabilities.
The winners will meet with UBS experts, mentors and partners over the next months to further position themselves on the global market. The collaboration helps UBS to find new cutting-edge technologies and to be prepared for the digital transformation of banks in the future.
UBS Group AG
