The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) and Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) are pleased to declare the winners of the fourth annual FinTech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge. Following a five month highly competitive selection process, seven firms including Uqudo (United Arab Emirates), Market IQ (Canada), Taiger (Singapore), modefinance (Italy), FutureFlow (UK), Elucidate (Germany) and Finverity (United Kingdom) were selected from a total of 189 applications.
Their solutions demonstrate innovative ideas to address the pain points of the financial service sector and focus on initiatives to promote financing for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the digitalization of financial services and RegTech solutions.
The winning start-ups will be assigned to work with one of five Corporate Champions, including First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), Anglo Gulf Trade Bank (AGTB), Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) and the ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) to develop a possible solution to address a particular problem statement through a Proof of Concept (PoC) process. In addition, these chosen start-ups will showcase their winning solutions during the FinTech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge Demo Day on November 25, 2020.
The winning start-ups and Corporate Champions will be eligible to apply for grant funding to further develop and test their solutions in the ADGM Digital Lab under the supervisory guidance of CBUAE and the FSRA, with a view to accelerating the adoption and ensuring the regulatory compliance of their solutions, which will help to overcome pain points in the industry. Equipped with API connectivity, digital toolkits and synthetic data to create representations of a bank’s operating environment, the Digital Lab enables open collaboration by bringing financial institutions, FinTechs and regulators together in the experimentation and procurement of innovative solutions.
As part of FinTech AD’s suite of activities and outreach initiatives, the Innovation Challenge brings together FinTech talent from across the world to address real challenges put forward by Corporate Champions. This year’s Innovation Challenge calls for the development of proof of concept (PoC) solutions to promote financing for SMEs, which are an instrumental stakeholder in the UAE’s plans for economic transformation and diversification.
