Three new global FinTech partnerships between Engine – the Investment Association’s FinTech hub and accelerator – and Australia, Kenya and Luxembourg will be announced at the annual Emergent Tech (EmTech) Global conference today (Monday 28 March). The five latest firms to join Engine’s Innovator Programme will also be confirmed at the event.

EmTech Global is being held at the Guildhall in London in partnership with the City of London Corporation and the Department for International Trade, with the Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, Chris Philp MP, giving the keynote speech.

Engine has signed Memorandums of Understanding with Australia, Kenya and Luxembourg to strengthen its global FinTech network. The partnerships with these new jurisdictions will cover three key areas:

1. Supporting the professional interaction of investment management businesses between the UK and these three countries.
2. Helping to facilitate the expansion of FinTech firms based in the UK and these countries to each other’s markets.
3. Helping to develop relationships between FinTech firms and relevant financial institutions in the UK and the three new jurisdictions with a view to exploring mutually beneficial opportunities.

These latest agreements build on the existing global FinTech network which includes Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Hong Kong, Qatar, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

Chris Cummings, the Chief Executive of the Investment Association, said:

“FinTech and investment management are both industries that are international in outlook and grow by seizing opportunities in new markets. That is why we are delighted to be extending our global FinTech partnership network to include fast-growing centres as well as long established ones with Australia, Kenya and Luxembourg now joining us.

“To help the brightest FinTech stars grow faster we launched our Engine Innovator programme and are today welcoming our fifth cohort of FinTech firms onboard. This fantastic collaboration helps our industry and FinTechs to explore tech solutions that will help firms secure a competitive advantage and continue to thrive by serving their clients in the UK and around the world.”

Vincent Keaveny, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, said:

“The UK hosts the largest FinTech community in Europe with London being the largest regional FinTech hub. It’s important that industries such as investment management continue to innovate through the use of technology and support FinTech firms being established here. The Emerging Tech Global Conference is an excellent forum for investment managers and the FinTech community to come together and discover new ways to collaborate.”

In addition to the partnerships, five new FinTech firms have been selected to join the Engine Innovator programme. The Engine Advisory Panel chose companies who they deemed best in class to drive innovative solutions to tackle key challenges in the investment management sector:

1. Intelliteq T/A “Gretel” centralises, simplifies and digitises customer reconnection across the entire financial services industry, helping individuals stay connected to their money.
2. Kore Labs enhances governance, efficiency and best customer outcomes. Kore deliver digital regulatory oversight and provide a SAAS solution for end-to-end financial product management and product lifecycle governance.
3. NayaOne connects financial services firms and FinTechs to enable the creation of new products and services at pace.
4. Saphyre provides a cloud-hosted client reference database, covering client data and related workflows. Investment managers, custodians, brokers and others use this to keep synchronised and in doing so reduce post-trade queries.
5. SESAMm analyse billions of web articles and build indicators such as sentiment, emotions and ESG risk factors on more than 5 million public and private companies, enabling clients to build custom investment signals and to leverage their pre-processed quantitative data feeds.

The chosen firms will be part of the programme for nine months during which they will participate in a range of UK and international events, regularly engage with the Engine Advisory Panel for support and mentoring, as well as meet with relevant IA Committees to gather ideas on how their technology can transform industry processes and unlock opportunities.

Since the launch of the IA’s FinTech accelerator and innovation hub in 2018, Engine has successfully worked with four cohorts of innovators, with over150 FinTech firms benefiting from the Engine ecosystem.

An ‘Innovation in Investment Management’ report was also published today, in partnership with Expand Research (a Boston Consulting Group company), which provides valuable insights into the UK FinTech landscape in investment management and looks at how the industry can unlock opportunities by using technology to transform their businesses.

For further information, please contact:

Katie Martin, Head of Communications: [email protected]

T: +44 (0)20 7269 4655

Navdeep Sidhu, Corporate Affairs Manager: [email protected]

About the Investment Association (IA):

• The IA champions UK investment management, supporting British savers, investors and businesses. Our 270 members manage £9.4 trillion of assets and the investment management industry supports 114,000 jobs across the UK.
• Our mission is to make investment better. Better for clients, so they achieve their financial goals. Better for companies, so they get the capital they need to grow. And better for the economy, so everyone prospers.
• Our purpose is to ensure investment managers are in the best possible position to:
  • Build people’s resilience to financial adversity
  • Help people achieve their financial aspirations
  • Enable people to maintain a decent standard of living as they grow older
  • Contribute to economic growth through the efficient allocation of capital.
• The money our members manage is in a wide variety of investment vehicles including authorised investment funds, pension funds and stocks and shares ISAs.
• The UK is the second largest investment management centre in the world, after the US and manages over a third (37%) of all assets managed in Europe.