Accenture has teamed up with some of the world's biggest banks to bring its Fintech Innovation Lab to Asia Pacific.
Already well-established in New York and London, the Fintech Innovation Lab offers startups the chance to participate in a 12 week programme designed to help them accelerate their product development and gain exposure to industry bigwigs.
Asia Pacific-based firms working in areas such as big data and analytics, mobile and wireless, payments, risk management, security, and social media, can apply during July to take part in the Hong Kong programme.
The applicants will then be whittled down by a panel of bank executives to seven participants. These will make their way to Hong Kong in September for 12 weeks of mentoring by banking executives who will help them fine-tune and develop their technologies and business strategies through a series of workshops, panel discussions, user-group sessions, networking opportunities, one-on-one meetings and presentations.
The programme culminates in December with an investor day presentation by participants in front of an audience of financial industry executives and potential investors.
Sushil Saluja, senior MD, Asia Pacific financial services practice, Accenture, says: "Hong Kong's role as a regional hub for the banking industry and the gateway for China investment made it an ideal location to launch our new Asia-Pacific Lab. By fostering the development of the next generation of financial technology companies, the Lab will further strengthen Hong Kong's status as one of the world's leading financial capitals."
The banks backing the event are Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of China (Hong Kong), Barclays, China Construction Bank (Asia), DBS, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Ping An and UBS.
Since launching in 2010, the New York Lab has seen its 18 alumni companies raise more than $76 million in venture financing; one participant was acquired for $175 million. The London arm - launched in 2012 - has seen participants raise $10 million.
Separately, FinCapDev, a US mobile app development competition for startups building financial inclusion tools, has named its 10 finalists. These firms will now go through to a demo day in October where they will face the judges in a bid to win a share of $100,000 prize fund.