Nordea is scouting for a new cohort of startups to joins the second round of its financial accelerator programme in Stockholm.
Open to fintech startups worldwide, the three-month programme will be looking for up to 30 companies to follow in the footsteps of an inaugural intake of 12 firms who graduated from the accelerator during winter 2015-2016.
Jan Sirich, head of experimentation and learning, Nordea digital banking, says of the first scheme: "The startups received over EUR600,000 in new funding and for two of the startups, Nordea is preparing actual pilots where the opportunities for long-term partnerships will be further evaluated. Nordea is also working with a couple of the other startups for possible cooperation."
The bank has once again teamed up with Nestholma Venture Accelerator for the next round, which will invite 50 of the most promising applicants to a training and selection week which will take place in Oslo during August.
"One of Nordea’s challenges for the startups is to come up with good ideas within emerging technologies like cognitive computing, artificial intelligence in banking and financial usage of blockchain technology," says Sitich. "But Nordea is interested in several other areas, which opens good opportunities to attract many different startups to the programme and provides synergy and diversity."