NEW YORK, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The New York FinTech Innovation Lab (FIL) kicked off its annual Demo Day on Thursday at the Bank of America Tower to celebrate its seventh anniversary.
Founded by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City in 2010, the FIL aims to make New York City a leader in fintech and grow technology jobs by leveraging the concentration of large financial services institutions and deep domain expertise that exist in the city.
"The concentration of large financial services firms actively looking for new technology coupled with a deep bench of talent that has financial services expertise gives New York City a competitive advantage in fostering fintech growth," said Maria Gotsch, President and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York City.
The FIL has successfully tapped into both of these strengths to grow fintech locally-in terms of jobs, investment and number of companies, she added.
"We are continually impressed by the quality of the talent pool and the Lab's participating companies. As a result, this program helps Bank of America gain early insight into paradigm shifts that enable us to take proactive action now to serve Bank of America's customers of tomorrow," said David Reilly, Bank of America Global Banking & Markets CIO.
The FIL is open to early-and-growth-stage companies developing innovative technologies for the financial services sector, providing entrepreneurs unparalleled access to top-level financial services executives to refine their products and advance their business development strategies.
Alumni from across the globe have raised 530 million U.S. dollars in venture capital financing since participating in the FIL, and New York participants alone have raised more than 460 million U.S. dollars.
"The FIl has proven to be a significant program for engagement between entrepreneurial technology companies and New York's financial industry," said James D. Robinson III, General Partner and Co-founder of RRE Ventures.
On Thursday, eight startups made their debuts of the innovations that came out ahead from this year's applicants, including cyber security, artificial intelligence and fraud detection technologies.
"Over the past seven years, we've seen a seismic shift in the willingness of financial institutions to experiment with, and in many cases adopt, cutting edge technologies to support their digital transformation and a better customer experience," said Robert Gach, managing director of Accenture Strategy Capital Markets and co-founder of the FIL.
"In many ways, the innovations we've seen come through the Lab have predicted the technology trends that banks have gravitated towards over the years, such as cloud, blockchain, big data and analytics. We expect this year's innovations will experience a similar trajectory," said Gach.
