Inclusive finance, blockchain, regtech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity… the 10 finalists of the 4th Fintech Awards, which took place on June 19, 2009, at the KPMG Luxembourg offices, came with solutions for almost every challenge the financial industry is facing today.
It must be said that this pitch competition organised by the Luxembourg house of financial technology (Lhoft) and KPMG Luxembourg, with the support of Luxinnovation, has succeeded in becoming in a few years a reference in this field.
This year, nearly 200 applications from 33 countries were received. An array of projects of very high quality from which the organisers could make a selection. If the quality of the solutions proposed by the 10 finalists was not enough, the representatives from each of the competing start-ups benefited from an intensive two-day coaching to present their best pitch in front of a large audience.
“The 10 Finalists were impressive – an incredibly strong field of competition and all with solutions that could provide a real positive impact to Luxembourg institutions,” commented Nazir Zubairi, CEO of Lhoft and also member of the jury.
A Fit 4 Start graduate awarded
The choice was difficult for the jury. It was finally the Luxembourg start-up Tokeny who won the 50,000 euro first prize. This fintech has developed a tokenization platform for the financial industry. In other words, it offers financial institutions an end-to-end compliant platform to issue, manage and transfer security tokens.
The second prize, which consists of free hosting at Technoport’s incubator for five months, went to OKO, an Israeli start-up that offers microinsurance policies to African farmers using mobile phones as the only transaction vehicle. The company was selected for the 7th edition of Fit 4 Start, Luxinnovation’s acceleration programme, in 2018.
The American start-up Uniken completes the 3 winners, with a platform that ensures the security of connections for financial services customers. It will receive media coverage in the publications of the Maison Moderne group.
Finally, a special prize, called Lighthouse, was awarded to the French start-up DreamQuark, which takes advantage of artificial intelligence to analyse all marketing, risk management and compliance activities of a financial company. The company receives 10 hours of free consulting from KPMG Luxembourg.