'Fintech Accelerator by L'Atelier BNP Paribas': Eight Startups Embark on Open Innovation Programme

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Mar 24, 2016) -  Eight FinTech and InsurTech startups have just embarked on an innovation accelerator programme run by L'Atelier BNP Paribas. Each startup will be working for four months in tandem with one of the BNP Paribas Group's businesses to develop co-innovations that will open up new business opportunities and help create new products and services for the Bank's customers.

Over the next four months, the eight selected tech startups will be working on an Open Innovation programme with the aim of meeting specific needs expressed by various BNP Paribas businesses in a number of fields including inter alia insurance, payment methods, customer experience, cybersecurity, risk analysis and compliance.

Each of these promising young companies is pairing up with one of the Group's businesses or service departments and will receive coaching in such areas as IT, marketing, business practice and fund-raising from the L'Atelier BNP Paribas Lab team, plus mentoring from entrepreneurs and financial industry experts. The startups will be hosted at the BNP Paribas We Are Innovation (WAI) space in Paris, which will provide them with a high-quality working environment.

Explained Yoann Jaffré, Head of the Open Innovation Lab at L'Atelier BNP Paribas: "We didn't really know how the startup ecosystem would react because we're the first to launch this kind of FinTech accelerator. However, the fact that 142 startups applied to take part, close to a third of them from abroad, confirms our belief that banks and startups are natural allies in the process of rethinking banking and insurance services going forward."

Jacques d'Estais, Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the BNP Paribas Group and Head of International Financial Services, declared: "I'm delighted to see a number of the Bank's businesses working hand-in-hand with young startups. In our drive to invent the bank of tomorrow we can rely on the considerable resources of the BNP Paribas Group but we are also determined to make use of the skills of other players who are keen to improve the customer journey."

'FINTECH ACCELERATOR BY L'ATELIER BNP PARIBAS' HAS CREATED 8 STARTUP-BANK BUSINESS PAIRINGS

Amalfi, pairing with BNP Paribas Cardif: Amalfi is France's first peer-to-peer insurance broker, which uses data-driven behavioural analysis and community management to enable customers to drastically reduce their overall cost of insurance.

Fortia, pairing with BNP Paribas Securities Services: Fortia Financial Solutions is a French RegTech company that brings disruptive technologies to the field of regulatory practice. Based on artificial intelligence, machine learning and collaborative intelligence, Fortia Financial Solutions is set to bring about substantial changes in the way compliance is managed.

Heuritech, pairing with BNP Paribas Personal Finance: Heuritech is developing an easy-to-use platform of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions designed to automatically turn all content (both multilingual texts and images) into actionable data.

KYC3 (Know Your Customer, Counterparty and Competition), pairing with BNP Paribas Wealth Management: KYC operates in many dimensions -- helping to master regulatory and reputational risk end-to-end from business development through to compliance; obtaining actionable intelligence from machine learning on unstructured Big Data.

LogMote, pairing with the BNP Paribas Retail Banking Division in France (FRB): LogMote is a unique unified authentication service which manages both legacy and cloud applications. The user's smartphone becomes the contactless key to unlock, simplify and accelerate his/her user access.

PayCar, pairing with BNP Paribas Cardif: PayCar is a payment method designed to facilitate used car transactions. PayCar offers simplicity and security to both buyers and sellers.

TwinPeek, pairing with BNP Paribas Wealth Management: TwinPeek is the first Personal Data Protection & Monetisation solution that allows everyone to take full control of their online data and only share the information they want to share anonymously and securely via a Digital Alter Ego, or 'Twin,' while transacting, interacting or browsing on the internet.

CommonAccord, L'Atelier BNP Paribas special choice partner: CommonAccord.org brings the benefits of open source collaboration to legal documents. It enables a world of peer-based relationships and facilitates continuous improvements to legal texts. The incubator is helping grow the CommonAccord solution into a Centre for Collaborative Law.

Accelerator Programme key dates:

• October-November 2015 - BNP Paribas businesses put forward strategic issues they wish to address; eight businesses were selected
• December 2015 - January2016 - Call for projects: 142 startups applied to take part
• Mid-February 2016 - Jury selected startups to take part; 8 pairings were created
• March - June 2016 - Four months acceleration from concept testing through to product/service development
• June 2016 - Demo Day, assessments and Action Plans to be drawn up

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About BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas is a leading bank in Europe with an international reach. It has a presence in 75 countries, with more than 189,000 employees, including more than 146,000 in Europe. The Group has key positions in its three main activities: Domestic Markets and International Financial Services (whose retail-banking networks and financial services are covered by Retail Banking & Services) and Corporate & Institutional Banking, which serves two client franchises: corporate clients and institutional investors. The Group helps all its clients (individuals, community associations, entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporates and institutional clients) to realise their projects through solutions spanning financing, investment, savings and protection insurance. In Europe, the Group has four domestic markets (Belgium, France, Italy and Luxembourg) and BNP Paribas Personal Finance is the leader in consumer lending. BNP Paribas is rolling out its integrated retail-banking model in Mediterranean countries, in Turkey, in Eastern Europe and a large network in the western part of the United States. In its Corporate & Institutional Banking and International Financial Services activities, BNP Paribas also enjoys top positions in Europe, a strong presence in the Americas as well as a solid and fast-growing business in Asia-Pacific.

About L'Atelier BNP Paribas
L'Atelier BNP Paribas is a tech innovation tracking and consulting specialist with offices in Paris, San Francisco and Shanghai, whose mission, based on 35 years of immersion in the digital economy, is to advise and assist the BNP Paribas Group and its corporate clients with their digital transformation. L'Atelier BNP Paribas takes a unique, open architecture approach which extends far beyond the banking sector, and also maintains an active presence in three key geographies that are hotbeds of innovation: Europe, North America and Asia. Through its various channels, including a vibrant website, newsletter, radio podcasts and TV spots, L'Atelier BNP Paribas works to convey clear insights into current and future developments in digital innovation and promote public debate on key topics, while its consultants help both the Group and its clients to implement a digital strategy. As part of its open innovation approach, L'Atelier BNP Paribas recently created the Lab, which puts disruptive innovators in touch with corporates and the necessary resources and support networks to accelerate promising innovations.