Winner Announcement: BankTech Asia Fin5ive Challenge 2017
Winners from London, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and Czech Republic set to demo their solutions at BankTech Asia, 5-6 July 2017
Powered by Matchi, BankTech Asia recently launched the Fin5ive Challenge to source five groundbreaking fintech solutions to showcase at the 9th BankTech Asia conference and exhibition in Kuala Lumpur from 5th to 6th July 2017.
“We’ve been running BankTech Asia for 9 years in Kuala Lumpur, and we are increasingly seeing banks being more open to collaboration with fintech companies and we’ve also observed fintech firms from around the world finding the Malaysian market more appealing. The latter as evidenced by an increased number of applications this year.” Vincent Fong, General Manager Knowledge Group, organisers of the BankTech Asia Conference series
From the onset, organisers stressed that relevance to the Asian market was key. In preparation for the BankTech Asia Fin5ive Challenge, a fintech survey which comprised 70 participating financial institutions from the Asia Pacific region was launched to identify the key pain points. The survey responses were then collated to determine focus areas which formed the entry categories for the challenge.
To ensure the market relevance of the winning solutions, BankTech Asia also enlisted the expertise of a panel of industry experts to join the judging panel. This year’s panel includes major banks and well-known venture capitalists from the around the region: Amran Hassan, Head of Innovation at Maybank in Malaysia, Paolo Baltao, Senior Vice President at Union Bank in Philippines, Markus Gnirck, Co-Founder and Partner at tryb Capital in Singapore as well as Paul Ark, Managing Director for Corporate Venture Capital, Digital Ventures in Thailand.
“We’re very thankful for the support from our partner Matchi and our panel of judges for providing market insights and identifying fintech firms that are truly innovative and relevant to the Asian market.” Vincent Fong, General Manager Knowledge Group
From the many responders that entered the challenge, only 60+ fintech firms were shortlisted and the best-of-the-best were picked for the respective categories by analysts from Matchi, BankTech Asia and the panel of judges. The organisers noted that applications were received from around the globe including cities such as California, Johannesburg, Sydney, Malaysia, India, Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong - indicating a strong interest in Malaysia’s vibrant market.
The BankTech Asia Fin5ive 2017 winners are:
Theme: Financial Inclusion
Winner: Big Data Scoring, London
Theme: Mobile/Channel
Winner: Suitebox, Australia
Theme: Process Automation
Winner: Luminous, South Africa
Theme: Payments/Transactions/Remittances
Winner: Alpha Payments Cloud, Ireland
Theme: Security/Identification/Biometrics
Winner: ThreatMark, Czech Republic
In addition to a 10-minute lightning demo in front of 200+ participating bankers, the BankTech Asia Fin5ive winners will each be showcased in a special exhibition area throughout the conference where they are expected to be a highlight for the 500+ trade visitors attending the event.
