Finnopolis-2017: we invite fintech talents to Sochi
Take part in the fintech startups competition as part of Finopolis-2017. Winners will be awarded cash prizes from one to three million rubles. Teams that qualified for the finals of the competition will be able to take part in the Startup Alley at the Finopolis Forum in Sochi (October 4-6, 2017), present their project to the leaders of top banks and the Bank of Russia. The collection of applications continues until September 17, hurry to declare your project.
We have already told the readers of Habrahabr the importance of digital transformation and the role of innovative projects in it. To help the participants of the Finnopolis 2017 Fintech startups contest, we interviewed Daniil Gusev, an expert and international envoy of the FinTech Association, Managing Partner, Luxembourg-based Fintech Fund Digital Space Ventures. How the fintech market is developing and what you need to pay attention to those who decide to apply for the competition and get the opportunity to spend time productively in Sochi,submit an application and pack your bags, read under the cat.
Digital technologies are increasingly penetrating the financial sector: banks and large financial organizations are introducing them into their business processes, actively transferring customer interaction online. This, on the one hand, gives new opportunities, makes services more accessible, transparent, convenient, but on the other hand entails new risks. And in this segment, Russian IT companies have a powerful technological base, which gives them an advantage over competitors in both our and foreign markets.
What technologies in the financial sector are most in demand today?
First of all, applied information technologies are in demand. Just having an idea or copying it from other geographies is not enough, it is important to understand the existing working conditions of financial technologies, which the activities of potential founders of a new business are aimed at. The desire of other participants in the fintech ecosystem (partners, investors, customers) to support it as meaningful depends on how much the implementation meets market demands.
Taking into account these requirements, the FinTech Association has formulated a number of requirements that are supported by all major banks:
In short, it cannot be said that specific technologies are in demand: the incentive for the development of technology is determined by the importance of the market where it is used, and the seriousness of the study in turning technology into a sustainable business process.
What problems and tasks should IT solve in the financial services market?
Technologies today must ensure the transformation of a business that is facing the challenges of the digital environment: the internetization of thinking, accessibility and total consumption of high technologies, new consumer properties with which they endow goods and services. The way we perceive information, form our digital footprint, how we order and provide services - all this changes the traditional functions of companies (marketing, research, distribution), transferring them to a digital basis.
What is the current state of the financial technology market in Russia?
The financial technology market has not yet taken shape and is currently limited by the budgets and interests of the main, dominant players. Funding is often backed up by government programs, and innovation sometimes follows large bills to cater for their implementation.
Fund investments are limited by ambiguities in ownership and reporting when using new technologies. It will take a lot of time to formalize market relations between players, investors and new formations - startups. Partially this is the focus of the efforts of AFT participants: to formulate the rules of the game, and from them the culture and experience of trust in the main programs of financial innovation.
What are some positive examples of the implementation of new technologies in Russia?
Russia is one of the world leaders in the countries that switched to digital consumption: the penetration of mobile high-speed Internet, the development of search technologies has formed a culture of online consumption, predetermined the development of prepaid wallets and electronic money technologies, and the contribution of large financial institutions has made it possible to quickly introduce systemic innovations - acquiring , where in terms of volume, the market leader - Sberbank - overtook WoldPay - the leading European processor.
It is important not to stop there and listen carefully to changes in customer behavior - the formation of a culture of mobile consumption (and mobile transactions amounting to about 8.8 trillion in China over the past year), it took about 10 years for the Celestial Empire. Having laid the right foundation for the development of the digital economy, it is possible to provide a market leap for the effective development of the entire fintech ecosystem.
How is it in the East?
In January 2017, the StartmeupHK Festival was held in Hong Kong, a large -scale fintech event in which the NEXT MONEY FINTECH FINALS 2017 startup competition was held . As part of the competition, 24 finalists from 15 countries were identified. Each finalist had 6 minutes to present his own project. The main prize was won by the Philippine project AAYNNAH
The awards were also received by BAMBU teams from Singapore, Darc Matter from the USA and BIMA from Sweden.
What is the role of financial startups in the development and implementation of promising technologies?
Financial startups draw up a request for change: they inquisitively prove a new way or demonstrate new technologies for interaction between a consumer and a seller, a borrower and a lender. Based on new approaches in distribution, motivation, analytics - due to the specifics of their organization and financing, they either quickly show the result, or change the model, or leave the market.
Amid heavy bureaucratic procedures, such flexibility is almost impossible: it either wreaks havoc or spends many times more effort and time. And there is not so much of the latter (taking into account the shrinking Hegelian “spiral of history”) in the market: someone else always takes the place of one. The liquidity of the global system that spurred investments in fintech (as well as insurtech , biotech, nanotech, etc.) will always find someone who will offer the product better and faster than you.
How is it in the West?
In June of this year, JPMorgan announced winners of fintech startups contestwho work in the field of improving people's living standards through technologies that optimize personal finance. The winners received $ 250,000 each and joined CFSI's Financial Solutions Lab, which will provide them with opportunities to implement their ideas, including mentoring assistance.
What problems do young teams face when trying to enter this market?
First of all, the rigidity and slowness of the corporate environment with prevailing rules. Large players are often intolerant of proposed changes due to internal procedures, limited vision (and management comfort zone). Nonetheless, financing often comes from banks, but this is due to the logic that startups themselves lay down.
There are two main ways for startups to develop:
-copy something from Techcrunch pages and apply in Russia . In addition to unsuccessful attempts to embark on someone else's wave of success, there are perspicacious companies that have successfully implemented a number of projects “cloned” from their Western counterparts - but there are only a few of them.
- do something original, based on the Russian experience of consumption, and bring it into the global world - here startups are uncertain between the resources of big players who want to do these projects on their own and the resources of small banks where projects slip into piecewise automation for them, and The startup project is doomed due to the lack of scale conditions.
The second competitive model is more promising in the conditions of distrust in the market of financial technologies. FINOPOLIS-2017 is called to eliminate this obstacle - the first platform on which the goals of the fintech and the mechanisms of movement towards them are determined. This is a very important startup competition at the FINOPOLIS-2017 site: it provides an opportunity to speak out of the young, full of energy, IT part of the financial community to the market and try to bring this vision together to life.
Years will take to form a market: the main thing is to plan and fill in the correct foundation from the point of view of the main areas of application, sponsorship of the development of these areas in a systematic manner - in solidarity and on general principles, with an interested regulator at a common, round table.
It is important not to give in to the desire to artificially shape the market, to manage it manually, because everything that has money replenishment will learn to mimic under slogans - and it will lose the competitive thread. It is competitive markets that generate startups and technologies - because they are forced to look for the best solutions in a limited environment. Russian experience: In 2016, the winners of the Finnopolis Fintech startups competition were: Oz Photo Expert , who created a software product for conducting quick examinations of digital photographs for falsification. Farzoom - came up with solutions that evaluate the scenarios of bank customers' behavior and based on them suggest which specific banking products may be of interest to them. Brainysoft
- developed solutions that provide in SaaS all the tools necessary for an operational assessment of the quality of clients in online banking and the MFI sector
What are the main requirements for participants and what should they pay attention to?
There is probably only one advice - try to describe the project on one sheet of the Business Model Canvas, paying attention to:
I would like to recommend some fundamental books to young minds for developing skills in constructing workable commercial models:
- IDEO - Human Centered Design Toolkit
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany
- The Ten Faces of Innovation
About the competition
The aim of the competition is to find teams offering innovative solutions in the field of financial technologies . The organizers are the Bank of Russia and the FinTech Association with the support of the Fintech Lab ANO.
Preference will be given to projects in the following areas:
Applications will be accepted until September 17, 2017, after which the tender committee will select the ten most promising projects that will participate in the final at Finopolis-2017 in Sochi.
→ Regulation on the competition
E-mail: startup@finopolis.ru
We have already told the readers of Habrahabr the importance of digital transformation and the role of innovative projects in it. To help the participants of the Finnopolis 2017 Fintech startups contest, we interviewed Daniil Gusev, an expert and international envoy of the FinTech Association, Managing Partner, Luxembourg-based Fintech Fund Digital Space Ventures. How the fintech market is developing and what you need to pay attention to those who decide to apply for the competition and get the opportunity to spend time productively in Sochi,
Digital technologies are increasingly penetrating the financial sector: banks and large financial organizations are introducing them into their business processes, actively transferring customer interaction online. This, on the one hand, gives new opportunities, makes services more accessible, transparent, convenient, but on the other hand entails new risks. And in this segment, Russian IT companies have a powerful technological base, which gives them an advantage over competitors in both our and foreign markets.
What technologies in the financial sector are most in demand today?
First of all, applied information technologies are in demand. Just having an idea or copying it from other geographies is not enough, it is important to understand the existing working conditions of financial technologies, which the activities of potential founders of a new business are aimed at. The desire of other participants in the fintech ecosystem (partners, investors, customers) to support it as meaningful depends on how much the implementation meets market demands.
Taking into account these requirements, the FinTech Association has formulated a number of requirements that are supported by all major banks:
- how to ensure low-value transfer of consumer funds (p2p market, B2C transfers)
- how to create a stable database of information about borrowers, other groups of people while maintaining data privacy (identification and authentication system, digital identity system for the provision of services)
In short, it cannot be said that specific technologies are in demand: the incentive for the development of technology is determined by the importance of the market where it is used, and the seriousness of the study in turning technology into a sustainable business process.
What problems and tasks should IT solve in the financial services market?
Technologies today must ensure the transformation of a business that is facing the challenges of the digital environment: the internetization of thinking, accessibility and total consumption of high technologies, new consumer properties with which they endow goods and services. The way we perceive information, form our digital footprint, how we order and provide services - all this changes the traditional functions of companies (marketing, research, distribution), transferring them to a digital basis.
What is the current state of the financial technology market in Russia?
The financial technology market has not yet taken shape and is currently limited by the budgets and interests of the main, dominant players. Funding is often backed up by government programs, and innovation sometimes follows large bills to cater for their implementation.
Fund investments are limited by ambiguities in ownership and reporting when using new technologies. It will take a lot of time to formalize market relations between players, investors and new formations - startups. Partially this is the focus of the efforts of AFT participants: to formulate the rules of the game, and from them the culture and experience of trust in the main programs of financial innovation.
What are some positive examples of the implementation of new technologies in Russia?
Russia is one of the world leaders in the countries that switched to digital consumption: the penetration of mobile high-speed Internet, the development of search technologies has formed a culture of online consumption, predetermined the development of prepaid wallets and electronic money technologies, and the contribution of large financial institutions has made it possible to quickly introduce systemic innovations - acquiring , where in terms of volume, the market leader - Sberbank - overtook WoldPay - the leading European processor.
It is important not to stop there and listen carefully to changes in customer behavior - the formation of a culture of mobile consumption (and mobile transactions amounting to about 8.8 trillion in China over the past year), it took about 10 years for the Celestial Empire. Having laid the right foundation for the development of the digital economy, it is possible to provide a market leap for the effective development of the entire fintech ecosystem.
How is it in the East?
In January 2017, the StartmeupHK Festival was held in Hong Kong, a large -scale fintech event in which the NEXT MONEY FINTECH FINALS 2017 startup competition was held . As part of the competition, 24 finalists from 15 countries were identified. Each finalist had 6 minutes to present his own project. The main prize was won by the Philippine project AAYNNAH
The awards were also received by BAMBU teams from Singapore, Darc Matter from the USA and BIMA from Sweden.
What is the role of financial startups in the development and implementation of promising technologies?
Financial startups draw up a request for change: they inquisitively prove a new way or demonstrate new technologies for interaction between a consumer and a seller, a borrower and a lender. Based on new approaches in distribution, motivation, analytics - due to the specifics of their organization and financing, they either quickly show the result, or change the model, or leave the market.
Amid heavy bureaucratic procedures, such flexibility is almost impossible: it either wreaks havoc or spends many times more effort and time. And there is not so much of the latter (taking into account the shrinking Hegelian “spiral of history”) in the market: someone else always takes the place of one. The liquidity of the global system that spurred investments in fintech (as well as insurtech , biotech, nanotech, etc.) will always find someone who will offer the product better and faster than you.
How is it in the West?
In June of this year, JPMorgan announced winners of fintech startups contestwho work in the field of improving people's living standards through technologies that optimize personal finance. The winners received $ 250,000 each and joined CFSI's Financial Solutions Lab, which will provide them with opportunities to implement their ideas, including mentoring assistance.
What problems do young teams face when trying to enter this market?
First of all, the rigidity and slowness of the corporate environment with prevailing rules. Large players are often intolerant of proposed changes due to internal procedures, limited vision (and management comfort zone). Nonetheless, financing often comes from banks, but this is due to the logic that startups themselves lay down.
There are two main ways for startups to develop:
-copy something from Techcrunch pages and apply in Russia . In addition to unsuccessful attempts to embark on someone else's wave of success, there are perspicacious companies that have successfully implemented a number of projects “cloned” from their Western counterparts - but there are only a few of them.
- do something original, based on the Russian experience of consumption, and bring it into the global world - here startups are uncertain between the resources of big players who want to do these projects on their own and the resources of small banks where projects slip into piecewise automation for them, and The startup project is doomed due to the lack of scale conditions.
The second competitive model is more promising in the conditions of distrust in the market of financial technologies. FINOPOLIS-2017 is called to eliminate this obstacle - the first platform on which the goals of the fintech and the mechanisms of movement towards them are determined. This is a very important startup competition at the FINOPOLIS-2017 site: it provides an opportunity to speak out of the young, full of energy, IT part of the financial community to the market and try to bring this vision together to life.
Years will take to form a market: the main thing is to plan and fill in the correct foundation from the point of view of the main areas of application, sponsorship of the development of these areas in a systematic manner - in solidarity and on general principles, with an interested regulator at a common, round table.
It is important not to give in to the desire to artificially shape the market, to manage it manually, because everything that has money replenishment will learn to mimic under slogans - and it will lose the competitive thread. It is competitive markets that generate startups and technologies - because they are forced to look for the best solutions in a limited environment. Russian experience: In 2016, the winners of the Finnopolis Fintech startups competition were: Oz Photo Expert , who created a software product for conducting quick examinations of digital photographs for falsification. Farzoom - came up with solutions that evaluate the scenarios of bank customers' behavior and based on them suggest which specific banking products may be of interest to them. Brainysoft
- developed solutions that provide in SaaS all the tools necessary for an operational assessment of the quality of clients in online banking and the MFI sector
What are the main requirements for participants and what should they pay attention to?
There is probably only one advice - try to describe the project on one sheet of the Business Model Canvas, paying attention to:
- the significance of the decision: how much it can be counted and how feasible with the economy that the founders see;
- its relevance - significance in terms of consumer properties, communication channels and consumer portrait;
- his resource needs: what technologies and skills are needed to move the project forward.
I would like to recommend some fundamental books to young minds for developing skills in constructing workable commercial models:
- IDEO - Human Centered Design Toolkit
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany
- The Ten Faces of Innovation
About the competition
The aim of the competition is to find teams offering innovative solutions in the field of financial technologies . The organizers are the Bank of Russia and the FinTech Association with the support of the Fintech Lab ANO.
Preference will be given to projects in the following areas:
- remote identification of customers participating in the financial market and digital identity management;
- use of distributed registry technologies in financial products (services);
- the formation of high-tech retail payment space;
- using open APIs to expand the range of products (services) for financial market participants and their customers.
Applications will be accepted until September 17, 2017, after which the tender committee will select the ten most promising projects that will participate in the final at Finopolis-2017 in Sochi.
→ Regulation on the competition
E-mail: startup@finopolis.ru