Meet the 11 Startups Who Will Battle It Out at FinTech Abu Dhabi’s Finals

FinTech Abu Dhabi has just selected the 11 finalists who will compete for the grand prize at their Innovation Challenge, set to take place at the massive conference taking over the Emirati city on October 2nd.

Overcoming a tough competition between 166 applicants, the winning startups hail from a variety of countries, including Singapore, Canada, and the UAE. The entrepreneurs now entered a five-week programme to come up with market-ready solutions for the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region, focusing on six areas: Financial and Investment Management, Financial Inclusion, RegTech, Trade Finance, InsurTech and Private Capital Markets. 

Throughout the programme, finalists will get mentorship from more than 14 FinTech and financial industry leaders, concluding with the hotly-contested FinTech Demo Day on October 22nd, where two winners will be selected to take off to the Global FinTech Hackcelerator in Singapore. “The process so far has shone a light on the immense talent that exists in the global FinTech community," said Wai Lum Kwok, Executive Director of Capital Markets, Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM (Abu Ghabi Global Market). "Now we look forward to harnessing and nurturing this outstanding talent even further and identify those game-changing concepts that will help revolutionise the financial services industry today to help build the knowledge-based economy of tomorrow.”

From AI powered solutions, to apps translating hard data into everyday language, these 11 startups are disrupting the financial scene - and their solutions may soon hit the global stage.

1. NewBridge FinTech (UAE): The startup is UAE-based digital wealth solution provider to Private Banks, Wealth Management and Asset Management companies. Its flagship product, Fundshop, is an automated wealth management robo-engine which uses multiple processes to provide tailored and institutional level of portfolio advice to private clients on their existing and new wealth using a highly innovative, risk and trend-based algorithm.

2. Alpha FinTech (Singapore): Through a simple user interface, this FinTech vendor enablement and management platform allows banks, payment gateways and enterprise merchants to access both new and existing vendors across the entire payment, risk and commerce spectrum.

3. Everledger (UK): using the top-notch tech - including blockchain and smart contracts - Everledger's shifts the burden of doing paperwork process onto a digital global ledger that is immutable, secure, scalable and fast. The startup redefines the way documentation is stored and data is shared, which is adaptable across numerous industries, and highly mitigates risk and fraud with clear financial as well as insurance benefits.

4. FRS Labs (India): Their digital solution allows customers to open bank accounts from the comfort of their homes. The startup also allows customers to scan any National ID, verify personal details, detect images, read facial expressions, and match them with other compliance databases to detect risky applicants.

5. ftcash (India): Setting off to empower small businesses through the power of digital payments and loans, the startup aggregates all payment methods - including credit/debit cards, net banking, various mobile wallets, UPI, BharatQR and PayPal - to create an open platform for merchants to initiate digital payments and provide institutional capital in less than five minutes.

6. Market IQ (Canada): Their simple app helps users manage their financial life easily and effectively, combining data from multiple sources like bank accounts, credit cards, insurance, and brokerages to provide a unified view of the user's financial life. Not only does the app make everything easy to understand with stunning visualisations, but also interprets the data using cognitive intelligence engine to surface insights in simple English so the user can better understand the story behind the numbers and take real action to save money and make money.

7. Canopy (Singapore): Their platform allows all assets to be anonymously aggregated and viewed as a single portfolio, run portfolio analytics, and generate custom reports and more. Facing a lack of data feed from private banks, Canopy eliminates manual data entry by straight-through-processing data from any sources, including PDF statements. Having an aggregated portfolio view coupled with their innovative tools helps users to make sense of their data.

8. Silent Eight (Singapore): This AI-powered startup is built to think like an analyst. Silent Eight reviews all available data at lightning speed and provides analysts with useful, relevant information with each alert. This helps the analysts to conclude their investigations much faster and with far fewer mistakes.

9. Privé Financial Limited (Hong Kong): Seeking a customer-centric model for wealth management with personalised services, the startup presents a digital ecosystem to enhance client engagement through a personalised advisory approach. By coupling DaaS (data-as-a-service) and SaaS (software-as-a-service) models, Privé Managers seeks to offer a comprehensive solution for financial advisors to deliver an unparalleled degree of portfolio advisory services and ability to increase the share of their end-clients’ wallets.

10. Pivot (China): using AI and machine learning to bring investment management beyond human inefficiencies, Pivot’s algorithms are transparent and based on Nobel-winning Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to offer good long term risk-adjusted returns via globally diversified portfolios 24x7, with low fees and low entry investments.

11. Sqreem (Singapore): the tech startup works in the field of artificial Intelligence with a software technology stack, and series of cognitive AI algorithms that allows users to understand and predict all aspects of human behaviour. Sqreem has developed one of the largest cloud-hosted behavioural data acquisition capabilities databases in the world, where people can build personas, understand customer journeys, map behavioural intent to purchase, and in turn target consumers across any channel, in over 60 countries and all languages.

The startups will battle it out at FinTech Abu Dhabi, the first FinTech Summit in the region, taking off next October 22nd, where the 11 finalists will showcase their solutions on the main stage of the FinTech Summit, and the two final winners will head off to Singapore FinTech Festival, as part of the ADGM team, to showcase their solution on November 16th 2017 at the Global FinTech Hackcelerator held in Singapore. 

For more information on the FinTech Abu Dhabi programme, click here.