Nordea announces startups joining fintech accelerator programme

Nordic banking group Nordea has announced most of the startups that will be joining its fintech accelerator in Helsinki and Stockholm this autumn.

As part of the 12- week accelerator programme Nordea will give startups the chance to work on and develop their ideas alongside the bank. The bank says the idea is for the bank and the startups to explore new business and partnership opportunities together for potential future collaboration.

So far, sectors the startups are focusing on range from cross-border payments for small businesses to optimising debt recovery for big banks and enterprise.

Half of the 12 teams that are  already officially enrolled are from Sweden, with others from Finland, Norway, Denmark, the US and the UK. Nordea has made an offer to 19 in total.

The will run between September and December, with startups picked from training and selection sessions in Oslo last week. The bank says 200 startups originally applied to take part.

Startups enrolled so far are:
> Asteria (Sweden)
> Lenovium (Sweden) credit/ mortgage management @Lenovium
> Kuan (UK) – cross border payments for small business @kuaninc
> Taviq (Finland) – investment products @taviqInvesting
> Tikkr (Sweden)
> Mina Tjänster (Sweden) – subscription management @MinaTjanster
> Trayce (Denmark) – expense reporting @trayceio
> Voxo (Sweden)
> Collectly (US) – debt recovery for big banks & enterprise @collectlyapp
> YeyNey (Norway)
> Smartcalling (UK)
> Zash (Sweden)

Nordea Fintech Accelerator

This is the second fintech accelerator Nordea is running, after an inaugural programme last year. Nordea says it is still working with two of the teams from that first programme: Jenny, a customer service-powered artificial intelligence startup and Feelingstream, from Estonia, which analyses how customers are feeling.

Nordea is running the programme alongside Nestholma Venture Accelerator and offers the chance for startups to run pilots with the bank’s customers and data.  Each team gets an investment of €12,000 and says there is also the opportunity to raise up to €150,000 from Netholma. Tata Consultancy and IBM are among the other partners that will be involved in the programme.

Nordea made public its wish list for the programme, which shed an interesting light on what the bank sees as the most significant tech trends affecting finance and where it sees banks playing a role in the future. Evidently the bank is keen to tap into the fast-growing sharing economy, saying that it is interested in the role banks could play in quantifying risk, providing new ways to finance houses or potentially handling money exchange. Meanwhile, Nordea is also interested in the role that banks can play in enabling rapid transactions and helping establish partnerships.

The themes include:
– New approaches to digital life insurance and pensions.
– The bank’s role in the sharing economy.
– Banks’ roles in helping to enable faster contracts and transactions.
– Reg tech to help financial institutions comply with the likes of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2), tthe Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), plus anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements.
– Sharing economy of payments.

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