Singapore, 13 November 2018… The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) today announced the three winners of the Global FinTech Hackcelerator, selected from 20 finalistsSee Annex A of MAS’ media release ‘60 Innovative Solutions Shortlisted for 2018 Global FinTech Hackcelerator and FinTech Awards’, 8 October 2018. that presented their innovative solutions at Demo Day, as part of the third Singapore FinTech Festival. The Global FinTech Hackcelerator was supported by KPMG Digital Village.
2 The winners are (in no order of merit):
| Company Name |
Description of Winning Solution |
| BetterTradeOff Pte. Ltd. |
BetterTradeOff’s one-of-a-kind holistic life-planning solution, 'Aardviser,' uses advanced statistical models and AI to empower people to make optimum decisions when financing their dreams. This flexible, modular, white-label solution can efficiently and quickly capture a client’s [new prospect or existing client] financial situation, digitising the traditional data capture with financial advisors, reducing time taken to a matter of minutes. It can dynamically adjust the financial plan of the client via investment products based on financial ambition such as supporting children’s education, purchase of property and readjust after life triggers such as loss of income. This tool immediately engages the client in relevant and exciting life solutions based on the partnering company's suite of products.
|
| Billon Group Ltd |
Billon's technology encodes national (i.e., fiat, not crypto) currencies via blockchain to allow for zero cost payment transactions. The system is composed of blockchain nodes, where each node is essentially an application installed on an end-user device (smartphone, tablet, computer, server) and each new user brings its own device (typically a smartphone), which adds processing power to the system as a whole. Transactions are processed directly between the nodes, without any central system being involved. Currency thanks to blockchain gets transferred peer to peer with no third party intervention, no intermediaries, thus it flows at zero cost. Consequently, the systems scales without any incremental transaction costs, and recent tests proved the ability to process over 160 million payment transactions per day.
|
| Mosabi |
Mosabi’s solution addresses the lack of financial training and financial access through a narrative mobile learning linked to financial inclusion, financial literacy, and digital financial services (DFS). It works with financial institutes to empower low-income entrepreneurs who have little or no knowledge about basic business management skills to deliver relevant curriculum and campaigns via modular learning. These lessons are delivered in lightweight video format as well as chatbot integration, quizzes and surveys all available with customised cultural context and available in local languages. These meaningful engagements enable performance analytics to be derived from the data creating a unique credit score which financial institutions can use to determine the creditworthiness of a user. This creates a new customer segment for financial institutions to provide access to all clients, from the financial serviced to thin file or no file clients. |
3 Mr Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS, said “The Global FinTech Hackcelerator is a great platform for FinTechs not only to showcase but also to contextualise their innovative solutions for the industry. Many of the finalists from the past two years have gone on to receive funding and to contribute their solutions to the industry. We wish our third batch of winners similar success. MAS thanks KPMG Digital Village for supporting the Global FinTech Hackcelerator.”
4 BetterTradeOff Pte. Ltd., Billon Group Ltd and Mosabi received a cash prize of S$50,000 each at the awards ceremony this morning at the Singapore FinTech Festival. Beyond Demo Day, the 20 finalist teams will continue to work with the corporate champions and industry mentors to plan for actual adoption and integration of their solutions into a real client context.
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Additional Information
The Global FinTech Hackcelerator is a 12-week programme powered by KPMG Digital Village for problem statements from the financial industry to be matched with innovative market-ready solutions from around the world. MAS had published 80 problem statements under four categories (InsurTech, Financial Inclusion, RegTech & SupTech and General), and received 304 applications from over 40 countries. Twenty teams were shortlisted by a panel of industry judgesSee Annex B of MAS’ media release ‘60 Innovative Solutions Shortlisted for 2018 Global FinTech Hackcelerator and FinTech Awards’, 8 October 2018. to work with corporates, investors, partners and regulators from the Singapore FinTech ecosystem to conceptualise, build and refine their prototypes (please refer to Annex A for a list of corporate champions and industry mentors).
On Demo Day, each team made a five-minute pitch before a judging panel (please see Annex B for the Demo Day judging panel), followed by a question-and-answer segment with the judges. BetterTradeOff Pte. Ltd., Billon Group Ltd and Mosabi were selected based on the relevance of their solution in addressing the chosen problem statement, their business potential, innovativeness of their idea, and the team’s profile and ability to execute the idea.
About the Singapore FinTech Festival (www.fintechfestival.sg )
Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) is the world’s largest FinTech festival and global platform for the FinTech community, drawing more than 30,000 participants last year which comprised of FinTech players, technopreneurs, policy makers, financial industry leaders, investors including private equity players and venture capitalists, and academics. The 2018 Festival will see participants from over 100 countries and host more than 250 global luminaries and 400 exhibitors, featuring highlights such as the FinTech Conference with a new AI in Finance Summit and Global Investors’ Summit, the FinTech Awards, Global FinTech Hackcelerator, Innovation Lab Crawl, Industry Networking and Workshops. The Festival is organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in partnership with The Association of Banks in Singapore and in collaboration with SingEx Holdings. Festival Grand Sponsors include AMTD, Deloitte, GIC, Google Cloud and Prudential. Find out more at http://fintechfestival.sg .