The Investment Association’s (IA) FinTech hub and accelerator, IA Engine, has announced the latest firms to join its Innovator Programme, as well as a new global FinTech partnerships between Engine and Canada.

The following five firms have been chosen to join this year’s cohort, which during the six-month programme, will receive one-to-one support and networking opportunities with industry leaders.

• AM Insights is the mobile-enabled fund data platform revolutionising asset management. With data on 70,000 share classes, AM Insights facilitates distribution teams to walk into meetings with a real understanding of their offering, peers, and clients’ holdings.
• BehaviorQuant revolutionizes finance with cutting-edge behavioral science and machine learning. By providing predictive insights into investment professionals and clients, BehaviorQuant empowers advisors to effortlessly personalize their services, investment teams to make smarter decisions, and capital allocators to minimize their investment risks.
• Intellibonds is an AI-augmented SaaS platform for fixed-income portfolio managers and analysts, helping institutional investors improve investment returns and lower operational costs through intelligent automation.
• Propellant Digital leverages the most extensive dataset in Fixed Income, aggregating, normalising and cleansing MiFID, TRACE and DTCC transactional data. Propellant’s powerful analytics cut through the noise to deliver insights in trading, sales, risk management, research, market intelligence and compliance, improving trading profitability and workflow efficiency.
• Tumelo was founded with a vision to democratise shareholder voting. It specialises in pass-through voting technology for asset managers.

IA Engine has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with FinTech Cadence, an established FinTech hub in Montreal, Canada, expanding upon IA Engine’s global FinTech network of 13 partners.

The announcements were made at the IA’s EmTech Global event, which was held today at CodeNode in London, with the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Michael Mainelli, giving the keynote speech at the event.

A Blueprint for FinTech Engagement and Onboarding was also launched today. The paper provides an overview of the current FinTech landscape, the challenges and best practice of FinTech and investment management firms working with one another and the ways that all individuals involved in the ecosystem can standardise and speed up FinTech adoption.

In addition, the IA and Engine member LiCuido published a thought leadership paper, Money Market Fund Tokenisation – Collateral Opportunities, which explores the case for utilising money market fund tokens as collateral, and invites firms and stakeholders from across the industry to turn the concepts into a reality.

Gillian Painter, Head of Membership and Engine, at the Investment Association, said: 

“Innovation is key to ensuring that as an industry, we remain at the top of our game in delivering for our customers around the world, and that the UK continues to be a leading global hub for investment management. IA Engine has a valuable role to play in achieving this, with the Innovator Programme having already connected our industry to 35 leading buyside FinTech firms, all of which utilising the latest advances in technology.

“I am also pleased to welcome the FinTech Cadence to our network of international partners, which share our agenda to develop innovative solutions that improve consumers’ experiences.”

Michael Mainelli, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, said: 

“The UK has an exciting and vibrant FinTech scene, with London hosting the world’s second largest FinTech hub. Within this, IA Engine provides a valuable platform which enables FinTechs to showcase their solutions to the investment management industry and benefit from the insights of industry leaders.

“Technological innovation is vital for the investment management industry and the IA’s EmTech Global Conference provides a great opportunity for investment managers and FinTechs to discuss the latest developments and how they can be implemented to the benefit of businesses and their customers.”

Source: IA