At the Digital Isle Conference on 10th November 2022, Lyle Wraxall, Chief Executive of Digital Isle of Man, announced the launch of the FinTech Innovation Challenge, a collaboration between Digital Isle of Man, Finance Isle of Man, and supported by the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority and Deloitte assisting.
The Innovation Challenge is part of the Isle of Man’s ambitions to build a secure, vibrant, and sustainable future. It has been developed to give innovative businesses around the world the chance to experience the island’s collaborative financial services sector, and showcase their solutions to core challenges that have been identified across the Isle of Man business community.
The FinTech Innovation Challenge is a competition inviting global participants to provide solutions to specific problems in order to support the growth and application of FinTech across the Isle of Man. The Challenge will allow businesses to pursue opportunities to develop within the Isle of Man’s world-leading regulatory environment, as well as encouraging collaboration with local communities to produce sustainable and innovative technologies to solve key challenges facing the financial sector.
For businesses participating in the FinTech Innovation Challenge, this is a unique opportunity to work with government, the regulator and businesses in a leading digital hub, and scale up solutions ready for the global market.
The Challenge aims to deliver three key objectives:
Participants will be able to choose from a selection of three predefined FinTech Innovation Challenges, plus a ‘wildcard’ option.
This challenge asks for a solution that covers the management of identity, navigating the complexities of moving from an analogue to a digital environment including:
For this challenge we would not expect deliverables to be able to go beyond C, but that should not limit presenting future proposals to build to D.
Know Your Customer, ('KYC') is a key procedure in financial services on boarding where a customer's identity will be checked and verified. This challenge asks how an e-KYC solution might be developed to reduce costs, automate process, ensure data security whilst complying with AML and KYC regulations? The solution should consider:
Fraud Prevention & Risk Management are critical to the success of financial institutions. This challenge asks for a solution that harnesses the power of technology to streamline and transform regulatory activities for organisations. This could include the role of machine learning and AI for sanction screening in payments and transactions, so that manual touchpoints can be reduced to a minimum level. It is also worth considering how financial intelligence may be shared between parties to enhance the accuracy of AI without compromising privacy.
Challenge Statement 4 is designed to be a wildcard, and we encourage all eligible FinTechs to define a problem statement that they believe exists in the Isle of Man and propose a technology-based solution to this problem. This can relate to any aspect of the Financial Services Industry.
The FinTech Challenge milestones can be seen below.
To support the FinTech Innovation Challenge, it is important that the local ecosystem plays a range of roles to ensure its success. We invite the local community to take part in the challenge through one of the following roles:
Successful applicants from existing companies and start-ups who submit innovative proof of concepts to address the challenge statements
Challenge Judges will form a panel and will be involved in the final event to assess applying FinTechs and evaluate the finalists’ presentations and pitches
Individuals or companies that want to provide access to space, mentorship and potential financial support. During the program, mentors will share industry insight, experience and provide mentorship to program participants.
Individuals or businesses that support the Final Event and post-event. As the solutions materialise, the challenge audience could become potential customers / investors of the end product.
No, the Challenge is designed to be globally inclusive and attract international interest. Collaborations between local and international organisations is also very much welcome. We would encourage applicants to visit the Island during the initial mentor matching event, which also introduces the local ecosystem. This will enable applicants, to take full advantage of the access to the marketplace that we are making available. Attendance is also encouraged at the final demo presentation event. However, facilities will be provided to include participants who cannot attend in person.
The winners in each category will receive:
Yes, we recognise your existing relationships are important to your business.
There is a minimum requirement of approximately 4 days in total which is allocated as follows:
That is OK. We are open to all products that have application for the Financial Services and Digital sectors.
If you are successful in the application process, you will be invited to an interview in mid-March.
The judges will be made up of Government and industry experts who will assess the proposition based on a set criteria.
There are no restrictions on entrants other than being able to meet the Challenge and to demonstrate innovation in the solution as well as some aspect that demonstrates value to the Isle of Man. Applicants can be at any stage of business development.
There are no restrictions, the product can be concept or completely formed but must demonstrate both applicability and innovation. However, the demo pitch will need to be able to demonstrate how an ultimate product will work, even if that is a simulation, and detail indicative timelines and cost to implementation.
We will be introducing you to mentors and supporting organisations who will have this capability, but part of the process is for you to organise capabilities like this if it is applicable.
There is that potential but will entirely depend on the relationship with your mentors/supporters.
If you have further questions, please email us at contact-digital@gov.im