Shattering Silos in Financial Services: The Roundtables Redefining Bank Innovation

Don’t get me wrong. Taking part in startup or scaleup programs with business mentorship and a network of mentors have a purpose and many are helpful, often critical. We challenge the industry to evolve today’s model to one that better fosters real conversations with actual decision makers that lead to contracts and solving specific problems.

Once a venture has an MVP, business model, value prop, defined audience, and a compelling narrative, let’s shift to a new way of enabling founders to succeed. Most have practiced their pitch and have a deep bench of mentors and advisors. Tons of online content, tools, and other resources proliferate on the internet. 

Let’s start inviting founders to more meaningful conversations. Let’s go beyond classroom exercises, demo days, and pitch competitions. Let’s move to multi-stakeholder conversations that bring founders and decision makers together. Let’s stop talking about theoretical scenarios and jump into strategic partnership opportunities – ones that have facilitate measurable growth for all.

Welcome to the spark redefining how to foster innovation within financial services. 

Meet IBM Fintech InnovationX, a series of roundtables hosted by IBM Cloud for Financial Services and Machinelab Ventures with its flagship Fintech Fast Pass program powered by IBM Cloud and Tech Passport. The series combines access, human-centered design, innovation, and enablement. You know, the pivot we mentioned above. 

By bringing ecosystem players together into a room - virtual or physical, human-centered design can take over to feed innovation and partnership in a non-sales-oriented setting. 

"Nothing beats the value of real interactions, and preferably in-person. Engaging in a dialogue is the foundation upon which genuine and lasting partnerships are built. When I heard about this opportunity, I knew right away this was for us. I encourage all founders to take notice, as this is what’s truly needed to help companies like ours grow.”
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-Ramona Ortega, Founder, WealthBuild

Scaleup recruitment is underway, but spaces are limited.

JOIN US HERE: Machinelab Ventures invites scaleup founders looking to grow via the IBM Fintech InnovationX series may apply to Fintech Fast Pass today.

"Connecting fintechs with financial institutions helps foster a collaborative environment that accelerates innovation and market entry—an ecosystem where everyone benefits. Our team at Tech Passport is pleased to be part of connecting industry players, not only through IBM Fintech InnovationX, but also via our Tech Passport platform.” 
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-Layla White, CEO & Founder, Tech Passport

The Genesis of IBM Fintech InnovationX

Millions of companies vie for attention from prospective clients. Many fail to break through. It’s exponentially harder if that company lacks a commonly recognized brand or is looking to disrupt an industry with a revolutionary solution that might upset apple carts.

The IBM Fintech InnovationX series of roundtables breathes life into the larger ecosystem and is powered by the IBM Cloud. It serves as a vehicle to connect banks to promising companies via our curated round table series. 

Roundtable #1 Theme: Data & AI 

Let’s jump right into our first roundtable and its theme. Our Data & AI conversation during the first roundtable will include common use cases of AI within banks and include discussions around real engagements. For example, one bank will meet with five companies. Each will have a pre-read to save time in the live session, resulting in more impactful and interactive dialogue. Banks will be asked to bring a core project team to meet with a carefully curated shortlist of companies. Due to common industry challenges, each bank conversation will be held separately from other banks and will be under NDA. Don’t worry, we’ll share key snippets later.

Roundtable #2 Theme: Data Security & Compliance

What roundtable is next after data & AI? Due to the heavily regulated environments of the banking sector, data security and compliance are always at the forefront of conversations. 

We look forward to sharing snippits form our first IBM Fintech InnovationX roundtable and preparing for our second. Expect to learn from key insights and sparklers from our series.

“Why watch from afar? Why not join us in our journey of redefining the way ventures are built and scaled, and how banks and other companies can engage with founder communities across the globe.”
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-Dr. Melissa Sassi, Venture Partner, Machinelab Ventures

IBM Fintech InnovationX Founding Partners 

Who's behind IBM Fintech InnovationX? Hint: us + some amazing partners. Each of us take our secret sauce to make the initiative much more effective than it could have been if we were going solo. What’s that phrase? Better together? Stronger together? Those definitely fit here. 

• Machinelab Ventures helps startups, scaleups, and enterprises unlock growth and innovation through ecosystem partnerships, innovation scouting, industry roundtables, thought leadership, and venture building. 
• ‍Tech Passport is a SaaS marketplace for data driven scouting that fosters industry collaboration by joining emerging vendor partners and enterprises, creating an ecosystem of trust with its enterprise-ready questions, co-designed with sixteen financial services institutions. 
• IBM Cloud for Financial Services helps reduce risk throughout the supply chain by addressing resiliency, performance, security and regulatory compliance requirements for financial institutions. It helps them reduce the complexity of managing ISV and SaaS workloads and is the foundation upon which fintechs can confidently build and scale.
• ‍IBM Financial Services Cloud Council brings together a robust community of more than 160 CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, and Risk and Compliance officers from leading financial institutions who are working together to help reduce risk for the industry.
  

Through IBM Fintech InnovationX the strengths of each partner together and result in new thinking to resolve longstanding pain points, while addressing new challenges and creating opportunities. 

As banks, financial services, and all industries look for innovation, the startup and scaleup ecosystem serve as sparklers. They are accelerants to innovation. Another such spark these days is AI and the role it will play in rewriting everything we know about the industry. 

"We believe models that center on collaboration are the future of banking - it takes all of us to come together to drive true innovation. As financial services organizations look to transform on their hybrid, multicloud journeys, IBM Cloud - along with solutions including watsonx and IBM Cloud Pak for Data - provides the technical tooling and industry expertise that can help companies design solutions for fraud detection, personalized banking, and more." 
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‍- Prakash Pattni, Managing Director, IBM Cloud for Financial Services

Join Us!

Below are a few examples of how Machinelab can help your team with our roundtable concept…

• time-strapped banks looking for new and innovative solutions,
• scaleups looking to increase revenue or enter new markets,
• data or AI companies seeing how they can pivot to a new industry, or
• ecosystem players looking for vetted and validated deal flow (corporate venture funds, family offices, VCs, sovereign wealth funds, accelerators, and the like). 
  

You might be asking yourself how YOU can take part. Fill out the Contact Us form at the bottom of our website and we’ll be in touch! You can also hit us up on any of the social media platforms.

“If you’re a bank, ecosystem player, or scaleup, please reach out. We have a tremendous opportunity to be the change we wish to see in the industry. I’d love for you to be that change right with us.”
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- Dr. Melissa Sassi, Venture Partner, Machinelab Ventures

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