The World’s Biggest Fintech Competition launches for its tenth year

Once again the competition will look to find the very best fintech ideas from anywhere in the world before offering the winners the chance to grow their business with a leading global business.

BBVA is looking for the fintech ideas that will shape the future of banking, that will support customers to make the most of their money and their data, and that will help customers reduce the stress of money management and financial decision-making.

The bank is also seeking out those solutions that will make businesses run more efficiently, operate more effectively, and work in entirely new and innovative ways.

Ultimately, through Open Talent, BBVA wants to foster and support disruption in the banking sector, and to ensure that technology can continue to work as a catalyst for positive change in an ecosystem where industry lines are blurring and great customer and client experience is a key driver for success.

Rewarding industry disruption, customer experience, and business transformation

The prizes for finalists and winners have been designed on feedback from the thousands of business that have taken part in the competition over the previous nine years, to support business growth.

As well as a €150,000 prize fund for the overall winners, dozens of finalists will get the chance to take part in an immersion week with the bank, learning how to partner with a big corporate, potentially becoming a customer, and finding solutions to their specific business challenges from expertise within the bank and its partners. What's more, while the winners will automatically get fast-tracked onto the bank’s proof of concept (PoC) workstream, so too will the top ideas seen throughout the submission process.

BBVA will also partner with the best start-ups it sees to help them address three of the biggest challenges facing fintechs: gaining exposure for their business,  sourcing investment, and finding customers.

For the tenth anniversary, the competition will be streamlined, with three main prizes on offer:

• Fintech for Future: the idea most like to reshape and disrupt banking in the next decade.

Prize fund of €50,000, plus immersion week at the bank, plus exposure at a major global banking conference, plus fast-tacked onto PoC programme, plus a slot at BBVA’s Open Innovation Global Summit in Madrid.

• Fintech for People: the idea most likely to improve the customer banking experience and positively change the way people manage their money and data.

Prize fund of €50,000, plus immersion week at the bank, plus exposure at a major global banking conference, plus fast-tacked onto PoC programme, plus a slot at BBVA’s Open Innovation Global Summit in Madrid.

• Fintech for Business: the idea most likely to transform the way businesses manage the financial or data side of their operations.

Prize fund of €50,000, plus immersion week at the bank, plus exposure at a major global banking conference, plus fast-tacked onto PoC programme, plus a slot at BBVA’s Open Innovation Global Summit in Madrid.

Supporting global startups addressing the biggest banking challenges

BBVA will also be inviting the best fintech solutions from each of the 11 countries in which it operates to take part in the immersion week at its headquarters in Madrid, and to take part in the BBVA Open Innovation Global Summit - which will see a gathering of influencers, investors, and potential partners comes together in the Spanish capital.

Throughout the year, BBVA will also partner with businesses that meet specific challenges the bank is seeking to solve, such as artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technology, insurtech, consumer finance, and asset management to name a few.

Speaking at the launch, BBVA’s Global Head of Customer and Client Solutions, Derek White, said: “BBVA Open Talent is a clear example of how the bank has been working with the fintech sector for many years, and supporting the innovation that is driving the financial services industry.

“Don’t underestimate the impact of this competition - if you are a start-up looking to kick-start your growth, then the insights, relationships, opportunities, and networks you can build through Open Talent create massive impact.”

BBVA’s Head of Open Innovation, Marisol Menendez, added: “It is now the tenth year in a row we have worked to partner with the world's best fintechs to put amazing in the hands of our customers and clients.

“This year we have decided to change things up a bit, and to ensure the feedback we get from the whole fintech start-up ecosystem is incorporated into the event. The aim is a totally win-win initiative for BBVA, for the start-ups, and ultimately for the customers and clients who will be the beneficiaries of the products and services being developed.”

Menendez added that what impresses her most about the competition are the mutual learnings both BBVA and the start-ups get from it. She said: “What we saw last year, especially with the culmination at our now annual Open Summit, was the energy the partnerships create - not just between BBVA and the start-ups, but the connections they make with investors, with business opportunities, and with each other.

“Fostering this kind of mutually beneficial fintech ecosystem is really what Open Talent is all about.”

Last year´s event saw around 1,000 applicants from 77 different countries take part, with the ultimate winner being an AI-powered personal assistant solution, Change.

Throughout the course of its ten-year history, BBVA Open Talent has see more than 6000 applications from more than 80 countries. In the last two years, the event has created 221 collisions between the bank and fintechs, and 34 proof of concepts. BBVA now works with seven companies who have taken part in the competition since 2016.

Already in 2018, BBVA has signed an agreement with one previous participant, which will sell its home insurance solution through the BBVA Seguros platform in Argentina.

Find out more and register for Open Talent 2018 here.