FinQuest by Alpha Bank: The second edition of the international digital innovation competition has been completed

Co-organized by Found.ation and with the support of 9 other partners, FinQuest by Alpha Bank, a digital innovation competition, was held for the second year in a row.

This year, the challenge was accepted by over 70 startups from 13 different countries. Seven of these startups qualified and joined the 5-week accelerator program. During this period, the teams developed their innovative proposals under the guidance of a large team of mentors and coaches, and finally presented them at the final Pitch-Event. This event was held digitally on December 9, and the three best solutions were granted cash prizes (5,000, 3,000 and 2,000 euros), to an online audience of more than 300 people.

The teams were evaluated based on four criteria:

• The identification of a specific problem or gap in the market that the application / solution is called to face and its main characteristics,

• The degree of innovation of the application in comparison with similar applications in the domestic and international market,

• The ease of implementation of the application by the bank, depending on the time and cost required, and

• The impact in terms of meeting the real needs of the bank and / or their customers.

The first prize was awarded to Wealthyhood (Alexandros Christodoulakis and Konstantinos Faliagkas). Based in the UK, the company offers an Open Banking wealth management solution, through their personalized and commission-free wealth management app.

The second prize was won by Finqware (Cosmin Cosma, Elena Cosma, Danut Covalciuc). Based in Romania, this is a cloud-based, custom-built platform for Open Banking, offering an off-the-shelf solution for real-time treasury.

The third prize was awarded to the Greek company Finloup (Antonis Prentzas, Marios Noutsos, Kyriakos Georgiou and Stelios Gasparinatos). Based in Greece, this is a software platform that enables point-of-service microloans by bringing machine learning and Open Banking together.

We are happy to have been selected by Alpha Bank to collaborate on FinQuest for the same year in a row and can’t wait to see new solutions being implemented in its services!