Machine Learning, Blockchain Headline FinTech Innovation Lab Demo Day

The eight startups were picked by senior tech executives from 16 participating financial firms. The program was created by Accenture and Partnership Fund for New York. Bank of America, Barclays Capital, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and UBS have all participated in the lab since its inception in 2010.

David Reilly, BoA CTO, made a brief speech prior to the presentations, during which he said his firm had three key takeaways from the program: It gives exposure to new technologies in an efficient way, it helps build out the fintech ecosystem locally, and it continues to push innovative ways to approach problems.

"It helps us ensure that we're disrupting our own thought patterns and our own ideas about where technology solutions might come from," Reilly said.

AI and Blockchain

Of the eight vendors, all but one touched on the institutional space. Of those seven startups, three were based around machine learning and artificial intelligence (Quarule, Syndicated Loan Direct, untapt) while two were in the blockchain space (AlphaPoint and Cambridge Blockchain).

"Every year we seem to have a different theme, and this year the theme I would say is artificial intelligence," Maria Gotsch, Partnership Fund for New York

Quarule focuses on automating risk controls and compliance certification. Syndicated Loan Direct looks to simplify unstructured legal debt documents by obtaining the necessary information using artificial intelligence. Untapt is a hiring platform that places technologists with hiring managers using an ever-evolving algorithm.

"Every year, we seem to have a different theme, and this year the theme I would say is artificial intelligence," Maria Gotsch, president and CEO of the Partnership Fund for New York, tells WatersTechnology. "I think that's an indication of how the technology has matured to the point where it can be used within an enterprise setting by a young company."

In the distributed ledger space, AlphaPoint's platform helps clients use blockcahin technology to issue, track and trade digital assets. Cambridge Blockchain, which won Santander Innoventures Distributed Ledger Challenge this year, is an identity-management platform via blockchain.

Other fintechs included 51maps, a platform that helps firms integrate their applications in a central dashboard accessible via any device, and T-Rex, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering focused on risk analysis and the valuation of assets.

New Fintech Hotspot

This year's demo day comes on the heels of a report produced by the Accenture and Partnership Fund for New York that showed fintech venture financing in New York surpassed Silicon Valley during the first quarter of 2016.

According to the report, Finteh's Golden Age, $690 million was invested in fintechs in New York compared to $511 million in Silicon Valley during the first quarter of 2016. The report also states that last year, fintech investment in New York tripled to $2.3 billion and accounted for roughly 10 percent of all fintech investment worldwide.

"I think what we're starting to hear is a recognition that if you're going to be building these systems in financial services that are more than just retail facing, you really need to be in New York, because that's where the domain expertise is," Gotsch says "I mean the level of sophistication of people in New York surpasses anywhere else in the country. I think there is recognition that it is a challenging sector in which to innovate given the regulatory regime. Here you have people who actually have expertise in regulation and this idea of partnering and leveraging that, I think you're now starting to see the fruits of that."