Bankia creates a headquarters for ‘Spanish and foreign’ fintechs in Madrid

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

Bankia has become one of the most proactive Spanish financial institutions in supporting projects with fintech. As a result, the bank created the Bankia Fintech by Innsomnia project, which is now in its fourth edition. 400 financial startups have already been submitted to this initiative.

Now, and within this impulse, Bankia's President José Ignacio Goirigolzarri is about to finish the works of a headquarters for financial startups in Madrid, located in Fuencarral street.

It will be the second headquarters after the one that opened in Valencia at the end of 2016 located in the Marina of Valencia, and which is known as the Valencian Silicon Valley because of the presence of Lanzadera. The objective of Bankia is to inaugurate this new Madrid headquarters in the coming weeks.

It will be a national and international startup workspace selected in the calls of the financial institution.

This new headquarters will have an area of ​​350 square meters, with open work areas, conceived as a diaphanous and versatile space, in which open work areas and modular rooms of different dimensions are located.

Sources of the entity affirm that with its design it is possible to “develop a dynamic work, of innovation and of creation and generation of projects”.

The same Bankia sources explain that the construction of this new Madrid headquarters responds “to the enormous and growing interest of startups to collaborate with Bankia, and will constitute a new impetus to the collaboration project with the best financial startups in any country.”

Bankia Fintech is the first Fintech incubator and accelerator in the country, according to sources from the banking institution. In addition, “it is the flagship of collaboration and mutual support between Bankia and financial startups.

The main objective of this project promoted by Bankia, and managed by Innsomnia, is to promote innovation in the fintech sector through the execution of a centennials program or the Z generation are those born between 1990 and 2010. Incubation and acceleration directed to startups, which has a duration of seven months.

In the four editions of Bankia Fintech by Innsomnia that have already been held, almost 400 startups have been submitted and almost 50 projects have been accelerated, of which 20% came from outside Spain.

60% of the fintech that have participated in these programs have ended up integrating their prototypes as internal products of the bank or for their clients.

The 16 finalist startups of the fourth call are:

Pangea MT, Newralers, Flip Simply, My Digital Legacy, Feel Capital, Finweg, Nodalblock, Snapswap, E-customs, Inbest, Opseeker, Afterbanks, Clicpiso, Coinigence, Scanovate and Coinscrap.

Bankia explains that the V call has already been launched, which has the following deadlines: Reception of projects: from July 22 to October 15 of this year inclusive. Between October 15 and November 15, the evaluation and selection of projects will proceed. On the 15th of 2019 the selected projects will be communicated. And on November 21 the program will start, which will close on June 24, 2020.

The programs, whose cost Bankia assumes, include specific mentoring and adapted to the technological development needs of the project, with a double follow-up by Innsomnia and senior mentors recognized in the fintech field.

To this is added, among other initiatives, value-added services to grow the project, technology credits with strategic partners, the possibility of reaching an agreement with Bankia, a network of professional contacts with multinationals and the possibility of obtaining investors and public financing for Continue developing the project of the entrepreneurs that are presented to the program, they explain from the bank.

Goirigolzarri has repeatedly reiterated that in Bankia “we face technological change, not as a threat, but as an opportunity. And in front of the new competitors, our strategy is of collaboration and alliance. And that is why we created Bankia Fintech by Insomnia with the objective of incubating and accelerating both national and international startups ”.

Bankia's incubation and acceleration program has an estimated cost of around 24,000 euros per selected project.

The entity that chairs Goirigolzarri competes directly with BBVA, the other Spanish bank (first in this case) that has opted for fintech projects.

THE BANK OF THE ‘CENTENNIALS’

The future of the sector. The bank believes that the great challenge today is to attract centennials or the Z generation as clients (those born between 1990 and 2010). These young people are digital native absolutes, Bankia explains on their website, gathering the arguments of the Interactive Advertising Bureau for Spain. This report ensures that centennials have buying behaviors that are far from millennials. And "they take advantage of the offers and the discount coupons", in a way because "their purchasing power is lower and their frequency of purchase is reduced." However, and there comes the role of banking and fintech, "they value the diversity of payment, the customization of offers and are highly susceptible to online advertising." The fintech, the study maintains, have come to cover some of these needs by offering solutions that give these young consumers and next banking customers some freedom, creating only digital products and with a high parental control.

Solidarity projects Bankia supports this year with more than 1.3 million euros 79 solidarity projects in the Community of Madrid with collaboration agreements with the Montemadrid Foundation, with the Red Cross, Caritas and the Padre Piquer Training Center, as well as the Red Solidaria program, to through which bank employees support initiatives of social entities based on the achievement of the business objectives of the office network.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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