Our member Raiffesisen Bank International’s Partnership Program Elevator Lab’s fourth round took place virtually in the second half of 2020. Elevator Lab had been selected as one of the “Best Financial Innovation Labs in 2020” by the Global Finance. The Lab aims at finding innovative fintech solutions and building mutually beneficial partnerships between RBI and fintechs.
This year, RBI’s subsidiary banks played an even more active role in setting the search topics and choosing the most promising solutions to be tested locally, that are aligned with the head office in Vienna. Three tracks of the global Elevator Lab Programs were organized in 2020, with four selected winners:
Under the Advanced Analytics and Loyalty Solutions topic, the jury from Romanian subsidiary bank selected iFactor, a fintech which is developing an engine used for fraud detection during the factoring process and the jury from the Bulgarian subsidiary bank chose Synerise, which focuses on customer experience and growth development in the e-commerce sector.
Under the Value added Services for Large Corporates topic, RBI’s head-office chose FinLync, a fintech which strives to develop white-label applications for real-time cash management, trade finance reporting and exchange rates integration, directly embedded in the corporate’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) environment, thus enabling RBI to communicate end-to-end with corporate customers.
Under the Bank as a Platform topic, jury from the Slovakian subsidiary selected Zentity which offers a platform that allows customers to use multiple services of third-party merchants without downloading separate apps.
The four fintechs together with mentors and experts from RBI’s subsidiary banks and head office, are going to work on developing Proofs of Concepts (PoC). In the second quarter of 2021, the fintech solutions will be tested in the PoC phase, and then not only they will be presented at a Demo Day but also evaluated for a potential partnership.
RBI regards Austria, where it is a leading corporate and investment bank, as well as Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) as its home market. 13 markets of the region are covered by subsidiary banks. Additionally, the RBI Group comprises numerous other financial service providers, for instance in leasing, asset management or M&A. Around 46,000 employees service 16.8 million customers through approx. 2,000 business outlets, the by far largest part thereof in CEE. RBI's shares are listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. The Austrian Regional Raiffeisen Banks own around 58.8 per cent of the shares, the remainder is in free float. Within the Austrian Raiffeisen Banking Group, RBI is the central institute of the Regional Raiffeisen Banks and other affiliated credit institutions.
