Ohio welcomes global talent through startup accelerator Fintech71

Beyond the tech hubs of San Francisco and New York, one Midwest state is gunning to become a global center of innovation in financial technology — via a new accelerator program in Columbus, Ohio, that multiple banks and insurers are setting up.

Fintech71 is an accelerator program for startups operating in banking, payments, insurance, health care, investing and regtech. The accelerator is named for Interstate 71, the highway that connects Ohio’s largest cities of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. It’s sponsored by some important players such as KeyBank, Grange Insurance, Huntington Bank and Visa, along with JobsOhio, a nonprofit economic development corporation. Industry heavyweights including JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and Silicon Valley Bank will offer support through mentorship. Backers of the accelerator are keen on keeping local talent in the state and attracting global innovators who could possibly set up shop there.

The world is fighting over people with good ideas,” said Ray Leach, CEO of JumpStart, a Cleveland-based nonprofit and venture development group.

Fintech71 will be housed in 15,000 square feet of space in a remodeled art deco building in Columbus located across the street from the Ohio Statehouse. The Columbus location is a nod to the area’s prominence to the sector, where JPMorgan Chase’s largest tech hub in the world and Morgan Stanley’s recently launched center of excellence are housed. Columbus’ recent designation by real estate and investment firm CBRE as a “new city of finance” seems appropriate.

“The financial services industry is the second-largest private industry in Ohio — you wouldn’t necessarily think that, but there’s a huge number of insurance companies and banks, a lot of acquiring banks, and innovation in fintech is increasingly important for Ohio’s economy,” said Leach.

For one bank partner, the accelerator is a hands-on way of supporting innovation in priority areas it has already identified.

“There are a number of institutions that are writing checks to the fintech companies, and that’s an exploratory method,” said Ken Gavrity, head of KeyBank’s commercial payments group and a Fintech71 board member. “But for us, we start with a customer pain point, what are the salient points, and from that, we work backwards.”

Among the areas being considered, priorities include payments, digital banking and institutional processes, Gavrity said.

The 12 companies selected will be offered $100,000 in investment (Fintech71 takes up to a 6 percent equity stake in the companies) and 10 weeks of training in Columbus. Matt Armstead, executive director of Fintech71, said he hopes the accelerator can help retain the talent coming out of some of Ohio’s best universities, and at the same time, attract some of the best global talent.

“We need to be supportive to bring in anyone from anywhere, and that includes people from around the world,” he said. “We need more diversity in startups.” Armstead added that Fintech71, working with JobsOhio, can help new companies, including those from outside of the country, wade through the red tape to get their businesses off the ground. 

Jeff Carter, a general partner at West Loop Ventures, a Chicago-based venture capital firm that focuses on financial technology companies, said the Midwest offers new companies low labor and real estate costs, along with an ecosystem of support. The accelerator program is a good strategy to get startups to stay in the area.

If they have early success, they’ll stay there,” he said.

Carter said in contrast to the coastal fintech hubs of New York and San Francisco that have major players in business-to-consumer technology, the Midwest has long been a center of innovation for business-to-business financial technology products. 

For KeyBank, the accelerator is an opportunity to begin longer-term partnerships or even set the stage for future acquisitions.

“Those business options are always on the table,” said Gavrity. “It may not happen in the accelerator, but maybe it’s five years down the road — anytime we can be early in the funnel to tap talent, that’s a great place for KeyBank to be.”

Photo of Fintech71 workspace courtesy of JobsOhio / Mark Wiggins

Big banks top 5 online media center designs

Banks’ digital media centers often resemble a bullet-pointed Word document, circa the mid-1980s. As newsrooms are the website space designated for banks to broadcast their most newsworthy news, it’s interesting that from a design perspective, most banks have left their newsroom pages to fossilize and petrify.

However, a few banks are breaking free of the monotonous newsroom mold to offer up a content product that’s actually alluring.

Here’s our top 5.

United States

BNY Mellon

In 2014, BNY Mellon released its revamped newsroom, and boy, a lot of thought went into it. After years of going down the beaten press release track, the megabank decided it was time for a change. “We recognize that that’s not how people consume their news currently,” said Colleen Krieger of the bank’s corporate communications in the newsroom’s release video.

bny-mellon

Instead of bullet points, the newsroom is organized more like a magazine interface, in keeping with millennial reading preferences. The content itself matches the design’s millennial vibe, with world finance news coexisting happily with top exec interviews, blockchain experiment announcements, and tips from BNY Mellon interns. 

J.P.Morgan Chase

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the United States’ largest bank by total assets has invested in its news design, and it shows. Although the newsroom itself is fairly drab, their news tab is current. The bank hasn’t entirely done away with the bullet-point press release system, it’s only one facet of the newsroom – and it’s in blue. The rest of the newsroom consists of a mix of written, visual, and video content arranged in boxes of varying sizes.

jpm

For the parent company, the newsroom is very community-oriented, showcasing a number of programs and bank employees that are dedicated to giving back. While Chase’s newsroom is a grid of boxes with smiling people giving down-to-earth financial advice, it appears the company doesn’t think this relaxed vibe should extend to its investment arm. JPMorgan’s newsroom is a press release listicle in blue.

United Kingdom

The Royal Bank of Scotland

The UK’s third largest bank by assets easily wins the UK newsroom design competition. While the Kingdom’s other four big banks have stuck with the tried-and-true bullet point system, RBS’ newsroom is much more similar to JPM’s boxed blog-like format, with vibrant images to go with a wide range of topics: financial advice, economic analysis, developments and the bank, and CSR.

rbs

European Union

Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank also seems to have grasped the basic principle that the listicle newsrooms of yesteryear are out. Instead, the German bank’s media center has opted for an assortment of boxes with news inside. However, the design – and the content – is much less vibrant than BNY Mellon’s. The colors are more subdued, the boxes are side by side, not interlocked, and the announcements are for bankers, not youngsters.

skitch-1

Still, replacing the list system with the box system demonstrates that Deutsche Bank is thinking out of the box. Interestingly, online German bank N26, whose tagline is “Banking by Design”, wasn’t particularly creative with its newsroom design.

ING Bank

ING Bank’s newsroom design is a long way from BNY Mellon’s Pinterest-like interface, but it wins points for adding a splash of color, the brand’s trademark orange, as well as pictures.

So while their newsroom is still just press releases, it looks more like a media publication than a list typed up on a word processor that’s still running on Windows XP.

At least they’re trying.