Blockchain Startup Crowdaura Selected for Accenture’s 2016 Fintech Innovation Lab in London

Accenture has unveiled the 15 startups that will compose its 2016 class for the Fintech Innovation Lab in London, a 12-week mentorship program that aims to help the most innovative fintech startups accelerate product development while giving them exposure to banks and financial institutions.

This year’s London Lab class includes Crowdaura, a startup that uses blockchain technology to automate activities such as documentation, marketing, distribution, clearing, settlement and servicing, providing thus a cost-effective solution to manage financial products.

Crowdaura offers three key technologies: a workflow management system that executes the issuance process, document standardization, investor management and cashflow administration; the Crowd Dynamics system that optimizes the marketing and distribution of securities; and a blockchain backbone acting as a depository, clearing and settlement service.

According to Dr. Avtar Sehra, founder and CEO of Crowdaura, using blockchain technology to execute clearing, settlement and depository services will be “one of the areas where there will be most of the ‘quick wins’ and real world financial applications due to significant cost and transparency benefits.”

In a recent blog post, Dr. Sehra indicated that Crowdaura was currently working on a private chain setup using open source protocols for niche closed industries, and an open source layer to use public blockchains, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, to issue securities and execute Delivery Versus Payment settlement and dividend administration using fiat currency.

“We are also looking at constructing a complete on-chain tradable option contract,” Dr. Sehra said.

“We think tradable options on the blockchain will be a game changer for the financial services industry in general and risk management specifically,” he expressed.

“We believe that as more finance experts start jumping into Ethereum and similar Blockchain protocols … the core development and exploration over 2016 will skyrocket and we will see many more advanced use cases.”

Crowdaura will be joining 14 other startups at Canary Wharf’s Level 39, the biggest hub of fintech talent in London, where the London Lab mentoring program will be hosted.

The London Lab is a collaboration between Accenture and 16 leading financial institutions, including Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Santander, HSBC, and USB.

The 15 startups will be partnered with senior-level bank executives. Six of them will be selected to present at an Investor Day in April 2016.

“Matching our experience with the creativity of the selected entrepreneurs is a proven way of developing technologies that bring real benefits to customers,” Stuart Gulliver, group chief executive of HSBC Holdings plc, said in a statement.

Kim Hammonds, chief operating officer and chief information officer of Deutsche Bank, said that embracing disruptive technology was “a priority for the banking sector,” noting that collaborating with startups was an important part of this process for the bank.

Alongside Crowdaura, other startups selected to join the program include:

• AimBrain, a mobile-focused biometric authentication platform targeted at banks and payment processors;
• Albert, a mobile platform for bookkeeping and financial planning targeted at self-employed and freelancers;
• AlgoDynamix, a portfolio risk analytics company providing fund managers, wealth managers, investment banks and trading houses with insights and anticipates price movements in advance;
• ClauseMatch, a collaborative document platform;
• Contego, a real-time identity and risk checks on companies and individuals;
• Cutover, a platform that aims to reduce risk and costs associated with live enterprise events;
• PassFort, a Compliance-As-A-Service web application;
• PayKey, the world’s first payment keyboard;
• Quotip, a management tool for structured financial products;
• SBDA Group, a machine learning company that allows banks to offer personalized and automated financial advice service to customers;
• TalentRank, a HR platform that trains and tests fundamental competencies and uncovers new talent;
• Undo, a set of specialized tools to improve software quality, robustness and security;
• Voleo, a mobile app that allows users to start a smart investment club to pool knowledge and funds and vote on trading decisions within their groups;
• ZeroDB, a company that provides end-to-end encrypted database protocol to help companies use cloud services without sacrificing control, security or privacy.

CoinJournal reached out to Crowdaura for comments but didn’t receive a response at the time of publication.