We want to come up with ideas capable of being the answers to the worldwide problems of the financial services industry and then share the resulting value with entrepreneurs who have succeeded in becoming a team in areas in which we see serious value being created in light of trends which we think we need or which we see and follow around the world. We want to support entrepreneurs in their efforts to make their own companies world-beating successes by making our contribution to the “partnership” in the form of the general idea, the finance to nurture that idea, and first/reference customer and then giving them the benefit of the mentoring, other services, and experience needed to become a viable business. We provide this support under four main headings, which is why we’re calling it “TEB FinTech Future Four” for the time being.
Our idea
We gave a lot of thought to what these four main headings should be. Come and share with us in the TEB BNP Paribas world your FinTech solutions in the following areas. Let’s develop them together and make a significant mark of our own on the future of banking.
If you think that you can make such advances and your algorithm provides ways to offer brand-new solutions to the things you dream about now, we invite you to join the TEB BNP Paribas global community in order to develop your ideas with a bank in the real world.
CUSTOMER FIRST:
Know Your Customer / Data Security
As financial institutions, we operate in accordance with the “Know Your Customer” principle: we analyze customers’ needs, we manage customer risks, and we keep customer information current. And the reason we do all this is customer security.
Possessing both the information (identity and address confirmation, occupation, etc) that must be supplied to become a bank’s customer and customer-related data and updating that data at regular intervals are very important to a bank’s ability to know its customers. At the same time the information that customers share with banks should also be checked at regular intervals so as to keep track of any changes. Moreover the confidentiality of customer information and its security in the mobile and internet environments is becoming increasingly more important.
DIGITAL CONSULTING SERVICES:
Robo-advisory
Although there may be differences in specific details and practices throughout the world, so-called “robo-advisors” are essentially algorithm-driven software systems that provide customers with investment advisory services. Such systems are not actively used in our country at present. We would be eager to see and would like to work together on robo-advisory products and services that have been adapted to local customer profiles as well as different/original algorithms/business models that are capable of leading to innovations not just in Turkey but around the world.
Virtual customer relationship management
In today’s increasingly more hectic pace in every aspect of working and living, banking finds itself having to respond to people’s increasingly greater needs. Innovative new products and services are constantly being developed and offered to make life easier.
The virtual customer service representative or specialist is an up-and-coming new concept that allows customers to take care of their banking business whenever they want and wherever they may be. We believe that advances and new ideas in virtual customer relationship management will open a new era in banking. Brand-new opportunities are made possible by secure infrastructures that recognize users, by improvements in mobile technology, and by the ability to interact with many more objects and at higher speeds over the internet. Supported by advances in artificial intelligence, these systems are increasingly evolving into personal-solution-focused structures that interact with a user’s interests and wishes. We believe that models which use artificial intelligence to achieve such personalization and which have been adapted to meet the needs of banking could add more value at every stage of people’s lives and become the factor that determines an individual’s choice of bank in the future.
BIG DATA:
Real-Time Marketing
We want to know our customers; indeed we want to know them very well. We also give extra importance to data security. In other words we don’t just know: we also keep that knowledge secure. To do this, we engage in a never-ending effort to deliver better service through big data. Marketing activities nowadays thrive and expand through big data, which is constantly getting bigger through the addition of real-time harvested and customer-supplied information.
New Payment / Merchant Technologies
Payment Systems and technologies are developing and changing every day. We know that we have all the vision and technology and our country is far ahead of other countries on this area. Upon this, we are looking for ideas that will provide products and services for businesses with integrated POS and cash register tablets via cable. We want to be placed as, "TEB POS can do this" in mind.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
Loyalty / Gamification
By far the most common credit card and POS system practices in Turkey involve bank-supplied creative incentives such as points, cash-backs, and similar rewards that vendors and cardholders earn when the cards and devices are used to pay for purchases. In most cases these systems include additional discounts that are provided when purchases are made from merchant partners (including travel agents) with which banks have entered into agreements. Loyalty programs which go beyond existing ones, whose specifics have been adapted to our own country’s customer profile and segmentation, which break new ground in both physical and digital/mobile systems, which increase a bank’s card and POS customer use numbers and volumes through the use of game mechanisms, and which have innovative features capable of attracting new card and POS users would be in demand not just at TEB in Turkey but in the 80 countries where BNP Paribas has a presence. In particular, anything which would allow retail users’ spending habits to be monitored and managed and which would encourage such users to save would be very important for banks in particular and for the promotion of thrift in Turkey in general. Moreover modernized, “no-frills” branches and branches which have been laid out to address specific customer segments are going to become increasingly more important in the future of the banking industry. The low-costs solutions supplied through these channels could easily satisfy customers’ needs for products and services that do not entail the provision of advice or guidance.
What we expect from you
First of all we expect you to develop one or more of these four general ideas through your own knowledge, research, experience, and abilities: in other words we expect you to create your own original idea yourself. Supposing you had our support, what sort of alpha-level product or service do you think your 2-3 person team could come up with in three to six months? What sorts of algorithms, interfaces, operational mechanisms would you transform into a world-class product or service? We’re asking you to present a business plan of not more than a page and a half. We think this plan should include such sections as the particulars of the product you’ve got in mind, the value it adds, the resources you’ll need, the timing, the team, the methodology, and what you expect us to do. You don’t need to include information about the existence of the problem or market dimensions: we think we’ve already got a good idea about those things.
What will we be doing as a bank?
First off we have to tell you what we won’t be doing. We’re involved in something the likes of which has never been seen before in the corporate world.
If this were something that we needed for example, we’d just buy it or outsource it.
If we didn’t think there was some world-class thing that only you could achieve through your creativity, we’d do it ourselves. Or if the ideas were entirely your own we’d “incubate” or “accelerate” them.
To be honest we don’t quite know what to call what it is we’re doing and maybe you can help us out with that too. But for the time being we’re calling it “TEB FinTech Future Four”.
We’ll provide you with enough time and access to finance, bank data, and experts to get out an alpha-level product. In return for that we would hope to be the first/reference customer for your product under fair-market conditions. Two bank executives who are specialists in private banking and retail banking and executives responsible for the bank’s IT systems will sit with with you once a month in meetings during which they’ll give you advice and help on how to make more progress with your idea. The financial support which the bank provides is to be used to take care of whatever needs you wish during or, if you’re a team, to defray your costs during the incubation period. We will make an effort to give you access to other agencies and organizations which the bank works closely with. Our only condition is a limited period of exclusivity in Turkey: we will have no other restrictions or claims of shares or rights. Is that hard to believe? There’s more…
Our partners get involved
Our consulting partner Smyrna Capital (www.smyrnacapital.com) will be providing the team it selects with financial support during the alpha-product stage. Because they will be working closely with these investors, the teams will have full to invaluable advice concerning a host of issues ranging from setting up a company in another country to legal advice, from accounting practices to taking on partners, and from applying for patents to attracting customers. They’ll also have access to the business management consultancy, entrepreneurship training, and office and other support services provided by TEB Startup Business Banking and likewise be entitled to make a presentation to the members of the TEB Private Investor Society, Turkey’s award-winning and most active angel investment network.
Selection and corporate incubation processes
Because we’re aspiring to do something that’s never been done before, there must also be things that we don’t know or can’t foresee right now. That’s why, just as we’re willing to take a chance with you, we’re asking you to take a chance with us and believe that we’re sincere when we say that there are things that can’t be anticipated at the moment. So let’s learn together, dream together, and create together as venturesome partners who believe in each other.
The future!
We know the day will arrive when technologies that transform the world of banking and finance will come from Turkey too. We are TEB and innovation is in our DNA. We’ve always been supporting startups with innovative programs like startup business banking and the TEB Angel Investment Platform. That’s because the day will arrive when a technology giant will come from Turkey too.
Through the FinTech Program that we’re launching today we’re giving brand-new support to innovative financial technology ideas.
Because;
Startups need banks. Through the FinTech Program we’ll be giving startups the benefit of
our infrastructure and experience, of financial support for their first project, and
even their first customer. And to make this a reality, we’re looking for bright and
creative people who can come up with innovative solutions for the problems and needs of
the banking & financial services industry.
We at TEB believe:
Banks by themselves are not going to determine the future of the banking & financial services industry.
We think that the vision of the future we dream of for our industry will be possible only through an innovation model in which banks and startups work together and startups demonstrate their creativity. That’s why today we’re saying to startups and would-be startups: If you join the TEB FinTech Future Four Programs, technologies that will shape the future of the world of the banking & financial services industry will be arriving very soon.
TEB Fintech Future Four offers 20.000 USD financial support for the first product of all selected projects.