Funding Opportunities for Fintech
We cannot accuse the Horizon 2020 Framework Programmes of being driven by short-term trends, hypes and fads. The development cycle for the Work Programmes is far too long to be influenced by mainstream media or popular opinion. The 3-year time frame of the upcoming Work Programmes, the time between the deadline and the actual start of the projects, and the duration of the projects themselves prohibits aimless activism and requires strategic foresight.
Many technologies in the financial technology (Fintech) sector are well advanced in the hype cycle and are already mature enough to be applied in different domains. Horizon 2020 has always been open to projects that use big data and cloud computing technologies to support the financial industry, to proposals that promise to implement innovative financial instruments to finance the use of energy-efficient technologies, and to teams of researchers that are developing efficient and secure means of communication.
Even though digital ledgers, smart contracts and other Fintech technologies are mentioned only sparsely in the drafts of the upcoming Work Programmes, there will be many opportunities to create impact using these technologies in different areas. The challenges are to find appropriate topics, form capable teams and write convincing proposals that outline the impact to be created. The upcoming ICT Work Programme will most likely call for proposals on regulatory issues in the Fintech industry and ask for the application of blockchain, digital ledger and artificial intelligence technologies.
This is reason enough for the Fintech community to have a closer look at the Work Programmes to be published by the end of October 2017 and to ask the National Contact Points at Euresearch for help in identifiying funding opportunities.
Stefan Fischer, National Contact Point ICT & Energy
