Barclays today announced that Rainmaking, a leading corporate venture builder, has been chosen as an innovation partner. With the support of Rainmaking, Barclays will launch a new suite of initiatives targeted at FinTech founders across the globe, from early-stage to scale-up and beyond, to help grow and develop their companies.
The first to launch is the Rise Start-Up Academy, a virtual digital skills-building accelerator targeted to idea- and early-stage FinTech founders. Applications are already open for founders addressing emerging FinTech trends including wealth equality, climate, the future of money and more. At a later date, Rise Growth Academy will be launched to provide capability development around key areas such as investment readiness, recruitment, accelerating sales and leadership development.
A FinTech Venture Studio will also go live later this year and focus on co-developing new FinTech ventures through working with internal talent, start-ups and other leading companies.
This partnership will support Barclays in its ambition to transform banking for the customers and clients it serves. The Barclays Group Innovation team will work closely with start-ups at the forefront of innovation to bring new products and services to market at pace and scale.
“Innovation is critical in driving growth in today’s challenging business environment and in solving some of the most pressing problems society faces today,” said Mariquit Corcoran, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Barclays. “We have been humbled and changed by the incredible FinTechs we have worked with, and we understand first-hand the power of collaboration to evolve and unlock opportunities for our customers, clients, colleagues and the communities in which we operate. We are very excited to work with Rainmaking to further push the boundaries of corporate innovation and ensure collaboration is at the heart of our FinTech strategy.”
