Irish Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donoho and the SFI Research Centre ADAPT have launched new €5m research FinTech Fusion programme, which will run for four years from 2018 to 2022.
The FinTech Fusion research program will focus on breakthroughs in three significant areas, including payment (PayTech), regulation (RegTech) and insurance (InsureTech).
Donohoe said: “The collaboration between industry and third level institutions in research programmes, such as FinTech Fusion, gives Ireland an early advantage in emerging technologies.”
SFI Research Centre ADAPT will be the head of new research program, which will include researchers from three existing SFI Research Centres such as ADAPT, Insight and Lero.
The program will also be supported by the IDA, FinTech and Payments Association of Ireland, Insurance Ireland, and Columbia University.
FinTech Fusion’s academic researchers will collaborate with various firms such as Deutsche Börse, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, Gecko Governance, FINEOS and Zurich, to develop FinTech innovations that can influence economies, markets, companies and individuals.
The new research program will study how financial technology is disrupting and transforming businesses from financial institutions to technology companies, including the retail and wholesale financial sector.
Based on the research, the program will create innovations to help create significant change in financial services on a global scale.
Distributed ledger systems will serve as alternative payment systems through offering faster and cheaper services.
Technological innovations such as blockchain-based frameworks will help decrease reduce human intervention and fraud, as well as increase transparency and efficiency.
Science Foundation Ireland will offer €2m for the program, and the remaining amount will be gathered via research agreements with industry partners.
ADAPT Centre’s FinTech Fusion director professor John Cotter said: “Fintech is the marriage between finance and technology and offers huge growth opportunities for Ireland both in research reputation and economic impact.”
