MANAMA: A series of nationwide fintech innovation challenges titled ‘Bahrain Open Banking Supernova 2022’ have been launched by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB).

Hosted on FinHub 973, the CBB’s Digital Lab, the competition will see regional financial institutions tackling real market challenges related to financial services, aimed at finding customer-centric solutions revolving around open banking use cases across fintech, regtech and insurtech.

Innovators and fintech startups will have access to an API sandbox with 330+ APIs and simulated data sets from local and regional banks to enable rapid and seamless proofs of concept (PoC).

FinHub 973 is powered by open innovation firm Fintech Galaxy.

Aimed at furthering the development of the fintech sector in Bahrain, the challenges align with the CBB’s digital strategy to boost collaboration and integration between financial institutions and startups utilising open APIs.

The challenges provide innovators with the ability to accelerate the testing of their innovations to enrich the financial services industry in Bahrain with novel solutions across FinTech, RegTech and InsurTech.

Contestants will be able to submit their proposals via the FinHub 973 digital platform, addressing problem statements under the following themes: Benefit – open banking for consumer lending; Bank ABC – autonomous financial advisor leveraging open banking and Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB) – straight-through processing solution.

The Benefit pitch competition is on May 26, the Bank ABC pitch competition is on June 30, and the BisB pitch competition is on July 5.

A judging panel comprising of executives from each of the financial institutions, along with subject matter experts, will then announce the winners of the above challenges.

Commenting, Yasmeen Al Sharaf, director of fintech and innovation unit at the CBB, said: “We are delighted to announce our second annual fintech challenge, the Bahrain Supernova 2022, which will again be hosted on our digital lab, FinHub 973.

The ecosystem in Bahrain is rapidly accelerating in terms of its breadth and innovative scope, delivering enormous opportunities for socio-economic development to support our transition towards a digital economy. This challenge provides innovators with an incredible platform for development within an enabling regulatory framework.”

Also commenting was Mirna Sleiman, chief executive and founder of Fintech Galaxy, who said: “Since our first challenge in June 2021, we have seen incredible advances in artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud services that are transformative, unleashing new opportunities and global solutions.

This year, the Bahrain Open Banking Supernova will help leverage these technologies and accelerate Bahrain’s transformation towards an inclusive, AI-powered digital economy that reaffirms the vision of the Central Bank of Bahrain to expand infrastructure in financial technology, unlock innovation opportunities, and introduce new and innovative financial products to the market.”

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