UK: Innovation in Professional and Financial Services (Collaboration)

Deadline: 9-Nov-22

The Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation is seeking applications for its Innovation in Professional and Financial Services – collaboration grant to develop new products and services within Professional and Financial Services.

Aims

The aim of this competition is to advance the Professional and Financial Services sectors by supporting them in the creation and adoption of new digitally supported services.

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• Legal services
• Accountancy and audit
• Insurance
• Open finance innovation
• Financial planning and support for consumers and SME's
• Financial regulatory compliance and financial crime prevention (such as fraud and anti money laundering)
• Payments and transactions

Your project must include the following:

• Clear consideration of user experience and design
• Consideration of broader, non-technical aspects including ethics, privacy, transparency and Regulatory requirements
• Consideration of barriers to adoption within these sectors and approaches to address them
• Quantify how the solution will be exploited

Your project must address innovation in the relevant areas.

Themes

Innovate UK is particularly encouraging applications that:

• Are for projects that increase access of the services to underserved or excluded communities, individuals, and businesses.
• Cover more than one sector in scope.
• Address broad sector wide needs.
• Involve collaborations with professional and financial service providers.
• Are multidisciplinary and include social science as well as science and engineering.

Research Categories

The competition scope will specify the category of research and development (R&D) activity for that particular competition.

Innovate UK supports the following R&D categories:

• Fundamental research
• Feasibility studies
• Industrial research
• Experimental development.

Sectors

Your proposal must show how you will help these sectors:

• To deliver better products and services
• Increase access to these services
• Make these services more effective for their customers

Funding Information

• Your project's total grant funding request must be between £50,000 and £500,000.

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • have a total grant funding request between £50,000 and £500,000
    • start by 1 April 2023
    • last between 6 and 18 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from gold in the UK
    • You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
    • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
    • If your total project's grant funding request or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email at least 10 working days before the competition closes. Innovate UK will decide whether to approve your request. If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
• lead organization
  • To lead a project your organization must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • collaborate with other eligible UK registered organizations
    • if you are a large organization, include at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • Academic institutions and research and technology organizations (RTOs) cannot lead.
• Project-team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organization must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organization
    • research and technology organization (RTO)

For more information, visit Innovate UK.

For more information, visit https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1289/overview/2036e5d0-65d0-460e-b40e-cf1b5d875ca1