Polytech Ventures Teams up With Temenos to Launch First Swiss FinTech Incubator

Press Releases, February 4, 2015

Temenos – Company

GENEVA at Seedstars World – 4 February 2015 –Temenos (SIX: TEMN) and Polytech Ventures today announce the launch of Switzerland’s first fintech incubator: Fusion, the Swiss Fintech Factory. Fusion will be based out of premises in the heart of Geneva and will bring together fintech start-ups from all over the world.

While several fintech incubators already exist in cities such as London and New York, this will be the first fintech incubator in Switzerland. Fusion hopes to capitalise on the country’s rich banking heritage, its existing business networks as well as its reputation for innovation in order to foster a dynamic fintech scene while working with established banks and financial services companies to strengthen Switzerland’s role as a financial services hub.

Polytech Ventures will provide funding for the start-ups while an ecosystem of corporate members and partners will provide expertise, mentoring and sponsorship. Temenos is the first corporate member to become involved with the incubator, but it is anticipated that there will be others, drawn from relevant industries such as banking, insurance and telecommunications. In addition, several local companies have agreed to provide resources, such as Safe Host, a datacentre and business continuity services provider, and there will also be academic partners, in particular Idiap, an affiliated research institute of the Ecole Polytechnqiue de Lausanne, one of Europe’s top 10 engineering universities.

Launched today, the incubator will be fully operational by the autumn. At present, the team is actively soliciting applications from fintech start-ups and it will run a boot camp in the summer to decide which firms will gain a place at the incubator.

Guillaume Dubray, Managing Partner at Polytech Ventures commented:

“This is a good time to launch a fintech incubator and Switzerland is the perfect place. The financial services industry is in the throes of digitization, opening up the possibility for new business models and ventures. The aim of the Fusion incubator is to bring together the best of Switzerland, a collaboration between a broad ecosystem of corporate members drawn from multiple sectors, academia and fintech start-ups, to build the next generation financial services companies.”

Ben Robinson, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Temenos, said:

“Temenos has a proud record of innovation. We are very excited to partner with Polytech to launch the Fusion incubator because it furthers our innovation agenda, giving us the exposure to new ideas and some of the brightest fintech talent that will help us to keep delivering outstanding customer success. In addition, we believe in giving back to our community and hope that by working with Fusion and its partners we can reinforce Switzerland’s position as a vibrant centre for financial services and financial technology.”