Innovation in Professional & Financial Services Round 2

Single applicant strand

To lead a project, your organisation must be a micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).

Collaborative strand

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other eligible UK registered organisations

The collaboration must include at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

A business can apply as the lead for multiple applications across the 2 strands of the competition, but only one successful project will be funded.

Any organisation can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• start by 1 April 2024
• last between 6 and 18 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

For single applicants, you must have total grant funding request between £50,000 and £200,000. For collaborations, you must have total grant funding request between £50,000 and £500,000.

For both strands, this can cover up to 70% of project costs depending on business size.

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.

Innovate UK KTN held an online briefing event on Tuesday 1st August: click here to watch the recording.

Innovate UK have provided useful background documents including reports from the Bank of England, AI For Services, Fintech Scotland and Lawtech: click here to access the background documents.

If you would like help to find a collaborative partner, contact the AI For Services team at Innovate UK KTN.