Innovate Finance, an independent membership association that represents the UK’s global fintech community, announced on Wednesday it welcomed a delegation of leading voices from the digital finance community of Belgium led by the Minister of Finance Johan Van Overtveldt in London for the launch of B-Hive, a new collaborative innovation platform for FinTech in Belgium.
According to Innovate Finance, B-Hive is the successor of Eggsplore, founded by Jurgen Ingels and with Wim De Waele as CEO, a fintech platform in which some major banks, insurers, and market infrastructure players started working together on common innovation challenges and building bridges to the start-up and scale-up community. B-Hive builds further on Eggsplore, with support from the Belgian government – using the federal investment fund – and some other additional partners. Users on B-Hive can do the following:
- Meet and explore the opportunities offered by digital transformation
- Jointly promote their digital platform know-how
- Provide the key elements of infrastructure, funding, and education
- Attract technology companies to use Brussels as a gateway to the European market
- Collaborate with broader initiatives supporting the start-up community
Johan Van Overtveldt, Minister of Finance for Belgium stated:
“I am very pleased to announce the launch of B-hive, a collaborative innovation platform where finance meets technology. The new platform is the result of a recommendation made by a high-level expert group on the future of finance in Belgium, which I put in place in 2015, and led by Johan Thijs, CEO of KBC Bank and Insurance Group.”
Wim De Waele, CEO of Eggsplore, then explained:
“Economic growth and innovation in the network economy is strongly dependent on collaboration and exchange of knowledge. With the B-Hive initiative we are connecting the different local and global actors that can contribute to that growth. I am pleased we are getting such broad support for this vision and I am convinced it will make a difference for our region as a digital financial centre.”
Innovate Finance then reported that a co-operation agreement between it and B-Hive has also been signed to strengthen and establish closer ties between the two FinTech hubs and to help advance the sector by bringing together key influencers to engage on issues such as regulation, investment, and cyber security. Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO of Innovate Finance, added:
“Brexit will not get in the way of FinTech advancing in the UK and Europe. Today we are welcoming the Belgium hub B-Hive to build a new FinTech bridge with the UK. Many continental FinTechs continue to see London as an attractive destination and we are keen to support future collaborations for our members on the continent with B-Hive. Belgium is at the heart of the European investment management scene and has a number of global infrastructure partners such as SWIFT, Euroclear, BNYMellon and Mastercard.”