Bank and Insurance Innovators to Benefit from European Oracle Fintech Innovation Program with B-Hive Europe

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., June 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Oracle has chosen Brussels as a European gateway to roll out its Fintech Innovation Program to Europe. Oracle plans to dedicate additional European staff and resources to set up mutually monetizable relationships with fintechs and digital banking innovators. Oracle plans to work with B-Hive Europe to accelerate enterprise readiness for participating fintechs and banks. 

Brussels was chosen as Oracle's European fintech hub because of its central location and the presence of leading institutions of the European Union. Oracle's customers will benefit from a renewed focus on European affairs.

Johan Van Overtveldt, Belgium's Minister of Finance, said, "I wholeheartedly support the decision of Oracle to organize their European rollout from Brussels. Oracle is a global, reliable, technology company and B-Hive Europe is an important public and private sector collaboration. I expect this relationship to create real momentum in the acceleration of financial innovation in Belgium and Europe. It further strengthens Brussels as a pan-European hub for fintech and thus contributes to our strategy to focus on attracting niche financial activities, such as fintech, insurance and market infrastructures."

"At Oracle, we realize that in Europe, results-driven digital innovation is thriving because of the historical roots of banking. We are choosing Brussels as our fintech center for mainland Europe because of its excellent location," said Rik De Deyn, senior innovation director, Oracle, who'll be leading the European rollout. "Brussels is easy to reach from most European financial hubs, close to the European Commission, and an ideal location to bring together fintech innovators and financial institutions," he added. "Our work with B-Hive Europe will inevitably result in a faster time to innovation value for banks and insurers, and accelerated monetization for fintechs."

B-Hive Europe is a collaborative innovation fintech platform that brings together major banks, insurers and market infrastructure players to work on common innovation challenges and build bridges to the start-up and scale-up community.

"Adding BigTech firms to our ecosystem is an important part of our strategy to grow and expand innovation for our start-ups, scale-ups and financial service partners," said Fabian Vandenreydt, Executive Chairman, B-Hive Europe. "With Oracle, we share a focus on accelerated productization and monetization of fintech innovation for the benefits of the full ecosystem. As our strategic cloud infrastructure collaborator, we welcome Oracle's expertise to help our start-up and scale-up community reach higher levels of enterprise readiness, security and scalability. And this will benefit our bank, insurance and market infrastructure partners in the short term."

The European fintech market is growing rapidly and banks have an appetite for tangible results. A number of fintech firms have previously worked with Oracle and B-Hive Europe, and welcome the collaboration.

Hanna Zubko, CEO and Co-Founder of IntellectEU Inc, a smart integration and development company focused on blockchain for financial services, explained: "IntellectEU is proud to be part of the unique ecosystem that Oracle and B-Hive Europe have created. This important work offers industry leading technology and strong business relations that our customers need." 

Alain Vansnick, Senior VP at TAS Group, a mature fintech running payments and credit card software, said, "Our collaboration with Oracle as a cloud technology provider has been transformational to our business over the past years, generating real revenue opportunities. We are now joining B-Hive Europe because we believe that a collaboration between big tech, fintech, banks and public sector can also transform the market."

NGDATA, the Intelligent Customer Data Platform, has benefited from B-Hive Europe's programs from the start, and runs on Oracle technologies. Luc Burgelman, CEO, looks forward to this collaboration: "Oracle and B-Hive share a focus on enterprise-ready, scalable results. We believe in data-based innovation. Oracle and B-Hive Europe combining forces couldn't have come at a better time."

The fintech program is globally spearheaded by Mark Smedley, VP Financial Services Solutions; De Deyn will be leading the European effort.

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SOURCE Oracle