For the first time in its three years of existence, the Digital innovation Observatory of Politecnico di Milano decided to leave its premises for one of its appointments and did so by choosing the Fintech District as a partner. Together, the two entities organized the first public workshop of Fintech and Insurtech held last Friday at Copernico Isola for S32.

This initiative is one of the stages of the annual project of the Fintech and InsurTech Observatory which will end in December and which also includes the preparation of a report on the sector, conferences, meetings and a prize for student ideas.

The workshop was dedicated to open finance, an even broader concept than that of open banking and essential today because “Only those who apply effective open innovation strategies can remain competitive in the banking and insurance system” as explained by Marco Giorgino (Politecnico di Milano) opening the morning.

The key words of the morning of work, indicated by Giorgino, were innovation, change and ecosystem, the watchword was concreteness.

After a brief introduction by the two organizers, there were two Pitch sessions, one for Incumbents and Corporations (Fabrick, Intesa Sanpaolo, Reply, PwC, Accenture, Kaleyra), the other for the Fintech Startups, all members of the Fintech District ( Oval Money, Credit Data Research, Deposit Solutions, HYPE)

Inspired by what was heard, seeing what open finance means from different points of view, the participants have drawn up strategies to apply open finance divided into heterogeneous groups of 5 or 6 people called to discuss and produce a concrete and detailed proposal to be presented at the end of the morning.

Commenting on the theme of the workshop, Giorgino explained that at the present time “we see many processes of innovation but they are not coherent with the challenges that arise today. There are strategies often oriented to the past and not to the real digital transformation that banks and insurance companies have to experience”.

According to Giorgino, it is necessary to invest, “not only in an economic but also in a cultural sense, because many banks in Italy have invested resources for innovation but with an incoherent approach. There are organizational and implementation costs to be incurred and a very long time to market for banks. From this situation the need for a comparison arises because to change internally and alone is not always possible“.

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