LendIt Announces Partnership with Capital One to Co-Host their Annual Fintech Start-up Competition
PitchIt @ LendIt to find Europe’s leading innovator in online lending and fintech
[London – 24th August 2016] LendIt, the largest conference series dedicated to connecting the global online lending community, today announced a partnership with information based lending company Capital One to co-host PitchIt @ LendIt, a competition to find a future star of the fintech world.
The competition is aimed at firms innovating within the online lending and fintech space. It provides a showcase for eight high growth fintech firms to pitch their business case to a panel of expert judges as well as some of the technology industry’s leading figures attending the forthcoming LendIt Europe 2016 conference in London. (http://www.lendit.com/europe/2016).
Ahead of the event, each shortlisted company will receive coaching for their pitch from L Marks as well as individual mentors from the industry who will help them to hone their pitch and prepare them for the competition. The overall winner will also be mentored by experts associated with Capital One Growth Labs via a personalised plan to help the fintech develop. Capital One Growth Labs is a partnership between Capital One and L Marks to ensure fintech start-ups can get access to expertise and capabilities to develop their innovations.
Commenting on the partnership, LendIt’s Chairman and Co-Founder Peter Renton said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Capital One for this year’s PitchIt @ LendIt Europe event. LendIt provides an invaluable opportunity for innovative fintech start-ups to get in front of an audience of global fintech leaders and investors. Through the Capital One Growth Labs programme Capital One and L Marks provide start-ups with unparalleled access to their extensive expertise in a variety of fields. The combination of the two will create a platform that we feel will help fintech innovators take that next step in their company development.”
Amy Lenander, chief marketing officer at Capital One, said: “We’re thrilled to be partnering with PitchIt @Lendit Europe. Our Growth Labs programme has shown us the power that comes from pairing fresh ideas and technology from start-ups with the scale of our customer base and ability to trial those ideas. I can’t wait to see the ideas and insights in consumer lending from PitchIt and hope that our mentoring will create value for the winner.”
To be eligible to enter the competition firms must have raised less than £4M in funding, have at least two full-time founders, have a working prototype with customer interaction, and started their venture between 2014-16.
Applications are now open. Companies are invited to enter at www.lendit.com/europe/2016/pitchit. Entries for PitchIt @ LendIt open today, 24th August, and close on 12th September. The eight finalists invited to pitch will be notified on 19th September, with pitches taking place on 10th October.
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About LendIt
LendIt is the largest conference series dedicated to connecting the global online lending community. Our conferences bring together the leading lending platforms, investors, and service providers in our industry for unparalleled educational, networking, and business development opportunities.
LendIt hosts three conferences annually: our flagship conference LendIt USA as well as LendIt Europe in London and LendIt China in Shanghai.
For more information about LendIt visit www.lendit.com.
About Capital One:
Capital One launched its UK operations in 1996, offering credit card products. The UK headquarters and operations centre for Capital One (Europe) plc is based in Nottingham. Innovation has been the key to Capital One’s success, operating at the intersection between technology and financial services, the company revolutionised the credit card industry during the 1990s by rejecting uniform pricing in favour of statistical models based on a greater depth of data and analytics. More recent technological innovations protect applicants for the company’s products (QuickCheck), help customers avoid fees and lead the way in saving customers’ time and money.
The company has been named one of the top five large workplaces in the country by the Great Place to Work® Institute. It won first place in the Great Place to Work® ‘Best Workplaces’ Awards for three years running from 2013 to 2015. It has also been named one of the best places to work in Europe.
Capital One’s Classic and Balance Plus credit cards have been awarded a four star Fairbanking Mark from the Fairbanking Foundation in 2015. The Fairbanking Foundation is a not-for-profit, research-based charity established in 2008 to encourage and assist providers of banking products to improve the financial well-being of their customers.
In 2015 Capital One was the first credit card provider in the UK to offer a pre-qualification tool which gives 100 per cent certainty whether an applicant will be accepted. Dubbed QuickCheck, the tool gathers and processes an applicant’s information and returns a verdict within minutes, without conducting a full credit check which would leave a mark on an applicant’s credit report.
On May 5, 2016, Capital One UK announced it had signed an 11-year lease at the White Collar Factory, adjacent to Silicon Roundabout, London, where it would relocate 50 existing London staff as well as 200 new tech hires.
The organisation also won the Treating Customers Fairly award at the Card and Payments Awards 2015.
Capital One UK is part of Capital One Financial Corporation, a Fortune 500 company trading on the New York Stock Exchange and is included in the S&P 100 index. Headquartered in McLean, VA, Capital One is a diversified financial services company whose principal subsidiaries, Capital One, N.A., Capital One Bank (USA), N.A., and Capital One Auto Finance, Inc., offer a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients.
For more information about Capital One Growth Labs visit: http://www.capitalonegrowthlabs.co.uk/
Capital One’s UK Registered Office: Trent House, Station Street, Nottingham, NG2 3HX