Continuing its commitment to underserved populations, the Financial Solutions Lab (FinLab) launched its Fourth Annual $3 Million Challenge with founding FinLab partner JPMorgan Chase & Co. The fintech challenge seeks to identify products and innovators able to improve the financial health of underserved populations in America. Unique for this year’s challenge is a focus on a diversity of entrepreneur teams to include people of color, women and people with disabilities.
According to the press statement, despite ongoing improvements in equality, all-women entrepreneur teams received only $1.9 billion of the total $85 billion invested last year, with only 3% of the venture capitalist workforce estimated to be black, with 4% Hispanic or Latino. FinLab believes that diversity among leaders and teams is important in order to create more inclusive products and services having the potential to scale to millions of customers.
Each winner will receive $250,000 and professional assistance from industry leaders such as ideas42, IDEO.org and Google, strategic guidance from the FinLab’s industry-leading advisory council, and a range of resources from founding partners CFSI and JPMorgan Chase.
The application deadline is April 11th and winners will be announced on stage at the EMERGE Forum 2018, June 6-8 in Los Angeles, CA.
“Technology offers a tremendous opportunity to help us reach overlooked populations with financial products and services that can improve their long-term financial health,” said JPMorgan Chase’s Head of Community Innovation, Colleen Briggs. “We want to see more innovation designed to meet the needs of underserved populations and teams of entrepreneurs that reflect this diversity”.
FinLab has the support of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), who manages the initiative along its five year mission to identify and expand innovations that help Americans build assets, increase savings, and improve credit with its competitions.
To date, FinLab supports 26 financial technology companies that have raised a combined $250 million in capital, addressing areas from access to credit to debt restructuring, and creating products or services that reach 2.5 million Americans.
