Naples Fintech Lab: tech education and finance

Technology has transformed people's behaviour also in the financial sector.
Digital now plays a fundamental role in almost all interactions between customer and bank.
Fintech - a term that originates from the abbreviation of Finance and Technology - in its broadest sense indicates the convergence between technological innovation and financial services and encompasses all uses of digital tools applied in the financial sphere.
One of the main objectives of Fintech is to facilitate the user experience, making it increasingly unique, secure and customised for the consumer.

The current context presents disruptive elements that accelerate the development of digital technology, here are some of them:

• - Banks and fintech start-ups are pushing the digitalisation of the financial market, proposing new innovation strategies and new services and products to customers who must be increasingly open and ready to use digital technologies;
• - The financial sector labour market is strongly influenced by the digital evolution in terms of composition and characteristics: new professional profiles are needed, which, in addition to the technological knowledge underlying their activities, will have to be able to know and understand the mechanisms and characteristics governing the traditional financial world, in order to develop new solutions in line with future trends;
• - Generative AI will be increasingly fundamental in interacting with users to help them approach the purchase and use of digital financial services, its development propelling the fintech sector by fuelling new opportunities in particular for managing the huge amount of data generated by this sector;
• - Companies, by digitising their customer experience in an increasingly diversified and evolved way, facilitate customer relationships;
• - Speaking of human capital, it is expected that there will be widespread difficulty in finding professionals suited to specific business needs.

This context imposes very fast and new requirements on industry players to keep up with their competitors and to seize these opportunities to accelerate their digital transformation, especially in terms of specialised skills, advanced technology, governance and innovative processes.

This is why Intesa Sanpaolo works alongside universities to create favourable conditions for disseminating knowledge on the technicalities, economic and compliance impacts of the new digital business, as well as promoting sustainability in its sector.
The Intesa Sanpaolo - Dipartimento di Studi Aziendali e Quantitativi dell'Università di Napoli - Parthenope collaboration is part of this approach, which also takes the form of co-design activities aimed at exploring the connections between finance and technology that generate insights, tools and solutions designed to improve business models and processes, as well as new products and services characterised by compliance with market rules and consumer protection.

It is a theoretical-practical financial education lab driven by ecosystem and open innovation logics and highly specialised in the design and development of fintech solutions.

It is characterised by inclusive teaching and free of charge and is dedicated to young talents. 
It proposes itself to financial companies, technology partners and fintech start-ups as a place and time for brainstorming that actually materialises a fintech university ecosystem capable of imagining and designing elements of digital transformation of the banking and financial industry.

It proposes two specific advanced training courses: one dedicated to open innovation and the other to start-ups, both with the objectives of bringing out and training new talents with new technological and design skills to make them capable of developing new fintech solutions and incubating new ideas for business development.

It entrusts partner companies with a team of students who are engaged in the development of a final challenge during the semester of the Lab.

The team followed by colleagues from Intesa Sanpaolo's Central Innovation & Processes Department explored the potential and possibilities of using generative artificial intelligence to improve the accessibility of customer documents.
The students, working with enthusiasm and in-depth knowledge of document accessibility, presented Finability, a modular system of services that uses a virtual assistant to facilitate the user in consulting their documents, as well as reading and understanding the information contained therein.  

The Italian fintech ecosystem is increasingly mature and constantly growing.
Between strategic partnerships, academic collaborations, support for innovative start-ups, and new products and services, the Bank provides know-how, expertise, and networks for the development of initiatives aimed at finding the ideal mix between the promotion of innovation, support for studies, access to the world of work, and customer protection and security.
The students we have worked with are the actors of the future, if they know how to project what they have learnt and experienced in the Napoli Fintech Lab into a broader context, the future of the financial sector will be more attractive and stimulating.