Barclays has today opened its flagship open innovation site, Rise London, at 41 Luke Street, in Shoreditch.  It is Europe’s largest co-working space dedicated to financial technologies (FinTech).

Rise, created by Barclays, brings together from across the world a carefully curated community of FinTech startups, along with our corporate clients and other experts, to work on Barclays’ customer and business opportunities and together help to create the future of financial services.

At Rise, Barclays co-creates new products, services and platforms along with our startup partners.  We partner with leading corporates, investors and industry experts across seven sites internationally in: New York, Manchester, Mumbai, Cape Town, Vilnius, London and Tel Aviv.  In each location, we operate multiple programmes for open innovation, including the award-winning Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars.  These programmes facilitate rapid engagement between Barclays and the Rise FinTech community, leading to the development of new models, long-term financial solutions, and the creation of valuable relationships that make the communities and markets we serve flourish.

Rise London will house more than 40 FinTech companies, along with banking and technology teams from Barclays, and will serve as a gathering place for leaders in the FinTech and venture capital communities.  Rise London will play host to more than 200 hours of learning, workshops, hackathons and networking on a monthly basis.

Jes Staley, Barclays Group Chief Executive, hosted the opening event, saying:

“We believe that technology must be a core competency of a global financial institution, and we intend to be a leader in the industry.  Last week we announced the creation of 750 new jobs in our UK technology centres.

“FinTech startups are at the front of the technology wave that is changing our industry. Through Rise, we glean important insights; we can actively experiment with emerging technologies, and we can spot early trends and new markets as they form. This allows our employees, customers and clients to do things faster, better and at lower cost.”

Michael Harte, Group Head of Innovation at Barclays said:

“Rise is an open innovation platform to engage FinTech startups with customers and clients to invent new business solutions. Our vibrant community taps into the agile and disruptive nature of these ventures. By matching FinTechs with the business challenges that we face as a diversified financial services firm, we drive customer and shareholder value.  For us, the more vibrant we make the FinTech community, the greater the value contribution to customers and shareholders as well as to the financial services sector as a whole.”