Barclays announces strategic partnership with global corporate venture builder Rainmaking to drive FinTech innovation

Rise Start-Up Academy, a non-equity digital programme targeted to early-stage FinTech companies, opens for applications today

LONDON, Feb. 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Barclays today announced that Rainmaking, a leading corporate venture builder, has been chosen as an innovation partner. With the support of Rainmaking, Barclays will launch a new suite of initiatives targeted at FinTech founders across the globe, from early-stage to scale-up and beyond, to help grow and develop their companies.

The first to launch is the Rise Start-Up Academy, a virtual digital skills-building accelerator targeted to idea- and early-stage FinTech founders. Applications are already open for founders addressing emerging FinTech trends including wealth equality, climate, the future of money and more. At a later date, Rise Growth Academy will be launched to provide capability development around key areas such as investment readiness, recruitment, accelerating sales and leadership development.

A FinTech Venture Studio will also go live later this year and focus on co-developing new FinTech ventures through working with internal talent, start-ups and other leading companies.

This partnership will support Barclays in its ambition to transform banking for the customers and clients it serves. The Barclays Group Innovation team will work closely with start-ups at the forefront of innovation to bring new products and services to market at pace and scale.

"Innovation is critical in driving growth in today's challenging business environment and in solving some of the most pressing problems society faces today," said Mariquit Corcoran, Group Chief Innovation Officer at Barclays. "We have been humbled and changed by the incredible FinTechs we have worked with, and we understand first-hand the power of collaboration to evolve and unlock opportunities for our customers, clients, colleagues and the communities in which we operate. We are very excited to work with Rainmaking to further push the boundaries of corporate innovation and ensure collaboration is at the heart of our FinTech strategy."

Rainmaking brings an impressive track record in partnering with large corporates to build successful new ventures. Its approach is based upon the proven methodology used to build 65 of their own ventures and through its subsidiary, Startupbootcamp, to accelerate over 950 start-ups and over 100 cohorts. While only 10% of early-stage start-ups typically survive, over three quarters (76%) of Startupbootcamp companies are still active or have exited. According to Rainmaking, this has led to the creation of 4,626 jobs and raised over $800 million in funding.

"We are working with Barclays to drive positive change and play an active role in stimulating growth and opening up future revenue opportunities for founders of new businesses," said Chris Locke, CEO Europe, Rainmaking. "By providing the tools to enhance digital skills, founders can build and scale their businesses for future revenue growth. The new suite of meaningful and cutting-edge FinTech programmes will combine the power of entrepreneurship, whilst unlocking the scale strengths and the deep domain expertise of Barclays."

The partnership will be led by Sonal Lakhani, Global Head of Programmes and Strategic Initiatives at Barclays Innovation Office, who also led the expansion of the Female Innovators Lab by Barclays and Anthemis last year across the UK and Europe.

Barclays has played a key role in supporting the evolving FinTech ecosystem over the past decade through Rise, its award-winning FinTech platform. With offices in London and New York, Rise has been at the forefront in building the future of FinTech. By partnering with Rainmaking, Barclays intends to continue expanding the limits of corporate innovation and accelerate co-creation with key players across the ecosystem. Together they will also expand Barclays' critical role of supporting the creation and scaling of early-stage FinTechs. Programme participants will join the largest single-bank alumni of seed-stage FinTechs boasting a market cap of $7.8 billion.

Additional programmes for FinTech companies at different stages of their journey will be introduced in the coming months.

Visit https://sbcaspire.io/risestartupacademy/ to learn more.

About Rainmaking

Rainmaking is one of the world's leading corporate innovation and venture development firms with 15 offices around the world, including major tech hubs such as London, Copenhagen, Dubai, Singapore, New York, and Sydney. It creates, accelerates, and scales new business with the world's leading corporations and entrepreneurs to solve big problems.

Rainmaking has partnered with 10% of the Fortune 500 companies to bring new strategies and market-based solutions including IKEA, VISA, Airbus, Engie, HSBC, Jaguar among others. It is also a proud member of the UN Global Compact, driving major initiatives on a broad spectrum of social and environmental impact issues.

For more information please visit: https://rainmaking.io.

About Barclays

Barclays is a British universal bank.  We are diversified by business, by different types of customer and client, and geography. Our businesses include consumer banking and payments operations around the world, as well as a top-tier, full service, global corporate and investment bank, all of which are supported by our service company which provides technology, operations and functional services across the Group. For further information about Barclays, please visit www.Barclays.com.

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