Chicago—FIA announced today that Riskfuel has been named the FIA Innovator of the Year. In addition, Options AI was named the runner-up, and Wematch won the inaugural People’s Choice Award.
These three companies were among the nine companies participating in the annual Innovators Pavilion at the FIA Expo, an award-winning showcase for fintech startups that is designed to encourage greater innovation in the derivatives industry. More than three dozen applications for places in the Pavilion were reviewed by a selection committee comprised of technology experts from banks, trading firms and venture capital firms, and these nine companies were selected based on their relevance to the derivatives industry and the innovativeness of their products and services.
Each one of the nine startups in the Innovators Pavilion delivered a short presentation to Expo attendees, followed by a Q&A session with judges drawn from Citadel Securities, DRW Venture Capital, Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq and UBS.
The judges evaluated the nine startups based on 1) the degree of innovation, 2) the relevance to derivatives markets, and 3) the potential impact on the industry. They chose Riskfuel based on its innovative solution to the challenges of derivatives valuation, and Options AI based on the appealing design of its app for trading equity options.
The People's Choice award was determined by votes cast by participants in the FIA Expo. This year's winner, Wematch, impressed attendees with its solution for modernizing the voice trading process for derivatives and other financial products.
This year's judges were: Nawaf Bitar, senior advisor, Citadel Securities; Conor Cunningham, managing director and global head of platform transformation, UBS; Nikolai Larbalestier, senior vice president, enterprise architect & performance engineering, Nasdaq; Marianna Lopert-Schaye, vice president, firm-wide strategy, Goldman Sachs; and Kimberly Trautmann, head of DRW Venture Capital.
This year's Innovators Pavilion was supported by three community partners: Fintech Sandbox, FinTEx, and Innovate Finance. These three partners helped FIA connect with potential applicants and promote the Pavilion to the startup ecosystem in Europe and the US.
