New fintech center launched at the U – @theU

Everything from the apps we use to do online banking on our smartphones to the algorithms that calculate credit scores use financial technology (fintech). And Utah is developing a reputation as the epicenter of financial technology education and innovation.

Now, the University of Utah, in partnership with The Stena Foundation and founders Steve and Jana Smith, lead out at the crossroads of fintech education with a new entrepreneurial lab – Stena Center for Financial Technology.

Using $65 million in “orchestrated” funding collected over the next 10 years, the center will include industry-sponsored labs, a startup incubator, venture funds and fintech-focused degrees and certificates. Reinvestments from the venture funds are expected to eventually fund the center in perpetuity.

President Taylor Randall says pairing fintech with education is like mixing chocolate and peanut butter – magic.

“There is no greater educational experience than starting a new business,” Randall said. “This new center will take an industry ripe for disruption and innovation, combine it with the research and passion of the faculty and students on campus, and create a whole new level of financial technology ecosystem in the state of Utah.”

Randall, Smith and Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced the new center to an audience of fintech entrepreneurs and workers gathered at the first fintechXchange symposium on January 30 at the Ken Garff Scholarship Club at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Read press release.

Cox noted Utah’s under-the-radar but emerging status as a center for the fintech industry. In January, WalletHub named Utah the “Startup State.” Fintech companies have grown by 18 percent in the past two years, the governor said. Two-thirds of all US industrial banks are located in Utah, and 93 percent of these banks’ assets are headquartered in the state. Since 2017, 4,100 new fintech jobs have been created. Also in January, Cox created a new fintech advisory council at the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.

“I really feel like this is what we’ve been missing,” Cox added. “This is the piece we need to really anchor ourselves as a center of competence, as the state for fintech for many years to come. Our job is to make sure we support you in the right ways.”

Center initiatives will be launched next autumn with an incubator – fintechXstudio – and venture capital funds will be made available to 10 to 12 qualified student entrepreneurs working in financial technology. Each of their new companies could receive as much as $100,000 in venture capital to get started. Eventually, business income from these start-ups will be reinvested in the incubator, financing other students’ start-ups.

“We don’t want to write checks that are Band-Aids,” said Steve Smith, former chairman, CEO and co-founder of Finicity, and a founding member and current co-chairman of the founding board of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX). “We want to invest in an ecosystem – something that perpetuates and builds on itself. We will be able to create a cohort annually of industry-funded startups. So with all the resources that will be available to these startups, success will only breed success.”

The center will work with academic units on campus to develop programs and degrees, housing faculty, classrooms and laboratory space. The first three colleges involved will be the David Eccles School of Business, the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering and the SJ Quinney College of Law, as well as the President’s Office. The university already offers a smaller emphasis on fintech. Over the next four years, U will start offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fintech.

Stiftelsen Stena and the university will announce the central location for the center during the next year. The center will be led by CEO Ryan Christiansen, a former executive of Zions Bank and Finicity.

“I don’t think much about legacy. I think a lot more about what the effect is, says Smith. “We’re here to make an impact, and if we can maximize and leverage the experience we have, the resources we have available to us, bring people together in meaningful ways and make a meaningful difference, then that’s the kind of goal we should be trying to achieve .”

To learn more about the Stena Centre: https://stena.utah.edu/.