Innovation in Professional and Financial Services

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £7 million in innovation projects. These will be to support the development of new technology enabled service within Professional and Financial Services.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to advance the Professional and Financial Services sectors by supporting them in the creation and adoption of new digitally supported services.

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

legal services
accountancy and audit
insurance
open finance innovation
financial planning and support for consumers and SME’s
financial regulatory compliance and financial crime prevention (such as fraud and anti money laundering)
payments and transactions

Your project must include the following:

clear consideration of user experience and design
consideration of broader, non-technical aspects including ethics, privacy, transparency and regulatory requirements
consideration of barriers to adoption within these sectors and approaches to address them
quantify how the solution will be exploited

Your project must address innovation in the relevant areas.

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, sectors, and supporting excluded or underserved businesses, communities or individuals.

Specific Themes

Innovate UK are particularly encouraging applications that:

are for projects that increase access of the services to underserved or excluded communities, individuals, and businesses
cover more than one sector in scope
address broad sector wide needs
involve collaborations with professional and financial service providers
are multidisciplinary and include social science as well as science and engineering

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects:

that are quantum technology development (use of existing quantum technologies in delivery of a service is in scope)
that focus on climate finance
that focus on development of new cryptocurrencies
that focus on green finance
that are focused on increasing access to data for professional and financial Services
that do not meet the competition eligibility or scope
where other Innovate UK funding support is available and more appropriate
that are dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
that are dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility

Your project must:

have a total grant funding request between £50,000 and £500,000
start by 1 April 2023
last between 6 and 18 months
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

To lead a project your organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size
collaborate with other eligible UK registered organisations
if you are a large organisation, include at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

Academic institutions and research and technology organisations (RTO) cannot lead.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

business of any size
academic institution
charity
not for profit
public sector organisation
research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

A business can apply as the lead for multiple applications across the 2 strands of this competition, but only one successful project will be funded.

Any organisation can collaborate in any number of applications.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Funding Costs

Up to £7 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If the majority of your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.

For feasibility studies and industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 25% if you are a large organisation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them.

Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

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Innovation in Professional and Financial Services – collaboration