Innovation

Synechron, a New York-based global financial services consulting and technology services provider,  has received two innovation awards from ACORD, the global provider of insurance data standards, in recognition of the firm’s innovative work in blockchain and micro-insurance.

Ever since the birth of money, economies have controlled nearly every aspect of human life. Money is power, and escaping that principle is nearly impossible unless you want to live in the wild. Honorable, civil-based economies have historically forged the backbone of the most powerful nations on Earth. Without this willing deception to believe money has value—just like any physical product or service—there would be no complex markets to foster innovation.

Individual producers and consumers of solar and wind energy will now have an instrument to integrate a Blockchain-based network into a new generation of energy trades. This comes thanks to three hackers who won the Dutch international energy hackathon H4ckenergy 2016 with their Blockchain project named EcoCoin.

The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament has recently published a Budget Amendments that proposes the spending 1,000,000 Euros to study and regulate distributed ledger technologies, i.e. Blockchain and Bitcoin technologies.

Don Tapscott, one of the world's leading authorities on innovation, and an expert in Blockchain technology will open the upcoming 2016 Greenwich CIO Executive Leadership Summit, organized by HMG Strategy.

IBM announced its plans to work in collaboration with the government of Singapore to establish the first IBM Center for Blockchain Innovation.

Bank of England announced the launch of a FinTech accelerator for new technology firms to demonstrate their solutions via proof of concept projects (POCs) and to help the bank “harness FinTech innovations for central banking”. For successfully completed POCs, the Bank of England promises to consider acting as a reference for the firms.

A new FinTech, Innovation and Competitiveness (FIC) division created by the French financial market regulator will soon operate in the country.