In partnership with startups to bank services of the future!

Nova KBM is a universal bank with the longest, more than 150-year Slovenian banking tradition. The owners of the bank are renowned international company Apollo, a global operator of investments, and the European Bank for reconstruction and Development. With new owners came a new and ambitious vision - to become the leading bank in Slovenia. Nova KBM which now has around half a million users has for many years been actively involved with the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, in part as a general sponsor of the PODIM conference. As this year's PODIM Challenge 'blue chip' partner it will pay close attention to fintech startups, with which it wants to strategically cooperate in adopting advanced user solutions in the fields of personal finance management, development of virtual banking consultants, chatbots, blockchain technologies and long distance business with non-clients.
 
Co-creating the trends in bank and payment services
»We are actively and often watching and co-creating the trends in the development of the most advanced technologies in the fields of bank and payment services. The partnership with PODIM Challenge is an important part of our business orientation, to more tightly connect with the startup environment, build new partnerships and reach developmental synergies to adapt advanced technological solutions, that thoroughly change the way of business and user communication with the bank," said Robert Senica, vice president of the board of Nova KBM about the meaning of this year's cooperation with the PODIM conference.
 
Areas of cooperation with startups
Even though Nova KBM operates in a very regulated and traditional industry, it is aware of the disruptive 'fintech startups, that are focused on end users and providing them with faster, easier and more efficient solutions for using and managing financial resources. Thus, the areas where Nova KBM wants to cooperate with startups are coordinated based on the predictions of global analytics of which changes will soon have the biggest impact on the financial industry:

• Personal Financial Management, including predictive analytics for better understanding of the use of money and potential savings, predicting cash flow and consulting in cash flow optimization as well as the offering of bank products that include the characteristics of the user;
• development of virtual bank consultants, supported by artificial intelligence, that can advise when managing finance, help make deals and if there are issues or unclarities when making a deal that cannot be solved virtually, connect the client with a bank employee;
• ‘blockchain’ technology or development of blockchain solutions that can be used in the financial industry;
• long distance business with non-clients, including verification methods and solutions that comply with the Slovenian law, solutions that enable long distance identification, analysis and the possibility of using qualified certificates to sign documents, making deals exclusively in electronic form and the law implications of such business;
• development of chat bots for use in the financial industry.

 
What can the bank offer startups?
Nova KBM, which in last spring partnered with Start:up Maribor to make it's way into the startup scene, by organizing the first banking hackathon in Slovenia, wants to learn from the 'fintech' startup teams it will cooperate with. In exchange, it is offering access to a very widespread business network (more than 500 bank and post offices in the network of Pošta Slovenije) all around Slovenia or its whole infrastructure, the access to approximately 500.000 users, a very strong referential cooperation with the bank a member of a global family as well as new partner connections and access to international markets.
 
Contact Nova KBM representatives
If you want to present your innovative idea that will help Nova KBM develop a new generation of banking services, to the company, you can contact Jure Kobal from the IT sector phone number 02/229 19 92, e-mail: [email protected] or to Matin Gunčer, the sector of software development, phone number 02/229 23 34, e-mail [email protected] and set up a meeting at the PODIM conference. 

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Fotografija: Siniša Kanižaj / ABC accelerator