The Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT),  announces the launch of the Catapult: Future Foundation Program, inviting technology firms and startups to tackle one of the financial industry's most pressing challenges: creating a secure, efficient, and scalable platform for data and document exchange.

Supported by Luxembourg's principal financial associations, the LPEA (Luxembourg Private Equity & Venture Capital Association), ABBL (The Luxembourg Bankers' Association), ACA (Association of Insurance Companies of Luxembourg), ALFI (Luxembourg Association for Investment Funds), LuxCMA (Luxembourg Capital Markets Association), LuxSE (Luxembourg Stock Exchange), and L3A (The Luxembourg Alternative Administrators Association), alongside a host of leading financial institutions, the program represents a groundbreaking effort to foster innovation and mutualisation within Luxembourg’s financial services ecosystem.

Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Gilles Roth declared: “The launch of the inaugural Catapult: Future Foundation program marks a significant step in our commitment to fortify Luxembourg's financial sector through collaborative innovation. By seeking advanced data and document exchange solutions, we aim to enhance operational efficiency and foster seamless interactions among financial institutions, their clients, and service providers. This initiative underscores our dedication to maintaining Luxembourg's position at the forefront of financial services, leveraging digitalisation as a key enabler for sustainable growth.”

A Vision for Collaborative Transformation

The Catapult: Future Foundation Program aims to address critical issues facing financial services by developing shared, mutualised technology solutions that can be used across the industry. For its inaugural edition, the program will focus on addressing the need for a cutting-edge platform that enables seamless and secure data and document exchange between actors in the financial services industry.

Guided by a Steering Committee of Luxembourg industry leaders, the program seeks proposals for solutions that will help reduce costs, drive efficiency, and improve client experiences while also meeting the highest standards of data privacy, cyber resilience and regulatory compliance.

Luxembourg: A Global Leader in Financial Innovation

As a world-class hub for financial services, Luxembourg combines an innovation-friendly environment with a strong regulatory framework, making it an ideal base for transformative projects. This initiative builds on Luxembourg's legacy of leadership by fostering public-private collaboration to address industry-wide challenges. By prioritising security, compliance, and interoperability, the program underscores Luxembourg’s commitment to shaping the future of financial services.

Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the LHoFT Foundation, remarks: “Innovation thrives when collaboration is at the core. The Catapult: Future Foundation Program epitomises Luxembourg's unique ability to bring together diverse stakeholders to address complex challenges with mutualised solutions. This program is a bold step forward in ensuring our financial ecosystem remains efficient, secure, and globally competitive. We appreciate the support of the institutions and associations that have worked hard over the past months to define the requirements. Now it's time for the technology companies, big and small, to step up and answer the call.”

A Platform for Action

The Catapult: Future Foundation Program goes beyond traditional accelerator programs, offering a unique platform for collaboration. The selected participants will work directly with industry leaders, experts and stakeholders, to shape and finesse their proposals, ensuring their solutions align with real industry needs and regulatory requirements.

Anna Sobkow, Head of The Catapult: Future Foundation Program at LHoFT highlighted that “It is a unique initiative that brings together innovation, collaboration, and mutualisation to tackle one of the most pressing challenges in the financial sector: secure and efficient data exchange. By uniting technology providers and Luxembourg’s leading financial institutions, we aim to deliver transformative solutions that will simplify processes, enhance compliance, and solidify Luxembourg’s position as a global leader in financial innovation.”

A Collective Effort

Participants selected for the  program will benefit from:

-   Hands-On Collaboration: Direct engagement with financial institutions to refine solutions.

-   Market Validation: Feedback from industry leaders ensures solutions are both innovative and implementable.

-   Unmatched Visibility: Positioning as trailblazers in financial technology.

Depending on the stage and scale of the solution, participants may be eligible for a level of grant funding to support development efforts and a PoC.

During a five-day bootcamp in Luxembourg, participants will refine their ideas with expert guidance before presenting their final proposals to a jury. The winning solution will be chosen for implementation, with the potential to revolutionise industry processes.

“L3A is a strong supporter and fully committed to the LHoFT Future Foundation Mutualisation Project in which we participate at the Steering Committee level. This project highlights the clear market issues around the duplication of a high volume of low-value but time-consuming tasks, with replication of data widespread across the industry and its market participants. Luxembourg would gain a huge competitive advantage through having an efficient infrastructure catering for the simplification of such tasks and data sharing.”, said Alan Dundon, President L3A.

Eligibility and Application for the Program.

The program welcomes applications from startups, scaleups, and established technology firms with expertise in regulated industries across Europe:

- Technology consortiums capable of delivering complex data exchange solutions.

-  Companies specialising in cloud computing, data encryption, blockchain, API integrations, and regulatory compliance (e.g., GDPR, MiFID II, PSD2).

-  Organisations with a proven track record in addressing financial data privacy and document exchange challenges in Europe.

If your team has the vision and expertise to reshape the future of financial services, this is your opportunity to collaborate with Luxembourg’s financial leaders and make a lasting impact.

Key Dates

-  Applications Open: December 3, 2024

-  Submission Deadline: February 28, 2025

-  Bootcamp: April 2025

-  Winner Announcement: June 2025

For more information or inquiries, visit the LHoFT website.