The launch is part of a trend of institutions seeking to keep ahead of innovation around financial services.

Japan’s Nomura Research Institute is joining forces with Microsoft, the US software giant, to create a fintech innovation group, made up initially of 18 organisations piloting studies on major themes in the sector.

Founded yesterday, the Financial Digital Innovation Consortium will look at topics such as cloud-based computing solutions, advanced data usage and tech areas such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.

The consortium also intends to improve financial institutions' operations such as reducing workloads, making the most of IT spending and shortening the time taken to bring new solutions to the market.
NRI will drive the discussion among the consortium and Microsoft Japan will provide the consortium with an executive office and give technological support including Microsoft Azure, a public cloud platform the consortium will use at the core of its operations.

Other organizations participating are INTEC; Infosys; NS Solutions Corporation; Information Services Int'l –Dentsu; Japan System Techniques Co; Japan Business Systems; Nihon Unisys; Numerical Technologies Pte, and FIXER. The list of participants is expected to expand, NRI said.

In the future, the Consortium will expand its participants and topics to further promote digital transformation of the financial service industry, diversification of service, and establishment of next-generation of business model.