UniCredit has been awarded the Global Innovation Award by Plug and Play for continued innovation efforts and high engagement with fintechs throughout 2020. Plug and Play presented two of its corporate partners with this award for displaying exceptional motivation and passion during a difficult year leading to multiple collaborations with different fintechs.

Marco Pusterla, Head of Innovation Orchestration & Fintech Strategy at UniCredit, commented: "We are proud of the continued successful partnership with Plug and Play and this award is a great recognition of our strong focus on innovation and collaboration to develop products and services that are most relevant to our clients. In 2020, this involved more than 200 UniCredit colleagues across the Group resulting in engagement with 225 relevant fintechs."

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play has created the world's largest innovation platform with over 35,000 startups and 500 official corporate partners. Since 2006, the programmes run by Plug and Play have expanded worldwide to include a presence in over 30 locations building the ultimate startup ecosystem for many industries. UniCredit joined Plug and Play in 2019 as a founding partner and the first financial institution to be part of the Plug and Play Hub in Milan. The bank is also a strategic partner for Plug and Play's Fintech Europe Hub in Frankfurt.

 

The partnership allows UniCredit to increase the testing of innovative fintech solutions Group-wide to continuously benefit from new concepts and products that can improve banking processes and enhance customer offering across various fields from retail to corporate and investment banking. The collaboration model follows a structured and lean process to pilot and assess solutions of interest with the final goal to harness the value from best-in-class fintechs on the market through potential commercial agreements.

In 2020, the UniCredit Innovation Orchestration & Fintech Strategy team worked with Plug and Play taking part in several thematic fintech sessions including on lending, wealth management, payments, NPEs and KYC. This led to a series of follow-ups with the companies identified engaging more than 200 colleagues across the Group and 225 fintechs.

Fernando Zornig, Director at Plug and Play in Frankfurt added: "We are very excited to present the global innovation awards to our Fintech partners in Europe. We want to honour their innovation efforts and their high engagement with our platform. UniCredit has been a clear winner of the 2020 award and we are looking forward to another successful year with UniCredit Group."

---

Additional media information:

Victoria Blajeva, tel +359 (0) 2 9264 993, wjlj/ebwjepwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Beatris Nikolova, tel +359 (0) 2 9232 528, cfbusjt/ojlpmpwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Ekaterina Ancheva, tel +359 894 518 193 , flbufsjob/bodifwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch