Hogan Lovells has unveiled the latest cohort of fintech start-ups and ‘momentum players’ to be admitted to its incubator programme.

Eight companies have been admitted to its London-based Global FinTech Mentor and Momentum Programme after a competitive application process, each thereby gaining access to £25,000 of free legal advice.

This is the fourth cohort to be admitted to the programme, which differs from many law firm-sponsored incuabtors –  which help legal tech start ups – due to its focus on London’s burgeoning fintech sector.

The companies admitted to the programme range from “start-ups to established momentum players in strong growth mode,” according to the firm.

Each cohort member will be assigned a relationship manager and be offered a range of benefits in addition to the free advice, including a 30% discount on legal advice outside the scope of the programme, access to the firm’s law tech tools and support from its consulting team for regulatory advice.

Hogan Lovells head of financial services Emily Reid said: “It was tough deciding who to admit to this cohort. We had more applications than ever from the UK and other countries, all extremely high quality and demonstrating true innovation in different areas of the financial services sector."

The new intake is made up of:

• General Internet – a credit and banking platform that is ‘moving towards becoming a networked business bank and open fintech platform’
• Moneyfold – a regulated financial services firm which uses public blockchains
• Thunes – a B2B cross-border payment network
• Pivotal Group: a consumer facing e-commerce platform for managing subscriptions with access to personalised offers
• Bloom – a provider of business cash advances to merchants.
• Floww –  a platform to simplify data and due diligence aspects of investing in start-ups for entrepreneurs, venture capital firms and investors 
• WeCovr – an insurance-as-service platform
• Covertech – an app-based ‘modular lifestyle’ insurance platform. 

Among the growing roster of incubators run by law firms around the world targeted at legal tech are programmes run by Slaughter and May and Deloitte Legal, in the UK, and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas in India.

In February, IP boutique Bereskin & Parr became a founding partner of Canada’s first incubator for tech hardware start-ups – the Hardware Catalyst Initiative (HCI).

Further reading:

Q&A: Bhupinder Randhawa on Canada’s first tech hardware incubator – The Robotics Law Journ