2026 Fintech Challenge Program

Who We Are
Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the oldest and largest financial services firms in the United States. Citizens offers retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, large corporations, and institutions. With 1,000 branches and total assets totaling $220 billion, Citizens is continually innovating and partnering with the world’s most promising FinTechs.

Our Challenges

GenAI Sandbox for Ideation in Regulated Environments
Citizens is exploring the development of a secure GenAI sandbox platform to accelerate experimentation with AI-powered tools in a regulated banking environment. The solution should support configurable access, audit-ready logging, and prompt versioning, while enabling users to upload and process documents and datasets. It should also offer tailored user experiences — from onboarding guides for business users, to agentic workflow support for advanced developers — ensuring safe, scalable innovation across the enterprise. By enabling responsible experimentation, this platform will help Citizens unlock new efficiencies, foster cross-functional collaboration, and accelerate GenAI solution development.

Planetary Risk Banking
Citizens would like to explore real-time global risk financing platforms that sense risks due to climate change, geopolitical events, and cyber and market shocks, thereby allowing the bank to deploy tailored capital or hedging before crises unfold. The bank is interested in FinTech solutions that help institutions anticipate and adapt to extreme volatility by applying data and tools that deliver real-time global risk insights, dynamic scenario modeling, and adaptive financial strategies to protect portfolios and operations.

Digitizing Real Estate Unlocking Liquidity and Efficiency with Blockchain and DeFi

The real estate industry remains one of the last frontiers for true digital transformation — still hampered by illiquidity, manual paperwork, and lengthy settlement cycles. Citizens seeks innovative solutions that can reimagine this sector by leveraging blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) technologies. The goal is to shape a comprehensive smart contract platform that tokenizes properties, automates title verification in hours instead of weeks, and enables fractional ownership through secure DeFi protocols. The challenge is not simply to digitize existing workflows, but to fundamentally reshape how capital flows, ownership is structured, and settlements occur in real estate. How might we create infrastructure that makes real estate as liquid, transparent, and accessible as any digital asset, while maintaining the trust, compliance, and security standards required by institutional clients? We invite solutions that will help lead this transformation and capture the vast market opportunity that lies ahead. 

Architecting the Future of Agentic AI for Banking & Financial Services
Citizens is seeking visionary platforms that deliver secure, scalable, agentic AI tailored for the banking industry. Solutions should enable autonomous agent workflows, advanced GenAI features, and robust governance for regulated, high-volume use cases. Key areas include customer onboarding, fraud detection, loan processing, and operations automation. Platforms must support modular architecture, banking-grade security, and seamless integration with legacy and cloud systems. We are looking for platforms that go beyond basic GenAI and offer a comprehensive agentic AI stack — from development to deployment, monitoring, and governance — purpose-built for the regulatory, operational, and customer experience demands of banking. If your platform can enable intelligent, autonomous, and context-aware systems that transform financial services, we want to hear from you.

Unified Investment Data Layer Accelerating Integration Across Custodians and Platforms
Citizens is looking for innovative FinTech solutions that can help the bank build a digital integration layer to seamlessly connect with a wide range of custodians — including, but not limited to, Fidelity, Schwab, and Pershing — as well as platforms such as DTCC, BNY Mellon, and DST/SS&C. The goal is to aggregate, normalize, and enrich investment data across these disparate systems to provide clients with a comprehensive, real-time view of their investment assets. The bank is particularly interested in technologies that automate data ingestion/mapping/reconciliation, offer secure and scalable APIs, enable data standardization and enrichment, and address compliance, privacy, and security requirements. This challenge aims to reduce operational complexity, accelerate innovation in wealth management, and empower Citizens to deliver a next-generation client experience through unified investment visibility.

Who We Are

Digital Federal Credit Union, better known as DCU, is a not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by and operated for our members. DCU was chartered in October of 1979. Since then, DCU has been chosen as the credit union for more than 700 companies and organizations. DCU serves more than 1 million members and their families in all 50 states.

With headquarters in Marlborough, Massachusetts, DCU is the largest credit union headquartered in New England as measured by assets and is among the top 20 nationwide.

Our Challenges

Blockchain and the use of Stablecoin for Money Movement

The process of moving money through the banking system, particularly international transactions, can be slow, costly for both the member and the credit union, and exposes both to potential fraud. While traditional methods continue to evolve to mitigate problems, the investigation into stablecoin as a solution has been gaining momentum. As volume increases in digital transactions, DCU wants to provide its members with the safest and most innovative solutions to complete their banking needs.

DCU is interested in exploring the feasibility and benefits of using a stablecoin solution for our members to transact domestically and internationally. We seek a partner who can assist with the development of a business case highlighting the value to our members, is interoperable with our infrastructure, scalable, efficient, and safe.

This would provide additional options for members, particularly those making international transactions, ideally reducing transaction times and cost while increasing safety.  It will provide DCU with a competitive advantage, strengthen our relationship with our members, and enhance our value proposition.

Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Tailored, Transaction-Based Fraud Prevention and Member Education

As fraudsters deploy increasingly sophisticated schemes, traditional fraud prevention techniques often static, generic, and reactive—struggle to keep pace. Among a multitude of possible solutions, artificial intelligence (AI) offers a transformative opportunity to reshape how we detect, interpret, and respond to potentially fraudulent activities. We are seeking a solution that can help us create a system where, upon identifying a risky transaction, AI delivers tailored fraud prevention information and training directly to the member at the moment of potential exposure.

Interventions must be designed to assist, not intrude. Training modules and prompts should be concise, actionable, and seamlessly integrated into transaction workflows. The ultimate goal is to empower members, not overwhelm or frustrate them. Members must understand and appreciate the value of AI-driven fraud prevention training. Building trust is a prerequisite for effective adoption.

By integrating AI-driven training interventions into the transaction process, we will equip our members with the knowledge and confidence to pause, reflect, and protect themselves in the face of evolving scams. Together, we can redefine what fraud prevention means in the digital age, building a safer, smarter, and more resilient financial ecosystem for all.

Who We Are

The Massachusetts Bankers Association (“Mass Bankers”, “the Association”, and “MBA”) represents over 115 community and regional banks serving local businesses and consumers across Massachusetts. Community and regional banks face unique challenges in competition within today’s financial services market, while also maintaining a focus on their community and stringent regulatory standards. Our member institutions across the board are committed to innovation. It has been our mission at Mass Bankers to assist our members in developing “innovation muscle” by providing additional resources, information and membership experiences to open doors for new business relationships within FinTech verticals.

At the start of the year, Mass Bankers formed and cultivated a new business committee of Innovation Liaisons from Massachusetts banks. The Liaisons group’s membership represents 30+ community banks operating within Massachusetts. With their input and feedback throughout the year, we developed a comprehensive needs assessment that revealed all responding banks struggle with digital transformation challenges, system integration issues, and regulatory compliance complexity that mirrors broader community banking industry trends.

Why MBA Partnered with MassChallenge

Massachusetts community banks need innovative technology partners that understand both their specific operational constraints and the broader community banking landscape. Our member interviews revealed critical needs for solutions that can integrate with existing systems while addressing industry-wide challenges around cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and digital transformation. The MassChallenge FinTech program offers our member banks direct access to emerging solutions developed specifically for community banking challenges validated through both our local assessment and industry research.

We are elated to submit the following Challenge Statements and excited to get to work with our partners at MassChallenge.

Our Challenges

Business Process Discovery and Inventory System

For community banks to be able to take full advantage of emerging AI and automations solutions, there is a need to identify, document, and optimize their operational processes.  In addition, this work would support internal knowledge management and enhance the ability to gather valuable information from long-tenured employees.  We seek intelligent process discovery tools that can map existing workflows, recommend process improvements, and determine optimal automation opportunities. The platform should help banks determine whether processes should be automated as-is, redesigned first, or replaced entirely with new technology solutions. Successful implementation would result in documented process libraries, optimization roadmaps, and clear automation priorities that maximize ROI and operational efficiency.

Deposit Growth and Customer Acquisition Platform

Deposit growth ranks as a top strategic priority for Massachusetts banks, with multiple institutions designating it as their #1 priority and facing intense competition from digital-first institutions and fintech challengers. We are looking for comprehensive deposit growth platforms that can combine digital marketing automation, competitive rate management, customer acquisition tracking, and retention analytics. The solution should integrate with existing core banking systems and CRM platforms, provide geo-targeted marketing capabilities, and offer advanced analytics to identify high-value customer segments and optimize acquisition costs. The platform should support both individual and business deposit growth strategies while maintaining compliance with banking regulations. Successful implementation would demonstrate measurable increases in deposit balances, improved customer acquisition costs, enhanced retention rates, and competitive positioning against both traditional and fintech competitors.

Strategic Workforce and Talent Pipeline

The banking industry is challenged by a disconnect between the public perception of the industry and the realities about extensive career opportunities that are available within the industry. This public perception gap is blocking the talent pipeline, leading to a multi-layered challenge that includes attracting, guiding, and retaining new bankers at all levels. Traditional career paths in banking are often perceived as outdated, rigid, and monotonous, despite the reality of flexible, community-focused roles with opportunities for advancement without a formal degree. We seek a relationship that leverages partnerships with schools, non-profits, and professional organizations to rebrand banking careers and attract a broader cross-section of talent. The program should offer a curriculum that dispels common myths, highlights diverse career paths, and focuses on the soft and technological skills needed for success in a modern banking environment.

Who We Are

At MassMutual, our unwavering focus is – and will continue to be – our purpose: helping people secure their future and protect the ones they love. We’re a mutual company, which means we’re owned by our policyowners – so everything we do is focused on our customers. We provide holistic financial solutions, guidance and education in the way our customers want to engage with us, on their terms – whether in person, online, at the workplace or over the phone. We offer a wide range of financial products and services, including life insurance, protection products, retirement, and investment solutions to help people achieve their financial goals.

As a Founding Partner of the MassChallenge FinTech program, we understand that startups are the hub of innovation. We need new ideas and innovation in the financial services industry, and we believe that by creating a platform through MassChallenge’s FinTech program, we will help build industry and startup collaboration.

MassMutual is an excellent partner for startups – we are passionate about innovation, have significant knowledgeable resources available and are committed to helping startups grow. Our track record over the past seven years with the MassChallenge FinTech and HealthTech programs led to more than 40% of our partnerships turning into engagements.

If matched with MassMutual, startups can expect to meet with leaders and associates across the company and engage in use case assessments which will help determine business and technology opportunities.

We look forward to partnering with innovative startups and making Boston the leading FinTech ecosystem to help address our industry’s challenges.

Our Challenges

Customer Centricity & Digital Enablement

How might we enhance the wealth management client and advisor experience by enabling smarter advisor matching, expanding innovative product offerings, leveraging technologies for faster content creation, and improving CRM integration for seamless tracking and reporting?

A strong first impression can be the deciding factor between a client connecting with the right advisor or being deterred by a fragmented, frustrating experience. Wealth Management is evolving to meet clients where they are through data-driven engagement, smarter advisor matching and adopting new technologies and products that deliver a frictionless experience. By continuing to evolve in these ways, we can empower advisors and employees to work smarter, faster, and more collaboratively making the client and advisor journey personalized, seamless, and more meaningful.

AI & Real-Time Intelligence
How can we harness AI and real-time intelligence to more effectively and efficiently achieve our strategic objectives and deliver improved business outcomes through faster insights, smarter decisions, and measurable business impact (e.g., lower cost, higher revenue, lower risk), all while ensuring our practices are consistent with MassMutual’s values and applicable laws?

MassMutual has been integrating data-driven decision-making into our company strategy for more than a decade – incorporating new technologies like machine learning and AI along the way – to help return value to our policy owners.  While AI and real-time intelligence offer the potential to dramatically improve quality, cost, and experience, effectively integrating these technologies across diverse workflows and delivering business impact at-scale remains a significant challenge. As such, we are looking for partners who can help us leverage AI and real-time intelligence to improve decision-making, uncover actionable insights, reduce risk, and deliver business impact at scale across the enterprise, while ensuring consistency and adherence to MassMutual’s values and all applicable laws and regulations.

Workflow Efficiencies & Administration

How can we streamline workflow management and maintain dynamic process documentation that clearly shows how and why things are done, while making knowledge gaps and changes easy to track?

Managing workflows across teams and maintaining process documentation is cumbersome and often inefficient. Knowledge gaps and areas of subject matter expertise are difficult to identify and capturing not just how tasks are done but why—whether due to regulatory requirements or internal preferences— is inconsistent. Existing documentation is often static and lacks important updates or context. As a result, tracing changes over time, understanding current practices, and getting an accurate point-in-time view of operations is extremely challenging. In order to get to an improved future state, we are seeking ways to streamline our workflows across the business.

Talent, Retention & Recruiting
How can MassMutual attract, develop, and keep talent crucial to our growth strategy by using tools that help leaders make the best talent decisions?

MassMutual is seeking innovative solutions that enhance its talent strategy. The goal is to attract, develop, and retain top-tier talent aligned with the company’s talent objectives. We’re looking for tools that empower leaders to make smarter, data-driven decisions across the employee lifecycle—from recruitment and onboarding to performance management and succession planning. These solutions should provide actionable insights into workforce trends, skill gaps, engagement levels, and retention risks, enabling proactive interventions and strategic workforce planning.

Fraud Prevention & Cybersecurity
How might we protect against fraud & cybersecurity risks while improving efficiency and trust in our processes?

The rising manipulation and falsification of documents, forms, and identities expose insurers to significant fraud & cybersecurity risks—ranging from underwriting misrepresentation and fraudulent claims to disbursement fraud, profile hijacking, and familial fraud.  There is a pressing need for low-friction, cost-efficient solutions to further improve document authentication, identity verification, and early flagging of suspicious activity, thereby reducing financial and reputational risk while improving operational efficiency.

Who We Are

The Hartford is a leader in property and casualty insurance, employee benefits and mutual funds. With more than 200 years of expertise, The Hartford is widely recognized for its service excellence, sustainability practices, trust and integrity. More information on the company and its financial performance is available at https://www.thehartford.com.

Our Challenges

NextGen Distribution & Engagement Platform

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) often struggle to find suitable insurance that’s affordable but still meets their needs, while brokers lack efficient tools to position solutions. Distribution is fragmented, reactive, and impersonal, limiting growth.

Start-ups can address this by designing and building a platform that matches clients to products, enables self-assessment, delivers tailored outreach, and equips brokers with proactive tools. Starting with Small Business property insurance, the platform should be designed to scale to larger segments. This effort supports digital transformation, customer-focused innovation, and broker enablement. A successful solution will simplify discovery, boost conversions and satisfaction, improve broker output, and drive growth and efficiency across teams.

Advanced Neighborhood & Property Risk Fingerprinting

Commercial property risk assessments often miss the link between building-level issues (e.g., fire systems, permits) and neighborhood health (e.g., economy, infrastructure), which can limit pricing accuracy and mitigation. Start-ups are invited to merge a Neighborhood Health Index and Virtual Fire Exposure into a unified risk score, like a credit score for property, to enable smarter underwriting and targeted strategies. This aligns with goals in consulting, AI analytics, and community resilience, empowering data science teams to deliver actionable insights.

A successful solution will create a scalable framework that allows for systematic identification, analysis and characterization of unique risk profiles, enhance underwriting tools, and strengthen areas like Data Services, Risk Modeling, and Client Advisory – enabling the organization to offer the future of risk intelligence today.

Proactive Risk Engagement & Self-Service

Commercial risk mitigation is often reactive and manual, leaving some clients without tools to spot and act on emerging risks, while insurers lack real-time data for pricing and segmentation.

This challenge invites start-ups to build a Risk Engagement Hub that surfaces mitigation options, embeds risk scores into underwriting, and offers self-service tools for SMBs to assess and deploy solutions like sensors or telematics. The platform needs to support goals related to customer empowerment, risk intelligence, and scalable service, enabling teams to deliver smarter engagement. A successful solution will centralize risk insights, boost satisfaction, reduce losses, and improve pricing—impacting Risk Services, Underwriting, Digital Experience, and Product Strategy, and advancing proactive risk management.

Gamified Behavioral Telematics

Commercial drivers and fleet managers lack engaging tools to improve safety, while traditional telematics offer data without realizing lasting change, and insurers miss out on behavior-based insights.

This challenge invites start-ups to build a Gamified Risk Platform that uses telematics and external data to personalize feedback and encourage safe habits through positive reinforcement – points, rewards, and leaderboard – favoring motivation over punishment. The platform builds a rich behavior data lake for underwriting, pricing, and loss prevention, supporting goals in risk intelligence, segmentation, and digital engagement. It empowers teams to deliver predictive, personalized solutions, and a successful outcome will improve safety, generate high-quality data, and strengthen Commercial Auto, Risk Services, Underwriting, and Digital Experience – advancing behavioral risk management and customer satisfaction.