The Fintech Investor Network and Ecosystem (FINE) project is a Horizon Europe funded project which kicked off in September 2023 and was concluded in November 2025. The consortium consisted of seven partners spread across six countries, providing expertise and experience in the fintech sector.
- Paris EuroPlace / Finance Innovation (FR)
- F6S Network Limited (IE)
- CrowdFunding Hub (NL)
- AcrossLimits (MT)
- Impulse4Women (ES)
- The Fintech Corridor (IE)
- Asociatia Romana De Fintech (RO)
Investment ecosystems are dynamic living organisms driven by different actors with different interests. Investors, including early investors or angel investors as well as venture capital (VC) firms, have different motivations, risk appetites, and levels of available capital. Furthermore, investors vary in expertise and specialisations, with most investors moving away from generalist approaches to more individual sector-oriented strategies.
To maximise efficiency, VC firms now tend to focus on specific industrial verticals depending on their expertise and the types of start-ups they attract. Angel investors also prefer investing in businesses they understand, hence limiting their investment activity to specific industries. With verticalisation comes more focused expertise, and increased efficiency for investment managers to get to know the ecosystem players, risks and policies governing that investment environment.
By creating more inclusive, connected and interlinked ecosystems between Fintech investment ecosystems (both on local and international levels), FINE promotes increased collaboration between investors including co-investment for new Fintech startups, creating a richer investment climate that will support innovation in new start-ups, as well as helping companies scale-up and cross borders to become global competitors in Fintech.
To achieve this dynamic ecosystem and facilitate the collaborative model envisaged by FINE, three main pathways were outlined by the project, as interlinking approaches that are focused on breaking down the barriers to cross-border investment and networking between local and international investors, which seamlessly tied in to the objectives outlined by FINE. These pathways are outlined below:
- Pathway 1: the mapping of ecosystems and development of the KnowledgeBase
- Pathway 2: the development of educational pathways for investors through the Investor Academy
- Pathway 3: the active community-building and networking measures for investors.
As a result, all objectives were completed throughout FINE’s lifetime and all the main targets have been reached. The Fintech ecosystem has been mapped out and can be accessed through the FINE website, as well as the KnowledgeBase and the Investors Academy, which will be supported for the foreseeable future. The community is held on a different platform but investors can apply and register from the website and after they are approved they will be sent a link to the Slack investor community, where discussions, deals and opportunities are being shared everyday.
Although the project is concluded, the tools and community that were created through FINE will be continued with a plan in place to keep these live and accessible. Furthermore, some of the partners who were involved in FINE are working on a continuation of the project with a follow-up EU project to expand the initiative further.
To learn more about FINE you can take a look at the website here or contact: [email protected].