Building bridges between important fintech hubs and the Eurozone, B-Hive brings together major banks, insurers and market infrastructure players. "We want to empower our community to participate in our strategic programs to create tangible solutions to challenges faced in the industry, while also helping connect them with the right people and companies on an international scale,” asserts Mr. Vandenreydt.

Working on common innovation challenges and building bridges to the global startup and scale-up community, B-Hive's Kick-Off 2018 event, on the evening of January 15, at the Chancellerie at BNP Paribas Fortis saw the likes of Belgian Minister of Finance Johan Van Overtveldt and included more than 240 representatives from the community. With everything said and done, one notion that everyone agreed to was "the need for a fintech community such as B-Hive in Belgium, as companies looking to scale not only need capital, but they also need an effective ecosystem that supports them."

B-Hive's members are a collection of more than 100 startups and scale-ups interested in collaborating in the ecosystem. The members have full access to B-Hive's community and the chance to pitch to, and network with, corporate partners, as well as promote company announcements through B-Hive's newsletter, website and social media channels.

Each of B-Hive’s collaborative innovation platform programs—CyberHive, DigiHive, OpenHive, TrustHive, and TalentHive—tackle a specific challenge in the financial services industry. In particular, CyberHive, as the name suggests, is a unified platform that provides a marketplace for cybersecurity experts with distinctive and applicable solutions and access to research, best practices and innovation for B-Hive's corporate partners while TrustHive deals with critical challenges around identity management, KYC and blockchain.

The meetups and subsequent events offer members of B-Hive's community new networking opportunities with new companies, unique access to C-level decision makers that would have taken them much time to identify, the chance to compress time from the first contact to concrete action and a highly recommendable interaction environment.

With stronger ambitions for 2018, B-Hive is developing itself more internationally and turning its focus toward matchmaking within its community. “B-Hive has ambitious plans that include, but are not limited to, a focus on community building, matchmaking, strengthening strategic programs and international positioning," concludes Mr. Vandenreydt.