On March 12th 2021, Nihon Unisys announced the establishment of the "Financial Inclusion Consortium" 「金融包摂コンソーシアム」starting April 2021 with the vision of "enriching lives for everyone who does their best" in the current changing society 「がんばるみんなに豊かな暮らしを」. 
The "Financial Inclusion Consortium" aims at providing a variety of financial services in collaboration with financial institutions, human resource service providers and fintech companies among others, taking into consideration some of the major forces driving societal changes such as the impact of COVID19, work styles evolution, a higher lifestyle diversity or also the coming possibility to pay salary using e-money in Japan.
encognize, alongside AdviceRobo, a leading Fintech company in Alternative Credit Scoring supported by our Japan X-Tech Force, is one of the initial members of this "Financial Inclusion Consortium" led by Nihon Unisys.

Nihon Unisys Press Release here (Japanese only)
日本ユニシス社のニュースリリースはこちらです。

​"Financial Inclusion Consortium" webpage here (Japanese only)
「金融包摂コンソーシアム」のHPはこちらです。

Our encognize Japan X-Tech Force has continued without any interruption (yet remotely) their business development efforts on FinTech and InsurTech X HealthTech related solutions from their existing business partners portfolio.
Additionally, encognize has engaged in new, diverse digital innovation-focused activities over Q3:

• .synaptik service: encognize, a Service Partner of Plug And Play Japan, was privileged to be invited to join the PnP Japan Fall Summit 2020 as guest contributor on September 28, Expo Day 1, and to discuss the presentations with the Brand & Retail APAC/Europe program participants for the benefit of the Expo audience.
• .fastforward service: on July 16, encognize announced its collaboration with FACIL'iti, a French-Japanese company offering a secure, cost-efficient, non-invasive and privacy compliant solution that helps make the web more inclusive.
• .lab4-203 service: as part of an EdTech project aimed at improving the learning of foreign languages on-line or with an app through the use of adaptive learning techniques, a first functional prototype of ELLA (E.nhanced L.earning L.evel A.lgorithm) has been released. The prototype is now being tested by a group of pre-selected learners in order to calibrate the adaptive learning recommendation engine.
• .fastforward service: through the whole quarter, part of our encognize Japan X-Tech Force has been involved in the facilitation and delivery support of a project based on advanced PII data protection solutions.

2020 Q2, The "lockdown Quarter"...
Under these unprecedented conditions of massive lockdown and travel ban across the globe, the encognize team has focused their Q2 effort on continuing pushing new innovation initiatives in Japan as well as bringing extra support to overseas startup contemplating entering the Japanese Market despite the challenging context.
These efforts were reflected through the following achievements and activities:

• June 10: an important milestones was achieved for AdviceRobo, an Alternative Credit Scoring solution from the Netherlands represented in Japan by our encognize X-tech Force, with the official announcement of a collaboration project with Orix Credit in Japan. The full Japanese Press Release is available here and the English version here.
• June 12: As a Service Partner of Plug And Play Japan, encognize has delivered remote workshops for newly selected batches in the US and Europe on Japan Market Entry and the related B2B opportunities and challenges. This program gives the opportunity to new comers to Japan to understand what to expect and how to prepare for developing fruitful collaboration relationships with Japanese corporations through  the PnP Japan program.
• June 30: a dedicated remote mentoring session was provided to a startup selected for the exploration program Next Step Japan, an initiative powered by German Accelerator and supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.
• May-June: the encognize proprietary framework "Japan B2B Collaboration Readiness Assessment" (J-B2B.CRA) was revised and released under version 3.1. Designed for B2B FinTech, RegTech, InsurTech and CyberSec startups entering Japan, this qualitative assessment framework evaluates their chances of success in developing a successful collaboration engagement with Japanese corporations over 5 key dimensions: Organization Credibility, Solution Usability, Governance Maturity, Market Entry Agility and Japan Fluency. If you want to know more or are interested in a free initial assessment (eligibility conditions apply), please contact us here.