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Bank of America has launched a new fintech accelerator programme aimed at entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities.
The six-month Breakthrough Lab programme provides mentorship, digital expertise, networking opportunities with industry experts and access to potential investors to Black, Hispanic-Latino, Native American and other entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities in order to help scale-up their early-stage technology-related businesses.
Pre-seed stage companies with ideas related to fintech or tech-enabled ideas promoting inclusion in areas such as healthtech, wealthtech, edtech and housing can apply.
Successful applicants will receive 94 hours of live instruction spanning a diverse range of business management topics and tech support and will gain exposure to investors and providers of capital.
The programme, which aims to boost the number of small fintech businesses and broaden financial inclusion, begins in September and ends in March next year.
Rina Arline, the programme’s director within the bank’s global transaction services division, says the accelerator will give emerging entrepreneurs from a range of backgrounds access to the bank’s “vast resources and industry networks”.
In 2021, the bank launched a pilot programme with five start-ups from the New York area. Subsequently, in 2022, the bank expanded the pilot with 17 companies from the US, Mexico, the UK and France.