Banking & Insurance

R&D for Banking & Insurance

The pillars of financing in France

This industry needs to develop specialised research and development cells in order to deepen their knowledge of their own sector. As a direct corollary, the fields of financial modeling, quantitative research and actuarial science are at the heart of their scientific projects.

In parallel, digitalisation and electronic represent a complex shift for financial institutions constrained by extremely strict security and regulatory policies, but which also make it possible to offer new value-added services which were inaccessible several years ago. The appearance of new technologies allow the genesis of heavy R&D programmes: blockchain is a perfect example, and banking institutions are perfect candidates for experimenting with these state-of-the-art technologies. Similarly, the importance of what is now called Big Data is no longer to be revealed in banking information systems which handle huge amounts of data on a daily basis, thus providing fertile ground for data processing projects. Consequently, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence make it possible to leverage these volumes of data by offering value-added services for customers.

If you work in the banking or insurance ecosystem, your projects can lead to innovation and technological breakthroughs, and we can support and advise you in the financing of your work.

Our support

Due to the specific nature of the Banking & Insurance sector, our teams generally work in pairs. Their financial mathematics and IT skills allow you to explore your projects in the respective fields of financial modelling and digitalisation. Thanks to this double expertise, we can support you in the various stages of the financing process of your R&D projects as well as assist you in the recruitment of PhDs whose appetite for large-scale Artificial Intelligence projects which banks can offer (for example) is well established.

Energy
& the Environment

A sector with major challenges

Reducing energy consumption is a significant environmental and financial challenge, and is a major driver of research, especially in this context where human activities have an increasingly negative impact on the environment, such as global warming.

There are several different types of energy:

• Fossil fuels (gasoline, natural gas, coal, etc.)
• Electricity
• Nuclear
• Renewable energy (wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, biomass, etc.)

Several avenues are being explored in this sector in order to reduce waste, improve energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact. A great deal of research and development work is currently being conducted in energy production, construction, transportation and the marine and offshore sectors, etc.

Indeed, research topics are oriented towards increasing energy efficiency in the production of all types of energy, improving the insulation performance of building materials, nuclear dismantling, recycling motor vehicle parts, developing models to simulate energy consumption in buildings, producing energy from the forces or resources of the marine and offshore environments, developing batteries for electric vehicles, developing biofuels, etc.

The energy sector in France is comprised of approximately 3,000 companies. Among the largest, we have Total, EDF and GDF Suez and Areva who also have a world-wide presence and recognised expertise. In 2017, Public R&D expenditures on renewable energy amounted to €126 million, or 13% of the total public R&D expenditure on energy, concentrated mainly on solar (43%) and biomass (41%).