Requests for Startups: Build with Real Banking Problems
Idrock is now accepting startup applications for Summer 2026.
Banks and their business clients are full of operational workflows that are still fragmented across Excel files, phone calls, paper documents, disconnected messengers, and manual approvals.
We believe this creates a major opportunity for startups that can build focused, secure, AI-enabled products for financial institutions and the companies they serve.
The sponsor bank has shared real problem areas. We transformed them into startup requests so founders can understand the pain, define an MVP, and apply with a product vision.
- Founders building B2B SaaS, fintech, regtech, HR-tech, enterprise AI, cybersecurity, developer infrastructure, workflow automation, or customer experience products.
- Technical teams that can ship a working MVP quickly and iterate with feedback from banking domain experts.
- Startups that understand compliance, data security, integrations, auditability, and enterprise adoption constraints.
- Student teams and early-stage founders are welcome if they can demonstrate strong execution speed and product thinking.
- A clear understanding of the user and business pain.
- A narrow MVP that can be tested with realistic workflows.
- Secure architecture, role-based access, audit logs, and clean data separation where relevant.
- Practical AI usage: classification, summarization, scoring, recommendations, anomaly detection, or analytics that improve a real workflow.
- A path from hackathon-style prototype to production-grade pilot.
The problem sets
ERP for SMEs that banks can offer as a platform service
Build a modular multi-tenant ERP and operational-monitoring platform for SME clients of banks, covering inventory, production, service operations, approvals, audit, dashboards, and optional business-plan/1C connectivity.
Smart quality control for business banking service teams
Build a digital survey and analytics platform that continuously measures service quality and turns client feedback into employee ratings, service insights, and action items.
AI customer support co-pilot and request routing for bank clients
Build an AI system that helps support teams answer client questions from verified knowledge sources and routes incoming requests, complaints, and service issues into a controlled CRM workflow.
AI recruiter that searches, screens, and starts candidate conversations
Build an AI recruiting assistant that proactively searches candidates, screens inbound applications, scores fit, and starts primary outreach before recruiter handoff.
Internal hiring platform for bank-wide recruitment workflows
Build a single internal recruitment platform that manages the entire hiring funnel from manager request to employee start date.
AI financial analysis for personalized banking recommendations
Analyze customer cash flow, balances, transactions, behavior, and needs to recommend relevant retail banking products at the right time.
AI cash liquidity forecasting for ATMs and branch cash desks
Build an AI system that forecasts ATM and branch-cash demand, monitors ATM status in real time, optimizes cash limits, replenishment routes, and ATM placement, and helps banks reduce both cash-outs and idle cash.
Mobile device management for bank-owned field devices
Build a simplified MDM platform that lets a bank register, monitor, secure, and remotely control service phones, tablets, and laptops used by employees and agents.
Internal developer portal for faster bank engineering
Build an internal developer portal that gives engineering teams one place to create services, provision infrastructure, view service health, and connect GitLab, Jenkins, VMware, Jira, and monitoring data.
AI early warning system for credit risk monitoring
Build an AI-powered early-warning module that detects credit-risk signals, scores clients and loans, creates tasks for monitoring teams, and recommends the next best action.
Corporate business-plan monitoring and accounting-data intelligence
Build a platform that helps banks monitor corporate clients’ annual business plans against actual account inflows/outflows and accounting data such as receivables and payables.
AI compliance operations for credit documents, FX control, and regulator responses
Build an AI-assisted compliance operations platform that can generate and verify credit documents, check FX transactions against currency-control rules, and help prepare legally grounded responses to regulator or government requests.
Unified operational workbench for bank back-office queues and accounting workflows
Build a single operational workbench where bank teams can manage credit queues, postings, fixed-asset leasing, approvals, payments, returns, protocols, and audit history without switching between disconnected screens.
Construction materials investment intelligence and export economics platform
Build a data platform that helps entrepreneurs, banks, and project offices choose better construction-materials investment projects, avoid oversaturated markets, and calculate realistic export economics before contracts are signed.
Cyber threat analytics and digital risk protection for banks
Build tools that help banks detect attacks in logs, investigate attack chains, and protect their brand and customers from phishing, fake apps, impersonation, typosquatting, and dark-web threats.
B2B marketplace and AI back-office for export-ready SMEs
Build a daily-use B2B platform where SMEs can list products, find foreign buyers, generate export contracts, manage financial health, score counterparties, and turn confirmed deals into bank financing applications.
How we evaluate
How clearly the team understands the user, business pain, and operational context.
Strength of the proposed MVP, product flow, feasibility, and differentiation.
Ability to ship, integrate, test, and iterate quickly with a secure and scalable approach.
Potential for a pilot with the sponsor bank and broader market applicability beyond one internal use case.
Responsible use of AI, explainability, data privacy, and risk-aware design.