Today, MaRS announced the official opening of the C Suite, its corporate innovation district located in the heart of the MaRS Centre.
Launched with founding partner CIBC, C Suite is meant to act as a space where startups and large enterprises to accelerate innovation. The first tenants CIBC Live Labs, Lab of Forward Thinking (LOFT) — a partnership between Manulife and John Hancock partnership — and Moneris, Canada’s largest credit and debit card processor.
“The definition of convenience in banking is changing, as personal and business clients adopt technology that allows them to bank when, where and how they choose, and we intend to be at the forefront of that evolution,” said David Williamson, group head of retail and business banking at CIBC. “Our work at CIBC Live Labs is all about delivering on changing banking needs with innovative solutions developed in a highly collaborative, fast-moving environment.”
Small teams of developers, designers, and market analysts in the C Suite will work to predict market trends and rapidly iterate new technologies. The CIBC Live Labs team is already working in the MaRS C Suite on FinTech solutions, and has already created the CIBC Apple Watch app and the bank’s Hello Home Mortgage app.
Moneris is also developing complementary technologies to improve the retail experience in the areas of mobile point-of-sale, omni-channel retailing, and core payments.
“CIBC, Manulife, and Moneris share MaRS’ belief that collaboration accelerates the rate of innovation,” said Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS Discovery District. “In the MaRS C Suite, financial technology services teams from several institutions are collaborating with each other and with ventures across our sectors to develop new technologies.”
