About the Smart Data Challenge Prize

What is the Smart Data Challenge Prize?

As a pioneer of Open Banking, the UK led the world in empowering people to take control of their banking data. This opened up new opportunities for fintech innovation and growth and expanded choice for people and small businesses.

But Open Banking is just the start. There is now a huge opportunity to transition towards a Smart Data economy, focusing on new sectors to drive positive change for people and businesses.

Following the success of last year’s Smart Data Discovery Challenge, the Smart Data Challenge Prize is the next step in this journey.

Through the Prize, we want to move beyond ideas and demonstrate how cross-sector Smart Data solutions might work in practice, and generate insight into the opportunities and the challenges of Smart Data-powered innovation.

The Prize will give up to ten selected innovators the opportunity to prototype Smart Data solutions with high potential impact in a specially created synthetic Data Sandbox.

The selected innovators will benefit from grants totaling £50,000, as well as a range of non-financial support. Following the prototyping phase, the winning team will receive a further £50,000, and two runners-up a further £25,000 each.

The prize closed for entries on 14 March 2025.

Challenge Statement

The Smart Data Challenge Prize is looking for teams that can:

Identify Smart Data use cases that utilise multiple datasets from sectors across the economy, and build prototypes, demonstrating their market feasibility and potential to deliver real-world benefits for consumers and businesses (pending implementation of Smart Data schemes).

Timeline of the Challenge Prize

15 January – 14 March
Open call for Smart Data solutions
From 15 January 2025 to 14 March 2025 we are running an open call for Smart Data solutions, in which we’re inviting you to submit an application outlining a Smart Data solution that you believe could make a difference for consumers or small businesses and that you want to prototype in the Smart Data Challenge Prize.
March – May
Assessment period
After the open call closes, an independent expert panel will assess submitted solutions and select the most promising based on published assessment criteria. We intend to shortlist up to 10 teams as finalists.
May
Finalist announcement
Finalists will be announced in May 2025 and will be eligible to receive a grant of up to £50,000 to support the development of their prototype.
May – September
Development phase
From May 2025, teams will begin developing their ideas into a working Smart Data prototype. In addition to the grant of up to £50,000, finalists are also eligible for non-financial support in the form of mentoring, training and networking sessions with key industry stakeholders, such as government stakeholders, industry groups, data holders and innovation/tech partners.
September – October
Winner announcement
In September 2025 teams will demonstrate their prototype and make a final submission to be considered for the winner’s prize of £50,000. In October 2025, the expert panel will select the winning team, and two runners up.
  • 2025
  • 2025
  • 2025
  • 2025
  • 2025

Sign up for updates about the Smart Data Challenge Prize

Sign up for our newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.