Luke Giancarlo is the Director of the FinTech Innovation Lab in New York, a global incubator connecting early growth-stage startups with leading financial institutions. He is also an executive at Accenture, where he leads digital currency and AI initiatives, helping enterprises adopt innovative technologies. With deep experience in fintech, innovation programs, and startup ecosystems, Luke combines strategic insight with hands-on guidance for founders, enabling practical, real-world impact.
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1. From Startup to Wall Street
Luke, who leads The New York FinTech Innovation Lab and works on Accenture’s digital currency treasury offerings, explains the history and purpose of the lab, which was founded after the 2009 financial crisis to bring fintech innovation to New York and connect startups with Wall Street players.
They talk about the lab’s unique approach: each year, it surveys top-tier banks, insurance companies, and asset managers to understand their technology needs. Then, startups compete to join the program, where the top companies are paired with several financial institutions for mentorship, guidance, and practical feedback over three months. Alex shares his own experience, explaining how the lab helped his company validate ideas, refine their product, and work more effectively with large institutions—sometimes with Accenture acting as a more agile bridge between a startup and a slower-moving enterprise.
The conversation also highlights a key tension for startups: how to get fast, actionable feedback on their products while dealing with long enterprise sales cycles. Luke and Alex explore strategies for choosing the right partners and focusing efforts so startups can grow without getting bogged down, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how innovation happens at the intersection of nimble startups and massive, heavily regulated organizations.
We founded it really after the financial crisis in 2009 as a way to compete with the West Coast and bring some of that fintech innovation back to New York City—to really be at the center and the hub for finance. (Luke Giancarlo)
2. Why the NY FinTech Innovation Lab Is a Game-Changer for Startups and Big Finance
Luke explains that success isn’t just about having a cool product; it’s about solving real problems for the institutions and learning how to navigate their processes. The lab gives startups direct access to procurement, strategy, and technology teams, helping them understand legal, contracting, integration, and data-sharing requirements—all the practical hurdles that are often invisible until you’re in the room.
They also discuss why Accenture has supported the lab for 15 years. Luke emphasizes that the program is largely pro bono and non-dilutive: startups don’t pay fees or give up equity, and financial institutions invest only their time. The payoff for Accenture isn’t direct revenue—it’s insight into what challenges these institutions are facing, the chance to keep New York at the forefront of fintech innovation, and the ability to identify successful startups they can introduce to their clients.
Alex shares how RELAYTO benefited from the lab, noting that it allowed them to pilot their technology in real-world enterprise settings and refine it based on feedback. Luke adds that seeing startups succeed—and then helping bring their solutions to multiple large institutions—is a core part of the lab’s mission.
We can actually partner with you and bring you to our clients and say, “Hey, look, we know this company works because we've seen it with 40 other financial institutions. (Luke Giancarlo)
3. From Innovation Labs to Regulated AI
Alex explains how RELAYTO uses its platform to create “hubs” and portals that showcase startups’ content in an engaging, easy-to-navigate way. These hubs combine videos, slide decks, and even AI chat tools that let users find the specific information they need. The goal isn’t flashy innovation for the sake of it—it’s about clarity, compliance, and impact, especially when communicating with busy financial institution teams or corporate sponsors.
Luke points out that the lab’s focus isn’t just on technology, but on practical solutions that truly solve problems for financial institutions. Every year, the lab gathers insight from banks and insurers to understand where AI and other technologies can improve back-office operations and, increasingly, front-office applications like personalized customer experiences.
Alex shares how this has influenced RELAYTO’s approach to regulated industries. Their “regenerative AI” ensures that AI-generated content remains approved and compliant, which is crucial for customer-facing communications in finance and insurance. He highlights a major challenge: many critical financial and benefits documents are overly complex, leaving employees and customers confused. By carefully applying AI, RELAYTO helps simplify these experiences without increasing regulatory risk, whether it’s for health insurance, retirement plans, or other benefits.
It’s less innovation theater and more putting you in the room—in the shark tank—with some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. (Luke Giancarlo)
4. Agentic AI, Compliance, and the Future of Work in Financial Services
Luke points out that the biggest challenge with AI isn’t just building cool applications—it’s managing risk, compliance, and accuracy. He highlights companies like Palki, which provide “guardrails” for large language models, ensuring that AI stays within regulatory boundaries and doesn’t hallucinate, especially in highly regulated finance and insurance contexts. Beyond compliance, AI is also being used to empower employees, helping them make better decisions and be more effective in their roles, particularly as workflows evolve in the post-pandemic world.
Alex expands on this by discussing HR and benefits communications. Historically, HR has been seen as primarily a compliance function, but employees and leaders want connection and clarity. AI offers opportunities here, but it also comes with risk—probabilistic models can misinform if not carefully controlled. RELAYTO’s “regenerative AI” approach ensures that customer-facing communications in insurance, healthcare, and retirement planning remain accurate and comprehensible, helping both employees and end customers make better decisions.
Luke then looks ahead to emerging patterns of innovation. Beyond back-office efficiency, AI is moving toward agentic applications, where systems can make decisions and execute tasks with minimal human intervention. This creates new challenges in governance, cost management, and operations—similar to what organizations went through with cloud adoption. He also highlights AI in payments and agent-to-agent commerce, including stablecoins and digital assets, as well as how customers increasingly use generative AI to make decisions about insurance and financial products. Companies will need to be proactive in ensuring their services are discoverable, accurate, and embedded within these AI-driven decision-making environments.
Part of the double-edged sword of AI is hallucinations. (Luke Giancarlo)
5. How Startups Break Through in Big Finance
Luke shares insights from his experience running the New York FinTech Innovation Lab. Successful startups, he says, don’t just have advanced technology—they have clarity about the problem they solve. Financial institutions are not buying technology for technology’s sake; they are buying solutions to concrete problems. Luke stresses the value of focusing on one problem and solving it exceptionally well, rather than trying to offer a platform that does everything. One of the lab’s partner institutions put it plainly: they want solutions that “solve one thing perfectly” rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.
Alex then reflects on RELAYTO’s journey, highlighting how early exploratory work—experimenting with multiple applications—helped generate interest. But the company found real traction when it narrowed its focus to a specific, high-impact problem in financial services: employee benefits. In the U.S., benefits are notoriously complex and confusing, with employees often struggling to understand healthcare options or retirement plans. By concentrating on this area, RELAYTO could develop a solution that was easily replicable, demonstrably effective, and aligned with both regulatory requirements and business needs. Alex notes that this approach—proving a thesis in a focused domain before scaling—is often overlooked by founders who aim to build a broad platform too early.
They also discuss a common misconception in tech development: that products are like “Legos” where customers can assemble whatever they want. In reality, tailored solutions that address specific workflows tend to deliver more value, especially in regulated enterprises. Even a large organization like Accenture relies on playbooks and structured approaches rather than trying to use technology in a completely modular, flexible way. For startups, this means that depth and clarity of solution often trump breadth of functionality.
Companies need to be more present with AI to help customers make insurance decisions. (Luke Giancarlo)
6. Narrow Focus, Follow-Through, and Networks: Keys to Startup Success in Enterprise Finance
Luke offers guidance for founders thinking about applying to programs like the FinTech Lab. He recommends starting with one or two hypotheses and testing them within the context of real institutions. The lab publishes the top themes and priorities each year, helping startups align their solutions with the problems financial institutions are actively trying to solve. This approach ensures that founders aren’t just creating interesting technology—they’re creating solutions that matter and are actionable.
Execution and follow-up are another critical factor. Luke explains that startups need “horsepower” to manage multiple enterprise relationships at once. Teams are often small—sometimes just two people—but they must respond quickly, track follow-ups, and meet the expectations of multiple sophisticated financial clients. AI and other tools, like CRM platforms or content solutions such as RELAYTO, can help startups stay organized and scale their efforts while delivering a differentiated experience.
People buy solutions; they don’t buy technology. (Luke Giancarlo)
7. Building Energy, Human Connections, and the Future of Agentic Finance
Alex emphasizes the human side of innovation, pointing out that energy, mindset, and collaboration matter as much as technology. In enterprise environments, rejection and slow adoption are common, so having “can-do” people around you—supportive, creative, resilient—is essential. He also notes that AI-driven outreach is creating noise in go-to-market efforts, making authentic, human connections even more valuable.
Luke agrees, adding that innovation should be enjoyable. He describes how financial institutions often look forward to interacting with startups because it’s stimulating and fun—they get to explore AI, blockchain, crypto, and emerging tech with enthusiastic founders. The energy and curiosity in these interactions help everyone stay engaged and inspired.
Looking ahead, Luke dives into the future of technology and enterprise innovation. He highlights agentic commerce as a transformative concept—where AI agents could manage payments, shopping, insurance decisions, and other transactional tasks autonomously. While this future is likely five years away from full adoption, early startups are already experimenting with embedding products and payments directly into AI-driven experiences. The vision is to offload operational tasks to agents, freeing humans to focus on creativity, relationships, and strategic decision-making.
Luke also touches on quantum computing and accelerated data processing. While fully realized quantum computing may be distant, interim solutions could create sudden industry-wide pressures—a “ChatGPT moment” for quantum—where organizations feel the urgent need to catch up to stay competitive.
Finding those people, leaning into them, and building your cohort—your “army”—is something I wish I had done earlier in my career. (Luke Giancarlo)
8. Digital Currency, AI, and the Power of Collaboration
Companies that understand the trends early and spot promising startups gain a critical advantage, while those who lag risk being caught off guard. Alex frames it in classic Warren Buffett style: you don’t want to be unprepared when the tide goes out.
Luke dives into digital currency, a personal passion of his. He traces its evolution—from early exchanges and foundational networks to stablecoins, tokenization, and NFTs—and anticipates the next frontier: a synergy between AI and blockchain. He explains that AI can help generate logic for smart contracts and manage complex financial processes, while blockchain ensures transparency and data integrity. One practical application he highlights is automated treasury management, where AI agents could optimize yields across stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and crypto funds, representing a glimpse of the future of agentic finance.
The conversation then circles back to the FinTech Innovation Lab itself. Luke describes it as a partnership between Accenture and the Partnership for New York City—a civic organization representing the city’s 300 largest employers. Accenture provides operational and technological support, while the Partnership brings its civic network and connections. Together, they run a program that gives startups unparalleled access to top-tier financial institutions, mentorship, and exposure to key decision-makers. Luke encourages early- and growth-stage founders to apply, underscoring that the Lab is one of the most practical ways to connect with major financial institutions in New York.
Alex closes by reflecting on how RELAYTO’s journey evolved alongside the Lab—from pre-AI roots to the launch of RELAYTO AI. He praises the Lab for enabling meaningful collaboration between startups and enterprises, and for creating real-world innovation rather than just “innovation theater.” Luke wraps up by sharing that LinkedIn is the best way to connect with him personally.
That future creates more time for humans to connect in real life—to focus on what we do best: creativity, relationships, and engagement—while agents handle bureaucracy and operational tasks. (Luke Giancarlo)
Check the episode's Transcript (AI-generated) HERE.
To continue the conversation with Serguei, connect with him via his LinkedIn or the Wharton website.
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