Fellowship
Lab Fellowship is our unique incubation programme for people and ideas with the
potential to transform our financial system. We call this ‘systemic incubation’.
Each of our previous cohorts has had a distinct focus, from financial health to embedding and advancing climate action within banking institutions.
Find out more about our current Fellowship.
Fellowship: Incubation that can shift a system
We’ve recently launched our new publication, Fellowship: Incubation that can shift a system.
The guide captures the essence of Fellowship, outlines the core elements of the programme, discusses the challenges we faced, and explores the role of incubation in systems change. It is an attempt to codify five years of practice and learning, to honour the skill and commitment of the Lab team over those years, and to share the insights with a wider community of practitioners.
Lab Fellowship: a Brief HiStory
In 2016 we built Lab Fellowship – the world’s first incubator for purpose-driven financial innovation. Following a successful pilot, we partnered with anti-poverty charity Toynbee Hall in 2017 to support the best innovations for improving financial health through the Financial Health Fellowship. In 2019, our Data Fellowship supported innovations harnessing the power of data to build a financial system that serves people and planet.
As the pandemic began we paused our fellowship for entrepreneurs to explore how this programme might develop in future. In 2021, we adapted our model for use in our work with mainstream banking professionals, leading to our first Climate Safe Lending Fellowship. You can read more about it in our report, Catalysing Bank Climate Action.
Our impact
InnovatorS
Lab Fellowship has been judged by independent evaluators to be “an outstanding success” with impacts that “are likely to be ongoing, and considerable”. As a direct result of the programme, Fellows on our innovator programmes secured major clients, received regulatory support, and featured in the press. Collectively, they raised over £4m during or within six months of completing the programme. Fellowship alumni are award-winning pioneers in their field, with many going on to make a significant real-world impact both by scaling their businesses and demonstrating that purpose-led financial innovation is possible. Together, we are helping to change the narratives about finance.
Meet our Innovator Fellowship alumni.
Banking professionals
“For me, the Fellowship was about breaking away from traditional financial services learning and development programmes. I wanted to be a better leader on a topic I feel strongly about. This is the perfect programme to challenge yourself to a new way of thinking, and most importantly, giving you the skills to equip yourself to drive climate action within your organisation.” – Fellowship participant
Meet the Climate Safe Lending Fellows.
