London, UK - 28th April, 2014 - GFT, a leading international IT solutions provider to the financial sector, today announced its selection as a finalist within the category of “Innovation in Pan-European Outsourcing” by the European Outsourcing Association.

The recognition follows on from the creation and continued support by GFT of CODE_n, an international initiative for digital pioneers, innovators and ground-breaking start-ups that celebrated its fourth anniversary with a special event during the CeBIT trade show in Hannover Germany last March. This year CODE_n was won by UK big data startup, Viewsy.

When CODE_n launched in 2011, its creator Ulrich Dietz, founder and CEO of GFT, offered a vision “to seek out and promote the world’s most innovative start-ups”. It was felt that innovation was not being brought to the forefront for the wider benefit of the technology sector and outsourcing community.

GFT initiated the idea that kick-started the annual awards, prize fund, workshops, presentations and panel discussion in co-operation with Deutsche Messe, EY, Fujitsu Technology Solutions and the German ICT sector association BITKOM. Over the intervening years, the project has welcomed over 1,000 start-ups from more than 130 countries and has helped to showcase innovation to investors, customers and the wider ICT industry.

Christopher Ortiz, managing director of GFT UK commented: “We have a long standing commitment to Open Innovation which we recognised as a key driver for business prosperity, growth, profitability, competitiveness, and a solid long-term future.”

Recognising the challenging environment in which banks and financial service firms operate, as well as the potential opportunities, In 2014 GFT and Bax & Willems launched “Innovation House” to support the banking and financial services industry in creating, developing and implementing new ideas. The venture promotes “thinking outside the box” to openly discuss and rapidly compare and contrast ideas with a broad audience in order to gather a complete view of potential solutions and the means and partners necessary to make those solutions a reality.

“For GFT, the Open Innovation paradigm expands to incorporate all kinds of innovation activities. Instead of developing everything in-house, outside collaborations are sought in both the development and commercialisation of new solutions, based on the concept that internal resources alone cannot encompass all the knowledge, creativity and capabilities needed for successful innovation,” Ortiz adds.

The European Outsourcing Association (EOA) is a pan-European collective of not-for-profit trade bodies with the express aim of promoting best practice in the outsourcing industry. The 2014 EOA Awards winners will be announced at the upcoming ceremony in London on the 10th of July. More information on CODE_n can be found at http://www.code-n.org/