On Thursday, Technology Association of Georgia President/CEO Tino Mantella challenged local business and government leaders at a Town Hall Meeting in Columbus to create an “Innovation District” that leverages the region’s strength in Financial Technology.

“A FinTech Innovation district in Columbus could serve “seed-stage” FinTech companies and provide free-access to critical data and resources to FinTech entrepreneurs and start-ups,” said Mantella. “One of the biggest barriers to FinTech startups is access to the data. This district could go a long way towards streamlining access to data for financial technology startups.”

The challenge was made at the TAG Columbus annual Technology Town Hall which was held at the offices of Delta Data on Thursday. The event serves as an informational forum about the critical issues and policies that are important to the emerging technology communities in Georgia.  Attendees learned about legislative activities from the 2016 session, as well as previewed initiatives for the upcoming 2017 Georgia General Assembly.

In addition to the Challenge, TAG also provided local insights from its 2016 State of the Industry: Technology in Georgia Report. According to the report, computer programmers, application developers, computer support specialists and systems analysts dominate the list of Columbus' leading technology occupations.

“FinTech is one of the tech sectors Where Georgia Leads and the state’s second largest FinTech Cluster is here in Columbus” said Mantella. “An innovation district that cultivates crowdfunding systems, financial data analysis and security, would certainly complement the other FinTech initiatives in the state. Such a move could attract more talent, capital and startups from around the nation and would strengthen Georgia’s status as a FinTech leader.”

TAG will be hosting additional Technology Town Hall meetings around the state over the next few months. For more information on the next Town Hall, please contact Joseph Santoro at [email protected].