A strong fintech award nomination does more than list what your company has built. It shows a jury, in a few hundred clear words, why your product, team or leader has made a measurable difference to customers and to the market. This guide shares nine proven tips from the team behind the FinNext Awards, so you can write an entry that is easy to judge and hard to forget.
The advice applies to most fintech awards, whether you are nominating your own company, a colleague or an organisation you admire. Where it helps, we use the FinNext Awards 2027 as a worked example: 15 categories, judged on innovation, measurable impact, customer value and scalability, with winners announced live in Dubai, London and Singapore.
In this article
Why fintech awards are worth the effort
Entering an award takes time, so it is fair to ask what you get back. For most fintech teams the answer comes in three parts.
- Credibility with buyers and partners. Banks, insurers and investors run due diligence on every supplier. Independent recognition, judged against published criteria, gives them a reason to take the first meeting.
- Visibility at the right moment. Finalists and winners are named on stage and across event channels, often in front of the investors and institutions they most want to reach.
- A sharper story. Writing a good award nomination forces you to explain your impact in plain language. Many teams reuse that text in pitch decks, sales proposals and hiring pages.
There is also a quieter benefit: the process makes you collect evidence. Teams that gather customer outcomes, growth figures and product milestones for an entry often discover gaps in how they track impact, and fix them long before the ceremony.
What judges look for in an award nomination
Every awards programme publishes its own criteria, and the first step is to read them closely. At the FinNext Awards, each entry is scored on four criteria that are common across most fintech awards:
| Criterion | What the jury wants to see | Evidence that works |
|---|---|---|
| Innovation | What is genuinely new in your product, model or approach | A clear before-and-after, a first in your market or a novel use of technology |
| Measurable impact | Results you can count, not intentions | Growth, cost or time saved, fraud reduced or approvals sped up, all with dates |
| Customer value | Who benefits and how their life or business improved | Customer quotes used with permission, retention figures, short case studies |
| Scalability | Whether the result can grow beyond a pilot | New markets, partner integrations, unit economics and capacity plans |
Notice that every criterion asks for evidence. Judges read dozens of entries, often against the clock. The nominations that rise to the top make scoring easy: a clear claim, then proof, then context.
9 proven tips for a winning fintech award nomination
1. Pick the category that fits your strongest evidence
Choose the category where your evidence is strongest, not the one with the grandest name. A payments startup with excellent growth but a modest product story may score better in Fintech Startup of the Year than in Payments Innovation of the Year. Read every category description, then match your three best proof points to it.
You can usually enter more than one category, but each entry should be written for that category’s focus. Pasting the same text into five categories rarely works, because the jury notices when an entry answers a different question.
2. Check the eligibility rules before you write
Eligibility rules decide whether your entry is read at all. Check the time window for achievements, the regions covered, whether self-nominations are allowed and how many entries one organisation can submit. For the FinNext Awards 2027, entries should describe achievements from the last 18 months, self-nominations are welcome, and each organisation or individual can submit one nomination per category.
3. Open with a one-sentence summary
Start your award nomination with a single sentence that a judge could repeat to a colleague. A useful pattern is who you are, what you did and the result. For example, with made-up figures: “In 2026 we launched instant cross-border payouts for gig workers in the Gulf, cutting the average payout time from three days to under ten minutes for 40,000 users.”
Everything that follows should support that sentence. If a paragraph does not, cut it.
4. Prove impact with numbers, not adjectives
Words such as “revolutionary”, “leading” and “best-in-class” add nothing to a fintech award nomination. Numbers do. Give the metric, the time period and the baseline, so the judge can see the change rather than take your word for it. The figures below are invented to show the pattern; use your own.
- Weak: “Our platform has transformed SME lending.”
- Strong: “Between March 2025 and June 2026, average SME loan decisions fell from five days to four hours across 1,200 applications.”
- Weak: “We are growing fast.”
- Strong: “Monthly active users grew from 18,000 to 95,000 in 12 months, and 62% were still active after six months.”
If you cannot share exact figures, use ranges or percentages and say why. Judges understand commercial confidentiality, but they cannot score a claim they cannot see.
5. Show the customer, not just the product
Many entries spend most of their words on features. Judges want to know who those features helped. Describe a typical customer, the problem they had and what changed after they started using your product. One short case study, used with the customer’s permission, is worth more than a page of functionality.
The same rule applies to institution and leadership categories. A Digital Bank of the Year entry should show customer outcomes, not only app ratings. A Fintech Leader of the Year nomination should describe the decisions the person made and what happened as a result.
6. Explain what is genuinely new
Innovation is easier to judge when you name the comparison. What did customers do before? What did competitors offer? What does your approach make possible for the first time, or for a new group of people? Keep the technical detail short and focus on why it matters. A judge from a bank, a fund or a regulator should be able to follow every sentence.
7. Make the scale story credible
Scalability is where many promising startups lose points. Show that the result is not a one-off: new markets entered, partners integrated, licences secured or unit costs falling as volume grows. If you are early, be honest about your stage and show the next concrete step, such as a signed partner or a live pilot with a timeline.
8. Back every claim with evidence judges can check
Link to evidence wherever the awards programme allows it: press coverage, public filings, regulator announcements, customer references, app store data or audited results. Make it easy to verify. A link to a public announcement beats a screenshot, and a named reference beats an anonymous quote.
Never inflate a figure or claim an award, licence or partnership you do not have. Juries talk to each other and to the market, and an entry that cannot be verified is usually marked down or set aside.
9. Edit hard, then submit early
Write a first draft, leave it for a day, then cut it by a third. Ask someone outside the project to read it and tell you, in one sentence, what you achieved. If their sentence does not match your summary, rewrite the opening. Then submit before the final week, when portals are busy and teams are rushed.
A simple structure for your award nomination
If you are starting from a blank page, this structure works for most categories. Keep each section short: a good justification is often 400 to 700 words.
- Summary: one or two sentences on who, what and the headline result.
- The problem: who had it, and why the existing options fell short.
- What you did: the product, programme or decision, in plain language.
- Results: three to five measurable outcomes, with dates and baselines.
- Customer value: one short case study or quote.
- Why it is innovative: the comparison with what came before.
- What comes next: how the result will scale over the next 12 months.
- Evidence: links or references the jury can check.
Common mistakes that cost fintech awards entries
- Writing a brochure. Marketing copy reads well on a website and badly in front of a jury. Replace claims with evidence.
- Answering the wrong question. Each category has a focus. An entry about team culture will struggle in a product category.
- Old achievements. Results from outside the eligibility window usually do not count, however impressive they are.
- Jargon and acronyms. Judges come from banking, investment, technology and policy. Write for all of them.
- Careless details. The wrong category, a broken website link or a nominee name spelled two ways makes a poor first impression.
- Leaving it to the last day. Rushed entries are longer, vaguer and more likely to contain errors.
FinNext Awards 2027 categories and the evidence that scores
The FinNext Awards 2027 have 15 categories in three groups. All of them apply to every edition except the Islamic Fintech Award, which is part of the Dubai edition only.
| Group | Categories | Evidence that tends to score well |
|---|---|---|
| Startups and innovation | Fintech Startup of the Year; Payments Innovation of the Year; AI in Financial Services Award; Embedded Finance Innovation Award; RegTech Solution of the Year | Traction with dates, customer outcomes, a clear first in the market and live partners |
| Financial institutions | Digital Bank of the Year; Best Digital Transformation in Banking; Wealthtech Solution of the Year; Insurtech Innovation of the Year; Islamic Fintech Award (Dubai edition) | Customer adoption, service improvements, cost or time saved and compliance outcomes |
| Leadership and investment | Fintech Leader of the Year; Woman in Fintech Award; Rising Star in Fintech; Fintech Investor of the Year; Excellence in Financial Inclusion | Specific decisions and their results, people developed, portfolio outcomes and reach into underserved groups |
For financial inclusion entries, it helps to put your results in context. The World Bank Global Findex database tracks account ownership and the use of financial services by country, which can show the size of the gap your work addresses.
How to submit your FinNext Awards 2027 award nomination
- Read the categories and eligibility rules on the Award Nomination page.
- Choose the edition: Dubai on 7 October 2027, London on 13 October 2027 or Singapore on 24 November 2027.
- Fill in the nomination form with the nominee’s details and your justification. It takes about ten minutes once your text is ready.
- Pay the US$100 nomination fee through the secure Stripe checkout that opens after you submit. Your entry goes forward for judging once the fee is paid.
- Watch your inbox. Shortlisted finalists are notified by email before the event, and winners are announced live at the FinNext Awards ceremony that closes each edition.
Each nomination is scored by a jury of fintech, banking and investment professionals, who declare any conflicts of interest and do not score entries from organisations they are connected to.
Fintech award nomination: frequently asked questions
How long should a fintech award nomination be?
Long enough to make the case and no longer. For most categories, 400 to 700 words of justification is plenty, as long as every paragraph carries evidence. Check the word limits in the form you are using.
Can I nominate my own company?
Yes. Many fintech awards accept self-nominations, including the FinNext Awards, where they are judged exactly like nominations submitted by others.
What if I cannot share exact numbers?
Use percentages, ranges or indexed growth, and say briefly why the exact figure is confidential. Judges score what they can see, so give them as much as you can.
Is there a fee to enter the FinNext Awards?
Yes. The fee is US$100 per award nomination, paid through a secure Stripe checkout after you submit the form. See our Refund Policy for how fees are handled.
When are the FinNext Awards 2027 winners announced?
Live at the ceremony that closes each edition: Dubai on 7 October 2027, London on 13 October 2027 and Singapore on 24 November 2027.
Nominate for the FinNext Awards 2027
Ready to put these tips to work? Submit your award nomination for the FinNext Awards 2027, or get your pass to join the ceremony in Dubai, London or Singapore. New to FinNext? Start with our guide to the 2027 editions.