Teal wins Fintech Startup Roadshow 2026

Teal, a London-based fintech startup providing real-time income and employment verification, has been announced as the winner of Fintech Startup Roadshow 2026. The event, part of the Startup Roadshow 2026 series, brought together founders, investors, and key players from the fintech sector.

Organised by South East Angels, the Startup Roadshow aims to showcase early-stage founders and foster growth in startup communities across various high-growth sectors. The series includes events covering Health, Energy, Fintech, Robotics, and Cyber, providing entrepreneurs with valuable opportunities to connect with investors, gain exposure, and receive constructive feedback.

The Fintech event featured a competitive pitch session where five promising early-stage startups from various industries presented their ventures. Teal stood out among the pitches, impressing the judges with their innovative technology and clear path to market.

Teal is a single-API platform that verifies income and employment in real time by connecting directly to payroll and HR systems, with user authorisation at its core. The platform routes each request across multiple data sources, automatically selecting the fastest available path. This replaces a manual verification process that typically takes lenders one to five business days, cutting decision times to seconds while reducing exposure to the payslip fraud and data discrepancies that affect a meaningful share of manually reviewed documents.

Michael Hart (Teal CEO and Co-founder) says:

"We're thrilled to have won the Fintech Startup Roadshow and grateful for the opportunity to share how Teal is tackling one of lending's biggest bottlenecks. The event was a fantastic platform to connect with investors and fellow founders who are passionate about building fairer financial infrastructure."

Jake Fox (South East Angels) says:

"Michael delivered a compelling pitch that showed both a deep understanding of the problem and a credible commercial model for scaling it. There is real value in becoming the trusted data layer for income verification as lending decisions move from paper to real-time."

Find out more about Teal, and connect with Michael Hart on LinkedIn.

Read more about South East Startup Roadshow events here. This event series is supported by NatWest.