The pitch seems similar to other finance-focused projects like ripple/stellar. What's going to separate it from those
I think the biggest difference is that xrp/xlm are more focused towards payment systems. Hydro seems to be more focused on finance as a whole.
XRP and XLM are definitely geared toward payments solutions, but XLM also seems to be building more of a platform (with tokens being launched and FairX exchange, etc). At the end of the day, they are both protocols designed for large-scale payment processing and they offer tangible benefits for financial companies in terms of operational efficiency and speed.
It does seem like they might be targeting the same kinds of companies as Hydro though