Digital transformation in the financial services: where to start

At last year’s Fintech conference in Edinburgh there was a focus on innovation, changing client expectations, and reinventing the traditional view of financial services.

Between challenges in the current climate, new regulations ”“ MiFID II, KYC, GDPR, and their ilk ”“ and the always advancing charge of technological progress, the financial services are experiencing a whirlwind of change.

With the costs of acquiring new customers and retaining customers higher than ever before, not to mention shifting demands from the current generation of clients, it’s clear that adapting and embracing new digital and online tools is imperative. So where to start?

1. Customer-driven innovation

Customers’ expectations are now largely concerned with three major things: convenience, transparency, and value for money. So it’s no surprise that they are embracing online and mobile fintech as an increasingly viable alternative to traditional wealth management firms and financial advisors.

Between 2004 and 2014, the percentage of Brits managing their personal finances by visiting physical branches dropped from 75% to 54%, and this is expected to fall to just 35% by 2019. Conversely, those who used the internet rose dramatically from 29% to 74%, and use of smartphone apps rose from 0% to 14% (Statistics from statista.com).

In order to engage with this new generation, there are a few key technologies to embrace to ensure maximum accessibility:

â—Mobile technology, including apps

â—Self-serve digital tools

â—Social tools and automated communications

For those with concerns that going digital in their communications will have a negative effect: 77% of financial advisors who conduct their business with digital and social tools see improved client retention (Accenture Generation D Research).

That’s because digital doesn’t have to mean impersonal ”“ your communications with clients can still be personalised, with the added benefit of being faster, more convenient, and more effective. According to the

Future of Finance report published 2015 in collaboration with Deloitte, the World Economic Forum found personal and low-cost communication methods to be the key characteristics of the future of wealth management.

Customers value their time as much as firms do, so delivering on efficient communications is a valuable plus point for clients.

2. Efficiency in internal processes

In the face of the demands of MiFID II and KYC regulations, automation is no longer an optional nice-to-have ”“ it’s essential for any firm to continue to thrive. The sheer breadth of the requirements would be all but impossible to achieve in any cost- and time-effective way were it not for the power of technology to automate processes such as onboarding and communication tracking.

Automating essential communications allows you to effortlessly maintain contact with clients, which means you can spend less time sending emails and more time working to give clients your best advice. It also makes it easier to stay compliant as tools such as Appointedd’s CRM suite automatically records all communications around appointments between firms and clients for an easy digital paper trail.

3. Security and data

When you help clients with their money, you need to know their sensitive data is safe with you, and embracing automated tools doesn’t have to mean more risk for your firm or your clients. Source tools with excellent security credentials, that are compliant with Cyber Essentials standards, and which have a proven track record of robust data security. This will put both your and your clients’ minds at ease and improve the appeal of your services.

The deadline of GDPR in May 2018 means that capturing, storing, and monitoring customer data is more important than ever. Although these new requirements bring additional challenges, with the data-driven revolution well under way it can also provide valuable opportunities.

A large part of the process of digital transformation focuses on the effective use of customer data to deliver a highly personalised service, as well as extremely relevant and targeted marketing and communications. 57% of businesses will be heavily investing in customer journey analytics over the next three years, and 66% of these will implement cross-channel data integration as a journey analytics tactic (The Four Elements of Digital Maturity, Adobe Digital Marketing Blog Europe). So complying with the new regulations around data can actually provide the perfect excuse to really hone your data-processing methods and make them work for you.

The future of financial services is bound to bring exciting changes, and taking steps now towards digital transformation will safeguard your business and help ensure growth and a thriving industry in years to come.

This article was written by Appointedd, a software provider. In the spirit of transparency we want to assure you that no financial contribution was received in exchange for publishing this content. We simply think the content can be of value to our readers.

University and fintech collaboration to improve financial well-being

What is this collaboration about?

Today, the University of Edinburgh Business School and Inbest.ai have announced a partnership on a research project to measure, track and improve the financial well-being of UK consumers.

The project will look to understand whether:

Consumers display sustainable spending patterns and have manageable debt levels
Consumers have enough savings to face unexpected events
Consumers have adequate savings to fund their retirement

Datafest 2018

The research project will be presented at Datafest 2018 in March. It will be followed by a discussion on how to improve financial well-being for British people.

Raffaella Calabrese, Associate Professor at University of Edinburgh Business School, said:

“From buying our first car or home to saving for retirement, the financial decisions we make play a major role in shaping our lives. Yet the majority of people still find it difficult to access the right knowledge to help them make the best choices, which in too many cases can lead to debt and poor financial well-being.

Working in partnership with Inbest.ai we hope to change this, by finding a new way to help people find the right advice about how to manage their money. One of Scotland’s most exciting Fintech prospects, we’re especially pleased to be working with a company which focuses not only on finance but people.”

Manu Peleteiro, CEO of Inbest.ai, said:

“We are delighted to collaborate with world-class academics in behavioural finance, financial mathematics and machine learning to alleviate a problem faced not only by UK citizens, but by consumers across the world. This project is also a great example of one of the main strengths of the Scottish Fintech ecosystem, collaboration across public bodies, research institutions and private companies”.

You can find more info about Datafest here

Scottish Fintech ShareIn not a start-up anymore

Impressive growth

ShareIn the, the Edinburgh-based technology and compliance solution for online unlisted investment, has just announced some exciting news:
Profitable year-end to October 2017 (£700k revenue, 3 times more than the previous year)

Increase in staff ”“ from 7 to 17

New clients ”“ 3 times more

A new website to highlight recent success

Work with a new crowdfunding platform called Triodos

Collaboration as a key success factor

One of the reasons behind ShareIn’s success is the solutions they’ve developed for their new clients. Amongst the latest ones is the Triodos Crowdfunding platform the first crowdfunding platform launched by a UK bank.

Andrew Pickett, Co-founder of ShareIn says:

“Working with Triodos, who are very well respected in the ethical finance sector and have raised more than £130 million to fund over 50 impact projects in the past 15 years, is a fantastic win for ShareIn.”

ShareIn are also working with Lendahand Ethex, raising over £2m for solar projects in Africa. With Mongoose Crowd they help who fund community energy projects with renewable sources.

Diversity

ShareIn are the living proof that diversity doesn’t have to be obtained by design. They’ve hired more women than men by solely focussing on skills and talents.

ShareIn’s CEO, Jude Cook says:

“Andrew and I are really proud of the brilliant team that we’ve been able to build. It’s quite unusual in a tech business to have more women in the company than men. We always hire the best person for the job but we’re lucky that great women keep applying. 12 of the 17 team members are women. We’ve got such a healthy mix of experience and nationality that makes ShareIn a very exciting place to work.”

Well done to Jude, Andrew and their team and we’re looking forward to more success stories soon.

FinTech Scotland and FinTechNZ establish a partnership

Another first

Things are moving at pace at FinTech Scotland in 2018.
Only 4 weeks ago we were welcoming our first CEO, last week we launched our first newsletter and this week we are delighted to let you know about our first partnership with another fintech hub, FinTechNZ.

So who are FinTechNZ?

FinTechNZ is The New Zealand Financial Innovation & Technology Association. They are a working group focussed on delivering economic growth in New Zealand through financial innovation. Slightly older than FinTech Scotland they have a member base of just over 100.
They work closely with the New Zealand government to offer guidance on policies and regulations.

Why this partnership?

At FinTech Scotland we are keen to develop a network with other international hubs. Several reasons are motivating us in doing so and they are all aligned with our core values:

Inclusion. We are very much open to the world. Other hubs aren’t competition but partners we are keen to include in our network. For our innovative companies to succeed they will need to enter new markets and form partnerships along the way. We want to help them do just that by offering them facilities to expand globally.
Collaboration. As we develop FinTech Scotland we want to be up to date with what’s happening around the world, identify collaboration opportunities and develop a unique offering.
Financial innovation. One of our goal is to establish Scotland as one of the leading hubs in the world. With so much innovation happening in Scotland we need to outreach to other countries and ensure our success stories are relayed around the world. We also believe this is the best way for us to attract fintechs and incumbents looking for a new base as well as attract investors’ interest to fuel even more innovation.

What’s next?

We’ll keep you updated on this blog about opportunities that will arise from this partnership. We’ll also keep you up to date with future partnerships with other hubs.
As we grow our community we wish to offer you a digital community for you to interact with people around the world so stay tuned.

Jenny Campbell in Edinburgh to address business women’s event

One of the top UK business women will be in Edinburgh in March at this year’s Ambition & Growth Conference dinner which will take place at the Sheraton Hotel.

Jenny Campbell, the Founder of YourCash Europe will be sharing her story and passion towards helping people succeed in business.

More about Jenny Campbell

Aged only 16, Jenny joined the banking fraternity. At 23 she had completed her banking qualifications and been awarded a Chartered Institute of Bankers prize.

In 2006 she joined Hanco, a cash machine company
owned by RBS, as director of operations.
In 2010 she took charge of a management buyout
of the business. She renamed it YourCash Europe before impressively expanding the business’ operations.
In 2013, she took the business through a secondary buy-out which allowed her to obtain full control of the business. She sold the company in October 2016 to Euronet Worldwide Inc.

Vitalise Business Woman of the Year in 2014 she was then welcomed as a Freeman to the Guild of Entrepreneurs in the City of London.

Very experienced public speaker she also spend a lot of her time helping entrepreneurs launch their business.

Most people will know her best for her role as a dragon on the BBC programme Dragon’s Den.

Jackie Waring, CEO and Founder of Investing Women, the organisation behind the Ambition & Growth Conference, said: “We are delighted to welcome Jenny, a high profile and hugely successful businesswoman, to the third annual Ambition & Growth Conference. Along with
her formidable track record in the global banking sector, Jenny really stands out for the work she does to support young people in business and promote a positive message about entrepreneurialism.”

Ambition and Growth Conference

Ambition & Growth 2018 is set to inspire, motivate and inform aspirational entrepreneurs as well as business angels and professionals in leadership roles.

Other speakers will include:

Professor Heather McGregor CBE, Executive Dean,
Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University and

Mary Harper, Affluent Customer
Director at Aviva.

For more information visit:
http://www.investingwomen.co.uk/ambition-growth- conference/

RBS FinTech Accelerator goes national ”“ but Edinburgh remains core location

RBS and fintechs?

After a successful trial at the Entrepreneurial Spark Hub in Edinburgh last year, RBS is expanding its FinTech Accelerator programme across three more locations in the UK – London, Manchester and Bristol ”“ but attracting FinTechs to join the programme based out of their Gogarburn head office is still seen as vital.

We spoke to Steve Chown who leads the FinTech proposition for the Bank:

“Having the Entrepreneurial Hub in our head office in Gogarburn over the last few years has transformed the feel of the building. The layout has been designed to really encourage engagement between Bank staff and Entrepreneurs, with the Hub and our Innovation teams next door to each other and even sharing an event space. It’s a big building, with coffee shops and even a Tesco Express and you often see Entrepreneurs in the queue for their Latte next to Bank Execs!”

“We’ve got 6000 staff based in Gogarburn alone, from every function within Banking you can think of and that’s a key part of our offering for FinTech businesses – linking them up with staff who can add value to what they are building ”“ for example if you are a payments business we’ll endeavour you a linked in to someone from our payments team who talks your language and can give you advice and feedback. Our staff are really keen to engage, I’ve even had our Analytics and Modelling team offering to help, hands on, with businesses struggling to manage their data or with large analytics problems”

“The Banks attitude to dealing with start-up businesses has really changed over the last few years ”“ we now realise that sometimes we don’t know best, and there’s massive value in partnering with specialist businesses with ready made solutions”

So what does a FinTech Accelerator involve?

Steve explains more:

“At the core of our offering is the coaching and mentoring from Entrepreneurial Spark alongside office space in our Hub but we really wanted to ensure FinTechs got real value from joining our programme so asked them what their main challenges were. Based on what we were told we have arranged additional content around IP protection, regulation, partnering with Corporates and raising investment alongside technology and sales strategy reviews from our partners at Dell – plus of course connections into relevant Bank staff and will end the programme with a Demo day event to pitch their ideas. We are really looking forward to welcoming some more FinTechs in to our head office.”

If you’re interesting in learning more about this or if you’d like to apply for this programme contact us below or via the contact us form.

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse – getting started

Welcome to the first Fortnightly Fintech Fuse!

This will be my regular blog sharing some of the insights, learnings and engagement with people form the diverse range of fintech participants across Scotland and globally.

To Fuse’ means to bring together and blend two or more things. This is exactly what FinTech Scotland is seeking to do with the aim of driving growth and creating jobs, hence the name for this blog.

The fusion arising from the changing world of financial services and technology presents enormous opportunities and through this blog I hope to share how Scotland is advancing on these.

The blog will be a cross between an open diary and informal ramblings that hopefully highlight the progress being made in fusing together the skills, resources and capabilities that make the potential fintech growth and job opportunities come alive.

The style will be chatty and quick read. It is not intended to be a formal report nor exhaustive of everything happening in our dynamic and thriving Scottish fintech environment.

Hopefully it will be a catalyst to the many people directly engaged or looking to be involved in delivering the enormous benefits for all of fintech developments.

Engaging Response

The start of the new role in January can be best described as a whirlwind of activity, with the announcement sparking a very positive response from the diverse range of fintech participants. I’ve very much appreciated all the feedback and comments in these early days and the task has been to get out to see as many people as possible to hear thoughts and share insights.

During this initial three weeks, I’ve clocked up over 70 actual face to face meetings with over 160 people in total as I have sought to immerse myself in understanding the needs of different stakeholders. This is in addition to being involved in four workshops and participated in a couple of local events.

The overwhelming enthusiasm and commitment to creating growth and jobs through fintech developments is very powerful, going forward I am hoping we can channel this high energy into productive results and outcomes.

Big thanks to everyone who has been in touch and reached out in since the start of the year, there has been a hugely enthusiastic response from all quarters of Scotland as well as all corners of the world, from New Zealand to Africa to Europe and the USA.

During this early flurry of activity, I am endeavouring to keep up to date with the positive flow of engagement and arrange the meeting and call requests as they come in!
Although managing the diary to meet and talk to as many people as possible has, I must admit, been a challenge and will be as I embrace the strong appetite for people to be involved.
Thankfully, I’ve only missed one appointment so far, with my dentist for a checkup!

Key Foundations

Amongst the many meetings, I have had very constructive discussions with key people from Avaloq, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, University of Edinburgh and Scottish Enterprise who have already strategically committed to getting FinTech Scotland of the ground.
This enables FinTech Scotland to start on a journey with confidence, which was very much reinforced when meeting Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for Business,

Innovation and Energy.

The Scottish Government’s very real and practical commitment to creating a thriving fintech environment in Scotland was a key factor for me in taking on this new challenge.

I must add that this fast start could not have been achieved without some key foundations being in place.
In this respect, an enormous thank you to the Edinburgh Innovation (EI) team at the University of Edinburgh, who have provided invaluable support in these early days of establishing FinTech Scotland’s operations.

It is fantastic to be working with the EI team to ensure we put the right foundations in place for the FinTech Scotland enterprise in order that we can maximize the
emerging opportunities.

Opportunity Knocks

One thing that has been really encouraging in these early days, is the contact from half a dozen fintech enterprises who are looking to move to Scotland, either from other parts of the UK or wider afield.

These entrepreneurial firms are all at various stages of their growth and scaling up but they all share a common interest in being part of Scotland’s fintech environment to take their innovative enterprises to the next level.

Explaining to the various firms how we and others in Scotland can support them in their growth and job creation aspirations is hugely motivating and something we will be building on in the coming months.

Running Around

I am hoping that scribbling this blog over the coming weeks will give me the opportunity to reflect on whether I have been focusing on the right priorities for FinTech Scotland and consider whether upcoming actions will enable us to make progress.

My other way of finding reflection time is to just get out and run, whatever the weather! Running is my other passion, alongside fintech, being a wonderful way take time out from the fast moving working life to consider the journey ahead and what can be achieved. More on this to come.

This fintech journey is going to be a marathon’ rather than a sprint and I am looking forward to sharing the experience with you through FinTech Fuse!