Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Purpose Driven FinTech
One thing that has really struck me since taking on the role at the start of the year to lead FinTech Scotland is the real sense of purpose behind the vibrant fintech innovation activity in Scotland
A purpose that goes beyond being commercially successful and creating job opportunities in Scotland but is driven by bigger overarching drive to improve people’s experience of financial services.
A brilliant example of this more significant motivating purpose was very much in evident when I met with the inspiring Phil Grady and the excellent team at Castlight Financial last week in Glasgow.
I was very much struck by Phil’s bold purpose of a “safer financial world for all’ and how this had a powerful meaning for the team members. It is no wonder Castlight Financial is successfully attracting attention in the financial world in Scotland and globally with its bigger purpose.
The same is true of Previse and my meeting with David Brown this week once again reinforced to me how their ambitious purpose of transforming trade finance to improve the well being of small enterprises is so important to all of us.
Collective Purpose
This purpose driven fintech becomes even more powerful when the collective forces of our ecosystem come together in Scotland to make a difference.
This was very much the case on Monday evening at the inaugural Open Banking Centre of Excellence meet up hosted at The ID.Co in Edinburgh with over 80 people from across the ecosystem. Listening to the stories of Colin Hewitt of Float, James Varga of The ID Co, Steve Tigar of Money Dashboard, Manu Peleteiro of InBest and Phil of Castlight showed to me we have the collective purpose in Scotland to make a progressive difference.
Especially when we have globally recognised leaders in the inspiring Gavin Littlejohn and Brian Costello of Yodlee championing how open banking fintech can make a positive contribution to citizens across the land.
Big thanks to Ross Laurie for making this inaugural meeting happen and be something we can build on going forward, more to follow soon.
Thank you also to Mickael, who stepped in for me to share Scotland’s existing fintech activity with the London community along with Paul Christensen of Previse, Kirsten Bennie of RBS and Graham Hatton of Scottish Development International last week. Great feedback on this.
A fabulous example of collaboration around a common purpose in action.
This was also the case at the SFE FinTech Group meeting a couple of weeks ago, thank you to Graeme Jones for the continuing valuable support in getting behind the collective purpose of Fintech Scotland.
Collaborative Purpose
Attending the Can Do Business Innovation Forum chaired by Government Minister Paul Wheelhouse on Tuesday was another example of the power of collective purpose through collaboration. Representatives from all sectors of the economy sharing how innovation can really drive inclusive growth and deliver positive outcomes for people and enterprises. I was particularly inspired when talking to entrepreneur Reemah Shanab and learning about her business Lucidly.
The Can Do meeting reiterated to me the benefits of cross sector collaboration to drive innovation and growth and this was further demonstrated when I met up with Alexander Holt to hear how CivTech is making such a huge difference in the public sector.
I’m sure Alexander won’t mind me saying but for me he is very much role model in driving real practical change with a strong sense of purpose. Alexander and his team have already been working with fintechs such as Wallet Services and there is much we can build on especially in the area of payments. Talking with Colin, Director of Digital at the Scottish Government further showed me we have a huge common purpose around this.
The broader collaborative purpose was very much in evident in my discussions with Maggie Craig at the FCA this last few weeks which is really valuable as the fintech ecosystem develops in Scotland
On Thursday, there was the opportunity to get together with Scotland’s many exciting fintechs enterprises from across the ecosystem at the Practitioners Forum.
The key areas of discussion were growing talent in Scotland and getting the right quality of investment in place and committed investors on board to help scale and grow. Terrific insights (again) from Stuart Lunn of LendingCrowd
My conversation with the impressive Steven Morris of ESM Investments this week was really insightful on how we could take some steps to address some of the funding issues in the fintech ecosystem at the moment.I am hoping to take forward a couple of ideas and they will certainly be forming a key part of the FinTech Scotland strategic plan and will be key if we are to achieve our ambitious goals for fintech in Scotland.
Another aspect I have on our strategic agenda is how to help fintech enterprises navigate the range of funding solutions available to them at present ranging from public funding through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Funds, to the University Innovations Funds to the mix of R&D relief allowances available.
In this respect, very appreciative of the guidance on public funding opportunities by Steve Harrison from Scottish Enterprise a positive change agent who is helping good ideas flourish in across the ecosystem.
Going forward, the focus hear will be to make sure we are much better at connecting the funds available to the innovators and entrepreneurs. In this respect, I’m delighted that Matt Smith, Kent Mackenzie and the Deloitte team will be playing a valuable role in helping us in these areas.
The other hot subject over the last fortnight and from fintech practitioners is finding talented people to support business growth and this is a subject I know Scotland can further excel in.
The visit to the Technology and Innovation Centre of Strathclyde University was a fantastic testament to the strength of the skills development taking place in Scotland at the moment. Wow!
Having a terrific working session with academic leaders from all part of the Strathclyde University highlighted how to me the new opportunities in fintech can be embraced and I am very excited on how we progress on a number of fronts together.
Big thanks to Adrian Gillespie and Team Strathclyde.
The bringing together of academia and industry was further brought alive on Thursday evening when I was given the opportunity to join a distinguished speaking panel at the University of Edinburgh Business School event.The subject was Cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin!” Captivating words from amazing Professor Chris Speed of Edinburgh College of Arts and insightful Tim Jones of Tibado meant I only needed to play a small bit part thankfully! Brilliantly chair Bill McCall of Chartered Bankers Institute.
The fintech people skills agenda also presents the opportunity to bring alive our purpose of being more inclusive and I was delighted to catch up with the inspiring leader Promilla Caughey of EY Foundation.
Promilla’s work in creating opportunities for young people from less advantaged background is something we will very much embrace and part of the fintech bigger purpose.
My favourite music has always given me a strong sense of purpose beyond fintech and last Friday I had chance to see live one of my musical hero’s Swill at the Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh along with the legendary Bobby Valentino.
What a wonderful evening and I can’t wait to see Swill with the rest of the awesome band, The Men They Couldn’t Hang, back together again for the gig in Glasgow at King Tut’s in December, anyone want to join me for probably one of the best bands in the world!This weekend I’ll be running with purpose in a half marathon race, enjoying the beautiful city of Stirling as I prepare for the big Edinburgh marathon in four weeks! Until next time
15 million potential users for Pensions Dashboard
The dashboard launch date (end 2019) is still seen as achievable but will need to be built to support such a high demand. The results of this research should therefore help establishing the requirements.
A need for flexibility
Anthony Rafferty, Managing Director Origo, says: “It is imperative that the industry is able to deliver and maintain all the underlying services and data in a way that is secure, robust and scalable to handle 15 million consumers.”
Flexibility is therefore paramount from day 1 as Anthony Rafferty explained: “Through our role as the industry’s not-for-profit FinTech, we have also been advising on the impact of this large consumer base on pension provider systems. The demands on some provider systems, as requests from 15 million consumers come in and information goes out, will need to be managed effectively ”“ all while still providing a secure and efficient online service.”
Customer outcome as a key driver
In parallel with the development of the Pension Dashboard, the Single Financial Guidance Body is set to launch in order to help people with important and complex decisions when it comes to retirement. For this body and for existing financial advisers it is important that the Pension Dashboard not only meet requirements from an end customer perspective but also those of 3rdparties.
Rafferty continues: “Consumer engagement and access to advice and guidance are crucial to improved retirement planning. The additional capacity required to enable the Single Financial Guidance Body and financial advisers to access a consumer’s Pensions Dashboard needs to be planned for.
“Whether the decision is to start with a single government-backed dashboard, or with multiple dashboards – it is imperative that the underlying infrastructure, the plumbing, be developed with an eye to future demand and requirements and be maintained in a cost-effective and efficient way that consistently delivers sensitive information securely. “
New Fintech Fellowship to Address Skills Gap
The idea behind this fellowship is to raise the awareness of the fintech talent gap and seek involvement from organisations and individuals. Last year, 42 UK universities took part.
“Seeing positive collaboration between groups of talented entrepreneurs and established financial institutions really inspired me to apply”, said Mohammed Hassan, last year’s winner.
The fintech talent situation in Scotland
The fintech sector isn’t completely centralised in London with Scotland contributing massively to the growth of this sector in the UK.
Universities have been quick at identifying fintech as an area of focus and the University of Strathclyde recently launched the first UK MSc in fintech, rapidly followed by Stirling University. It is highly important when projections show a potential for the creation of over 15,000 new roles overt the next 10 years.
A majority of the companies who took part in the HM Treasury UK FinTech Census 2017 identified skilled talent attraction as one of their top challenges.
The judging panel
Further members of the judging panel include:
Marilena Ioannidou, Director & Team Lead on Fintech Investments, British Business Investment
Elizabeth Lumley, global fintech commentator and advisor
Tanya Andreasyan, Managing Director and Editor, FintechFutures/Banking Technology
Niels Turfboer, Managing Director, Spotcap
FinTech Scotland does the talking in the Big Apple and beyond.
Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Talking Fintech
Fintech is very much the talk of the town’ at the moment across all quarters of the financial services sector and beyond.
One of the great things about this fintech talk is that it is so ubiquitous with such a broad range of topics and themes being discussed within the conversation.
The variety and diversity certainly make the conversation fascinating as does the way in which people from many different backgrounds have an active interest in talking about fintech.
This is presenting me with enormous opportunity as I shape the strategic plans for FinTech Scotland in the coming weeks.
New York Talk
The opportunity to hear thoughts and feedback from members of the New York financial services community last week about Scotland’s fintech progress was a great example of this.
Hosting the roundtable session with Cabinet Secretary Keith Brown to talk through our fintech aspirations and how this could be developed on a global stage was hugely valuable.
The discussions certainly reinforced the importance of existing and new relationships for Scotland in the USA which will be very critical as we develop our global fintech footprint.
The New York trip also provided the opportunity to catch up with a number of people to talk through the plans for Fintech Scotland and see what we could learn from one of the most vibrant fintech centres in the world.
I particularly valued the opportunity to catch up with Greg Schoenberg, the founder of Financial Revolutionist, the leading global thought leadership voice of fintech. The talk with Greg was both terrifically insightful as well as illuminating and will undoubtedly help me shape the plans for Fintech Scotland. Thanks Greg.
International Talk
The visit to New York coincided with preparation for the Visit Scotland Scotland is Now global campaign led by the brilliant Charlie Smith.
It was a privilege to be at the preview for the launch in downtown Manhattan and meet up with so many people enthused about Scotland’s story and potential.
Bringing fintech into this story about Scotland being a wonderful place to live, play, invest and work will be a key piece part of our work in the coming months.
I learned a great deal while in New York in talking with colleagues from Scottish Development International and I am looking forward to progressing the fintech opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic with Michelle, Raymond and Shannon in the coming year.
It is great to see that James Varga from The ID Co will be part of the delegation visiting the USA as part of New York fintech week to continue the dialogue and many thanks to Maria Deam and the team at the British Consul for helping spread the talk on Scotland’s fintech opportunities.
The international talk does not always have to be several thousand miles away of course, and I am delighted I will have the opportunity to join David Clarke for a Scottish-Irish Finance Initiative event in June to talk through the fintech collaboration opportunities on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Scotland Talk
One of the many great aspects about fintech in Scotland is the talk is very much countrywide.
For example, I’m really pleased we have the Where is Fife Leading Fintech Next? event in May at the Glenrothes Enterprise Hub where I will be joined by Ian Cunningham of Lending Crowd.
Thank you to Iain Shirlaw in arranging this talk to consider Fife’s longstanding record of developing world leading technology for financial services, especially in payments and security and how this can support the next stage of our fintech ambitions.
Before then, I have the opportunity to share Scotland’s fintech credentials with the entrepreneurial community in London along with the brilliant team from Previse and Kristen Bennie from RBS when the talk will be mixed with some sampling of Scotland’s finest gin!
There’s also going to be plenty of talk back home in Scotland in the coming weeks and I am very much looking forward to seeing the team at the University of Strathclyde next Wednesday to discuss how we share their great work with more audiences.
A great example of this is the Auditing a Digital Future event on 30th April at the Strathclyde Business School led by the inspiring Daniel Broby where the talk will be covering the range of topics from blockchain to cryptocurrencies.
This all demonstrates that Scotland does have a number of fintech topics that we can talk and, in fact, shout about.
So, I’m very excited about the inaugural meeting of the Open Banking Centre of Excellence next week being set up by the forward-thinking Ross Laurie along with the driving force behind global open banking Gavin Littlejohn
Theme Talks
With Spring arriving, it must be the season for these specific themed fintech events to take place as they seem to be hitting my diary thick and fast!
For example, very much looking forward to joining the talk at the University of Edinburgh Business School event entitled downBitcoin and Blockchain – what goes up must come down event in a couple of weeks.
Then soon after is the event on artificial intelligence organized expertly by Heather Corcoran where my talk with Kirsty Mackenzie of iMultiply, Melinda Matthews of CodeClan and Colin Hewitt of Float is all about the future of human and technology interaction!
And on this human theme, there is another great talk I’ll be joining in May also at the University of Edinburgh Business School on Social Finance and FinTech and joining a great line up of expert speakers such as Arman Eshragi who will share his thoughts of behaviourial finance and fintech.
In amongst all these talks, I will be continuing to fill my diary with the many people interested in engaging with the fintech ecosystem in Scotland.
I really value the timely meetings with people such as Mark Rodger and Andrew McGhee of Vivolution in considering how we help fintech enterprises to scale up after their initial success
My apologies if we have not had chance to meet yet, Shery is working hard to coordinate and plan my diary so I can get to meet and talk with everyone over the coming months.
Running Talk
The few days in New York gave me the opportunity to meet up with an inspiring friend Paul Skinner and our talk went beyond fintech on to our other mutual passion, that of running.
Of course, being in New York we could run the talk’ during the few days with a couple of great sunrise running sessions around Central Park, saluting the Fred Lebow statue each time as we passed.
The highlight though was the Saturday morning and an eight-mile run out to Flushing Meadows for a 10km race where I came in third in the over 50 age group, earning a bronze medal for Scotland!
Let’s hope the snow now stays away and I can get back to some races closer to home as the running season starts to hot up along with the exciting fintech talk in Scotland.
Until next time.
Scottish fintech LendingCrowd raises £2m
LendingCrowd, the only peer-to-peer (P2P) lender headquartered in Scotland, is poised to significantly scale up its operations after completing a £2 million external funding round.
The story so far
The Edinburgh-based business lending specialist, which was established in 2014, is planning to ramp up its sales and marketing activities and seek Series A funding over the next 12 months following the round, which was led by angel syndicate Equity Gap and included the Scottish Investment Bank and private investors.
Stuart Lunn, CEO and co-founder of LendingCrowd, said: “Having laid solid foundations for the business over the last couple of years, we now have a position in the market that is starting to pay dividends. We have a strong pipeline of both investors and SME demand and with such a strong trajectory, we are now actively speaking to the venture capital and private equity communities about our next phase of growth.”
Some very strong ambitions
Having agreed loan deals totalling some £16 million with SMEs across Britain last year, Mr Lunn has set a target to more than double that figure to about £40 million in 2018. Investor funds on the platform, which is fully authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, are also growing rapidly. LendingCrowd now offers three investment products, all of which can be held within its Innovative Finance ISA wrapper.
Scottish Investment Bank director Kerry Sharp said: “We are delighted to provide continued support to LendingCrowd, who have demonstrated real market traction with their innovative peer-to-peer lending platform in Scotland.”
Jock Millican from Equity Gap added: “We are extremely pleased that our syndicate members once again backed LendingCrowd, with this raise being the largest single investment by Equity Gap to date. Existing and new investors in LendingCrowd recognise the progress to date and the potential for the business to scale.”
On the box – think outside the bank
As part of its drive to build its position in the market and bring P2P investing to a wider audience, LendingCrowd recently launched its debut television advert. The campaign features Geoff, who decided to “Think Outside The Bank” and invest with the platform after becoming disillusioned with low rates of return elsewhere. The advert was filmed in and around Edinburgh, with locations including a café in Leith and the grounds of historic Hopetoun House in South Queensferry.