The importance of technology for Scottish growth
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How to deal with data protection issues as an SME – Alastair McKendrick, TC Young Solicitors.
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How Healthy Nibbles gained competitive advantage through innovation in a traditionally non tech sector – Sara Roberts, founder Healthy Nibbles.
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The practical applications of emerging tech in business – David Sime, Oncor
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Making tax digital – hate it or embrace it – Mandy Bogot, Gillespie’s Chartered Accountants
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Accessing support and expertise for your business at The University of Edinburgh – Sara Robertson, Entrepreneurship Development Manager, The University of Edinburgh
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Outsourcing IT services – how to do it right? – Michal Sztanga, Future Processing
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After the sale; a quick guide to getting paid and staying legal – Matt Perkins, Freeagent
The Applied FinTech Project at the University of Glasgow – update
Article written by Elisabetta Trasatti, Vice-President of the University of Glasgow FinTech Society
The Applied Fintech Project (AFTP), organised by the University of Glasgow Fintech Society, is shaping up to be one of the society’s greatest achievements since being established.
After being launched in September, the project is rapidly approaching its final steps, with the final event being in about two weeks.
The Applied FinTech Project has been designed by the society as an innovative opportunity for University students, who often feedback the lack of practical and experiential learning opportunities in their studies. The aim of the project is in fact to give students the chance to work on a “live” business case and come up with a solution in their team which the business can benefit from.
The case has been kindly provided by Orca, an Edinburgh-based Fintech startup which operates in the peer to peer lending industry. The society has been in close contact with the Orca team during the past months to decide which type of business case would best fit the AFTP challenge, with a particular focus on how to make best use of the diversity in the participating teams.
In fact, apart from receiving far more applications than expected, the UoG FinTech Society was impressed by the variety of degree subjects, years of study and backgrounds of the applicants. The 25 selected participants’ degrees range from Business to Computer Science, to Engineering, Psychology, Data Science and Law just to name a few. Another impressive feature in the teams’ composition is the fact that there are two Postgraduate students in each team. This is impressive considering the usual difficulty for student societies to actively engage Postgraduate students.
The project provided the teams with significant support throughout the working month on the case. In fact, each team was assigned a mentor or a pair of mentors, who could be contacted at any point during the project to get advice and help with the case.
A special mention in the support given to the teams goes to Deloitte, which has been AFTP event supporter. The team at Deloitte has not only provided mentors for two of the five teams, but has also organised a successful workshop at their Glasgow offices in which all the project participants received an insight into Deloitte’s work in automation and RPA solutions, as well as tips and advice on how to approach the AFTP challenge.
In two weeks, on Friday 16th November, the five teams will have the chance to present their solutions to a board of judges, composed of both academics from the University and professionals who have developed their competence and expertise in FinTech through their work in companies such as Morgan Stanley and Deloitte, as well as startups such as Previse and Orca.
Stephen Ingledew, CEO at FinTech Scotland, will attend the event as a keynote speaker and Keith O’Donnell, Data Engineer at Morgan Stanley, will also offer his contribution to the event as a speaker.
The evening, which will be at the Glasgow University Union, will be accompanied by live music performed by one of the University of Glasgow Music societies. Guests will also be able to network over a buffet dinner and drinks, thanks to the society receiving sponsorship from the Adam Smith Business School.
Can fintech help mentally incapacitated people?
This blog is written by Sandra McDonald; she was Public Guardian for Scotland for 14 years (2004-2018). The Public Guardian is a statutory regulator, supervising and supporting those who administer the affairs of persons no longer mentally able to do so personally.
As fintech firms continually develop new solutions to improve the way people deal with their finances, it is important for them to keep in mind that their users can have very diverse needs. When designing innovative solutions it is vital to consider things such as power of attorney or capacity assessing.
Equally, disruption in the way mentally incapacitated people can access money is still to happen and provides a great opportunity for nw entrepreneurs.
We’re looking at some issues fintech should consider:
Power of Attorney
Power of attorney is perhaps the best known legal method by which one person is authorised to administer the affairs of another; yet I hear criticism regularly about Organisations not truly understanding power of attorney. Indeed I have experienced this personally when an Organisation was insistent that my brother and I must both sign a particular document, despite the fact that we are appointed jointly and severally.
Their systems just couldn’t cope with this specific case.
Equal Treatment for Persons with Mental Incapacity
Persons with mental incapacity are persons with disability and thus must not be treated less favourably than a person who does not have incapacity. Yet often I see a higher bar’ to be met for those administering another person’s affairs than would be the case if they were managing their own affairs.
Capacity Assessing
Organisations, for ease, tend to categorise people as either capable or incapable but capacity is not black or white. It is not linear or on a continuum; it can fluctuate be this over time or over decisions.
Can new technologies such as AI help identify levels of capabilities and offer appropriate support?
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Deciding whether someone has capacity or not at a given time, for a given decision, will become ever more pertinent as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities requires us, Scotland, to allow persons with incapacity to exercise their own legal capacity ”“ sounds counter intuitive but comply we must. We must allow persons with incapacity to participate, as far as is possible, in decisions that affect them. Most frequently you will be familiar with attorneys advising what is best for the person they represent and respecting this, but this puts both the attorney and the Organisation in breach of the United Nations requirements. Are you confident that you support the incapable person in their own decision making? What if you felt what the person themselves wants is at odds with what the attorney is asking you to do. How do you manage such conflicts?
Digital Access?
I often hear about technological inadequacies ”“ for example a system only has the option of listing a person as power of attorney’ which, if they have some other form of authority, may offer them a higher level of access than thy have authority for. This exposes you to a claim if the person then abuses the erroneous wider powers you have given them.
Future
These are todays issues but a review of the law is in progress; are you in danger of just getting up to date as it all moves on? What should you do to prepare yourself for tomorrow?
NoMo Money: A PFM for today’s consumers
Article written by Author: Andrew Garden ”“ Product Manager @ The ID Co.
When I was approached two years ago by our company’s CEO, James Varga, and asked whether we could develop a consumer facing App, I was distinctly nervous about whether we could produce a product that could compete with some of the major applications that had already been launched and were launched soon after our conversation.
Two years on from that fateful afternoon, I couldn’t be happier with the release of our new customer facing App, NoMo (for No Money Mo Money!)
With hindsight, it was a great decision to focus on the customer side as well as the B2B offering, DirectID. Since its launch in 2015, DirectID has been a great success ”“ integrating with over 5,500 banks and building a customer base in Europe, north America and the UK.
Now it’s time for NoMo to take some of the weight.
Obviously, we’re a late entrant into the personal finance management (PFM) app space. In that time, there have been numerous releases, including many of the ones that we’re now very familiar with, from Yolt to Money Dashboard to Emma. I’ve taken a lot of time in looking at these apps, to understand their functionality, their key attributes and what we could do differently.
Essentially what I’ve found from having the time and space to develop NoMo, is that if you look at an App such as money Dashboard it has different functionalities ”“ from integrating multiple accounts, to categorisingspend and budgeting and planning.
That’s fantastic. I’ve used Money Dashboard myself and really enjoy it. But what we didn’t want to do was to recreate another version of what is already a very successful App.
So instead I took another approach, and asked “what is the biggest issue that people have with their money?” I think most of can agree, and unless we earn huge salaries, that the biggest issue is budgeting from one month to the next. From our research we know that this can create a feeling of helplessness around money, and this manifests itself by us burying our heads in the sand and hoping financial difficulties will go away.
In a saturated market, I wanted to find a way to make NoMo both stand out and be of value to users. We decided to go with a unique approach by giving NoMo a personality with references to popular culture. This way, regardless of whether users are up or down, they are spoken to like a friend. We wanted to make looking at your finances less like going to the dentist when you know that pain is on the way!
So, what we wanted from NoMo was to make it easy for people to know whether they were doing well in their finances. Ultimately this came down to one simple question “Do I have more or less money than at the same stage last month?” to which NoMo will show a simple graph ticker or message with a value that represents how much more or less money is in your account.
The summary provides a visual representation of the user’s budgeting performance over the month. The days of the month in orange represent the days the user has been down. Those in yellow represent the days the user has been up. The days in white are the days that the user has been on their average.
Commenting on the release of NoMo, The ID Co., CEO, James Varga said:
“We have been working on building a consumer App that allows customers to answer one very simple, but important question, and we’re confident that this premise means NoMo will be a great success with customers. It was important for us, that as well as being involved in working with financial institutions with DIrectID, we also have a consumer offering that will broaden our appeal within the market. Our research suggests that there is a very strong appetite for such an App and we look forward to receiving feedback now it has been launched.”
Indeed in these first few weeks there has been a huge amount of feedback, and to be honest, I’m delighted to receive this ”“ even the not-so-complimentary messages! To be honest, there hasn’t been anything that we either didn’t know about or were minor fixes. Moreover, we’ve learned a huge amount from the launch of DirectID. We’ve pulled in our experiences from the different industries that we work in, such as income verification, affordability, credit risk and lending, with the aim of bringing that knowledge to the benefit of consumers.
Moving forward, what we want to do is to be able to recogniserisky transactions that we can then flag to the user to try and be proactive towards their wellbeing. What this will mean is that when we release the Android verion ”“ hopefully by Christmas ”“ it should be perfect.
The feedback received along with the volume of downloads that we’ve had, even in these first few weeks, has given us a huge amount of confidence. I think we’ve touched upon a genuine need in the consumer market, which is for individuals to know quickly and simply whether they have more or less money than at the same time last month.
Ethical Finance 2018: Regaining Trust and Demonstrating Impact
Growing awareness of UNSDGs, sustainability, climate change and social justice issues, combined with concerns around trust arising from the 2008 financial crisis, have raised questions around the integrity, transparency and accountability of financial institutions and driven consumer expectation for finance to be social cognisant.
UKIFC in partnership with Responsible-Investor.com present a brand new conference, titled Ethical Finance 2018’ in Edinburgh on October 22-23, hosted by RBS and supported by the Scottish Government, HM Government and UNDP.
The aim of the conference is to gather banks, asset managers, faith-related investors, mission-driven endowments, charities and family offices together to look at practical solutions to promote trust in banking and investment and create long-term, sustainable finance solutions.
It will explore how trust in a sustainable economy can be revitalised, and how faith and endowment investors are confronting today’s biggest societal and economic challenges, notably as part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Topics on the agenda include:
· How do endowments, family offices and philanthropic entities use values and purpose as investment strategies
· How are faith groups ensuring their assets are managed according to the purpose
· The UN Sustainable Development Goals and the practicalities of investing
· Measuring impact across different asset classes
· The move from negative screening to positive investment
· Direct impact investing in developed and emerging markets.
The event will include a reception at Edinburgh Castle hosted by the Scottish Government.
The programme for the conference and further information can be found on the event site and by clicking for the programme and further info via the Register button.
A journey through the FCA regulatory sandbox
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s regulatory sandbox has now been in place for two years, and has continued to draw in innovative firms keen to test their business models, products and services in the market.
The FinTech team in Deloitte’s EMEA Centre for Regulatory Strategy, in collaboration with Innovate Finance, interviewed several current and previous FCA sandbox participants to seek their views on their sandbox journeys.
The result is A journey through the FCA regulatory sandbox: the benefits, challenges, and next steps.
It highlights the key themes, challenges, unexpected benefits and broader observations that firms expressed in relation to their sandbox journey, including their views of what the FCA’s next steps should be.
The unequivocal message is that the FCA sandbox has delivered real value to firms. In particular, being accepted into the sandbox and proving the underlying technology in a live environment has helped firms to better understand and fine tune their business models. Many also believe that the sandbox journey increased their credibility with both investors and customers.
Yet, while the usefulness of the sandbox is undisputed, the report also highlights areas where there is still room for improvement.
Overall, this report should make compelling reading for anyone considering a sandbox application.
Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Really Serious About Building Fintech at Scale
This last fortnight I’ve seen further examples of a serious intent to make sure fintech is a success at scale in so many ways across Scotland.
The biggest example will be FNZ, the international wealth platform firm based in Edinburgh, and their £1.6bn deal announced this week. An amazing achievement by Adrian Durham and the team at FNZ.
Building fintech scale is certainly not easy nor straightforward, with many bumps along the journey but inspiring conversations during recent days give me great encouragement.
Inspiring FinTech Scale
Meeting the inspiring Andrew Duncan and Simon Mone of CU Soar in Glasgow this week to hear about their ambitious proposition and plans to build a significant fintech business was hugely motivational.
Nicola and I came away from the meeting very excited on how we could support the team with their plans to build scale and reinvent an important part of the financial services sector and reach more customers.
This meeting was immediately followed up with seeing Eleanor Mackay from University of Strathclyde who is leading their very exciting Enterprise Pathway programme which will have a fintech theme this year.
The Programme will play a major role in inspiring new innovations in the fintech space from very early idea formation and I’m delighted we will be supporting the initiative.
On a broader scale, it was wonderful to meet up with Claudia Cavalluzzo of Converge Challenge to talk about developing a partnership to bring alive the opportunities for fintech company creation working with Scotland’s universities.
It was a privilege to also have Sandy Finlayson of MBM Commercial join us for the meeting and hear about his vast experience of helping new start up enterprises achieve scale. I’m hoping we can sprinkle more of this valuable know how across the fintech community.
Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to catch up with Susan Brown of Zortrex who themselves are at a very early stage of growing but I can see significant potential for their tokenisation’ innovation across many aspects of financial services at scale.
Of course, achieving scale with any business requires investment and addressing the funding challenge faced by many emerging fintech enterprises remains a key priority.
It was really helpful to meet with Ian Mitchelmore of Scottish Investment Bank this week to agree on the practical steps we can implement to support firms looking to build their fintech propositions.
Alongside this, the productive conversations with the Vivolution team Mark Roger, Andrew McGee, Kevin Lonergan plus Graeme Rennison and the team at Scottish Enterprise will mean this remains a key focus in the coming weeks.
Fintech funding was also a key topic in my catch up with Charlotte, Victoria and Peter at Innovate Finance on Monday in London and I am looking forward to combining our efforts in this areas
We also talked about collaboration initiatives on diversity and inclusion which we are all share a passion, especially in addressing the traditional barriers and mindsets.
Fintech Collaboration to Scale
My meetings this last two weeks have reinforced to me once again that innovative collaboration between large and small enterprises can provide a successful route to scale fintech.
This was very much part of the discussion when Mickael and I met up with long standing fintech supporter Derek Smith of Lloyds Bank to hear how their collaboration approach is enabling fintech growth.
Really impressed by Derek and seeing how the genuine collaboration is driving innovation in a large organization such as Lloyds Bank from their Edinburgh office and we very much value how they are productively engaging with the fintech community.
Prudential is another significant financial services player who are collaborating at scale and I am looking forward to developing the innovation opportunities in the wealth management space with Michael Winney and Richard
I’m hoping the collaboration at scale opportunities between large financial services firms and the fintech community can be developed on a wider scale to support the need to reinvent financial services with the common purpose of improving consumer outcomes.
I focused on this example of purpose driven innovation and collaboration during my leadership talk with the diverse range of leaders on the Common Purpose programme.
Thank you, John Heraghty, for the opportunity to share insights on the fintech movement and social purpose with a great group of people making a difference in their own organisations.
Collaboration was also the focus of recent meetings with Elaine Maddison and Jenny Thorpe of Aegon as well as Ali Law at Royal London as well as developing the broad range of fintech skills required for the future.
Fintech Skills to Scale
On the subject of fintech skills, it was so brilliant to catch up with the truly inspiring Elisabetta Trasatti, vice president of the University of Glasgow FinTech Society, one of the largest student led fintech societies in the world.
We are hugely impressed by the way Elisabetta and the FinTech Society team have galvanized students and the broader fintech ecosystem, very much brought alive by their Applied FinTech Project.
Wonderful also to see the collaboration with the Orca Money team and Chris Brown at Deloitte, such a great way to develop fintech skills for the future.
The focus on skills in order to build scale was a key theme of our discussion with David Skinn and the Aviva team when we visited the Scotland HQ in Perth last Friday.
It was terrific to hear about the insurance innovations focused on customer needs being developed by the Aviva and how they are building a centre of excellence around data analytic skills to further fuel this development at scale.
We are looking forward to progressing with the MBN Solutions and Dundee University teams going forward to ensure there are the fintech skills developed for future scale opportunities.
The visit to Aviva was a super way to finish off last week even if my walking directions led to Nicola, Mickael and myself getting to see more of Perth than we had expected!!
The long walk gave us time to discuss the theme of people skills which Nicola has rightly pulled out as a key topic which comes through almost every meeting we have had in this last fortnight
Nicola, who joined FinTech Scotland last week on a twelve month secondment form the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has already in the first few days made a huge impact with insights and expert guidance.
Once again, many thanks to Maggie Craig and Karina McTeague from the FCA for this valuable initiative in Nicola joining us on secondment.
On Monday it was the opportunity to take the fintech skills agenda to London and host the Scotland’s Got Talent’ Event at Scotland House.
I was joined on the stage by inspiring leaders Alex Ford of Encompass and Colin Halpin of HSBC.
The fact that you had three people, originally from other parts of the world (Sydney, Dublin and Reading!) talking about what a wonderful place was for a careers and living reflected the genuine international culture of Scotland.
Many thanks to a very diverse engaged audience and to the fabulous Scottish Development International team for a terrific event , Karen, Andrew, Ashleigh, Martin and the Scotland House team.
On Wednesday it was back to Edinburgh and a chance to catch up with Mark Hunter and Colin Tate of Sainsbury Bank.
Some of our conversation centred around skills development, especially in Mark’s capacity as the chair of DataLab, who are very much a shining jewel in Scotland’s economy led by one of my role models’ Gillian Docherty.
However, most of our conversation was about delivering fintech change at a strategic scale and, in this respect, the very impressive transformational delivery by the very humble Sainsbury bank team is in my view a template to build scale.
I’m looking forward to supporting Mark, Colin and the team connect further into the fintech ecosystem in the future and share their example of what strategic fintech scale could look like.
Strategic Fintech at Scale
This strategic focus on innovative collaboration was central to my catch up with Craig Wilson of Sopra Steria and the opportunity for fintech to have a major impact beyond financial services and into the public sector
Thank you to Colin Carmichael for the impromptu meet up presentation with the Sopra Steria team on Tuesday, I appreciated the opportunity to share how their strategic involvement in Scotland was making a difference.
The broader strategic themes in retail banking of open banking, payments and community banking were the main discussion points with Eric Leenders at UK Finance earlier in the day. Thanks Eric for the valuable insights.
In two separate meetings with Martin Rames of Yodlee and then with Charlie Woods and Billy Weatherall of HPE, I was hugely encouraged about the interest to support the development of the strategic infrastructure and capabilities that would enable small fintech enterprises to grow.
Similarly, in the previous week, Mickael and I had a really useful meeting with Simon Pink of IBM on how we develop the strategic tram lines’ to support fintech development at scale.
Scotland’s fantastic universities have a big role to play in bringing strategic fintech at scale to market and this opportunity was even more highlighted to Nicola and myself when we visited the University of Edinburgh Blockchain Lab.
Wow, what a way to finish the week before going on a weeks’ holiday, my head was spinning with ideas and potential connecting collaborations.
Hugely impressed by what Aggelos Kiayias and his team shared and very much looking forward to working with Aggelos, Emilios Avgouleas and Chris Magennis of Rooney Nimmo to take forward.
Then when I think of how the Blockchain Lab links our work with the brilliant Paul Mosson and the team at the Law Society of Scotland and their launch this week of LawscotTech, I just end up having a sleepless night with excitement!
The ideas, capabilities, skills and people all coming together to genuinely collaborate and provide the opportunity to reinvent financial services and more!! This is why fintech is so exciting.
Running at Scale
With all this buzzing around in my head I am going to start my week’s holiday with a run at scale, an early morning start while the streets are quiet to clear the head with a twenty miles or so run.
I’ve been plagued by a bit of a bug this last month so it was great to get out racing again last Sunday with the Kirkintilloch half marathon.
A very undulating course but one of my all time favourites and I was delighted to finish with a spring in my step and fourth in my super veteran category! I do find it odd be referred to as a super veteran!!
The next race in a couple of weeks time is the Jedburgh half marathon, another lovely part of Scotland’s landscape.
However, before then there is lots of fintech activity to flow! Until next time.
Fintech trade mission to Poland
Scottish Development International is helping to promote a Fintech trade mission to Poland, which the Warsaw-based DIT team is organising on 27th-29th November 2018.
Interested companies can join via the link below
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2018-uk-fintech-trade-mission-to-poland-tickets-50441104702
In brief, the programme of the trade mission will start in the afternoon on 27th November in Warsaw with expert briefings about fintech landscape in Poland. It will also include a joint reception with UK healthtech trade mission at the Ambassador’s Residence.
On 28th and 29th November, UK fintechs will be actively involved (sales pitches,1-2-1 meetings, networking) in Impact Fintech’18 ”“ the largest and most influential international fintech conference in Poland, which gathers key decision makers and influencers (including public sector) in the financial sector. The event will take place in a city of Åódź (1.5 hrs away from Warsaw).
We are expecting a UK Minister to attend the Warsaw reception and Impact Fintech’18 in Åódź.
DIT will secure for trade mission participants: transport from Warsaw to Åódź and 2 night accommodation in Åódź, where the conference takes place.
A FinTech degree for today and the future
Blog written by GB Ibikunle, PhD – Director, MSc Finance, Technology and Policy
Director, FinTech @ the Edinburgh Futures Institute
Decades of relentless technological advancements and new regulations have altered how financial services are delivered and trading of financial instruments in financial markets. Markets and financial products have never been more complex, with algorithms, rather than humans, now executing the majority of trades in financial markets, determining consumer credit-worthiness and interacting with consumers in the delivery of financial services.
The skills required to succeed within the finance sector have thus inevitably become more diverse, with financial institutions, looking to take advantage of the growing availability of data, demanding increasing levels of technological and financial sophistication from new recruits as well as existing workers. Indeed, in the finance sector, the ability to develop complex technological solutions is now as sought after as the understanding of the economic interactions generating big financial and consumer data.
This development and the pace at which it has emerged have led to a yawning skills shortage in the nascent sub-sector at the intersection of finance and technology ”“ the so-called FinTech sub-sector. Leading global universities such as the University of Edinburgh, have a responsibility to respond to knowledge gaps in the global workforce such as has become evident in FinTech.
Hence, we have responded with a new Masters level degree programme. Developed over a 30-month period of intensive curriculum building, which involved extensive interactions between our world leading academics/researchers and global industry leaders , our MSc in Finance, Technology and Policy (FTP) offers a unique degree sitting at the intersection of the three most important drivers of a modern economy ”“ financial services and markets, technology and policy.
The programme applies the core principles of financial economics and economic sociology with practical skills in programming, machine learning and big data
analysis within a problem-based learning framework to help students develop the skillsets that are relevant for FinTech roles of today and the future. Students on the programme work with industry partners to develop innovative solutions to live challenges as part of student consultancy projects sponsored by industry partners.
Generally, FinTech-related degree programmes and courses exclusively focus on the
vocational skills aspect of educating FinTech professionals. FTP as a programme focuses on this aspect as well. We believe that being able to apply machine learning approaches to solving problems and developing new and innovative products in finance is critical to building a successful career within the growing and vibrant FinTech sub-sector. However, we are also convinced that being able to critically engage with the core debates within the finance sector as it undergoes a technological transformation is equally important.
Therefore, while the programme offers students an unvarnished view of the functioning of existing financial markets and financial services structures, it also advances criticisms of the current set up and presents a basis for the development of alternative markets and financial products.
Markets are often taken as a given, with unspecified origins ”“ in current policy and academic debates. FTP is designed to contribute a strident policy-based argument to this ever-growing debate by weighing in on competing arguments. The programme explores the social anthropology and political economy of meanings and representations within which markets are embedded.
Relevant works for this task include economist Douglass North’s work on the implicit and explicit cultural meanings of markets and Susan Strange’s work on casino
capitalism that deconstructs current money markets and financial capitalism. This unique focus on critical economic sociology and market policy issues distinguishes FTP from all the other existing FinTech educational offerings. With the critical thinking skills students develop on the programme, they are able to reflect on the interactions between finance and technology on the one hand and policy evolution on the other.
This kind of consideration offers students the opportunity to meaningfully engage with the possible consequence of the solutions and innovative products they develop, especially how they may influence the trajectory of policy.
The relevance of FTP for the FinTech sub-sector today and in the future is not in doubt. In order to ensure that this continues to be the case, the programme is supported by an external advisory panel, with members drawn from regulatory agencies, finance and technology firms, as well as firms operating at the intersection of finance and technology.
The panel provides advice on curriculum development and employability issues. Furthermore, we offer an extensive range of entrepreneurship initiatives designed to help students develop innovative products and take them to the market within months of programme completion.
In the final analysis, I think the main selling point for FTP is that the degree is a University of Edinburgh offering. University of Edinburgh is a university with an academic pedigree of historic proportions. As a global university, we have been delivering impact research on a global scale since the 16th century. Today, we continue to lead in many areas, including machine learning/AI, economics and sociology ”“ all the critical building blocks of the MSc Finance, Technology and Policy.
UK FinTech Trade Mission to Zurich and Vienna in January 2019
The 2nd annual UK Fintech Mission to Zürich and Vienna matches senior executives in Swiss, Liechtensteiner and Austrian banks, insurance companies and venture capital firms and the most innovative UK-registered fintech and cybersecurity start-ups to build mutually beneficial business relationships.
€30 million in signed business deals generated from the previous Fintech Missions to Switzerland and Austria.
FinTech Scotland’s Stephen Ingledew and FDATA’s Gavin Littlejohn will join the Zurich Mission.
Switzerland: a leading global centre for finance and fintech
”‹Why Switzerland? Because it is home to over 260 banks. It is also the largest global financial centre for international clients in cross-border wealth management. At the end of 2015, assets under management in Switzerland totalled £5trillion.
Why join us in Zürich? Because it ranked sixth in the 2016 Global Financial Centres Index and 2nd in Europe (after London). Because a third of Switzerland’s 260+ banks have their head offices here. Some 510 banking institutions are also represented in Zurich in one form or another. Representatives from financial institutions in Geneva will be present too. Like Zurich, Geneva is a significant global financial centre. It ranked 4th in Europe and 15th globally on the 2016 Global Financial Centres Index. Geneva’s financial centre comprises some 140 banks. It is also a major centre for asset management. All these financial institutions understand the need to provide innovative digital solutions for their customers. They eagerly await your applications!
Why Austria? Isn’t it more Mozart than Fintech?
”‹The companies which you are pitching to have an extremely high market share across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This means that, if they buy your products/services, you could immediately have a presence across upwards of 15 countries. In 2017, CB Insights ranked VC Speedinvest no. 1 most active Fintech VC in the EU, with a €100m fund dedicated to identifying the most innovative companies. Austria is a country of wealthy consumers, with GDP per capita of €38k (vs. €34k in UK). It also has the highest level of smartphone and internet access in the CEE region. The market for Fintech in Austria is projected to reach €588 million by 2020 and Fintech investments in the DACH Region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) rank 2nd in EU after the UK. Limited domestic expertise means big opportunities for UK companies to get first-mover advantage in the market. Check out our video of last year’s event below:
Apply TODAY at www.ukfintechmission.com or contact pat.kunz@scotent.co.uk for further information.
REGISTRATIONS CLOSE 31. OCTOBER 2018