Morgan Stanley creates career opportunities for over 200 young people
Technology roles feature prominently in Morgan Stanley’s biggest ever recruitment programme for University Graduates, Graduate Apprentices and University Summer Interns in Glasgow. Over the next few months, the bank will recruit 75 University Graduates, 25 Graduate Apprentices and 104 University Summer Interns.
The 75 University Graduates will be recruited primarily from universities across Scotland for various roles and responsibilities across Technology, Operations, Finance, Legal & Compliance and Fund Services.
The 25 Graduate Apprenticeships will provide opportunities for Scottish High School leavers from S5 and S6. Graduate Apprentices will earn while they learn, working in the Technology, Finance and Operations teams at Morgan Stanley in Glasgow. They will also be able to pursue a degree qualification at the same time.
The 104 University Summer Internships are aimed primarily at penultimate year university undergraduates, typically those in the third year of degree courses at Scottish universities. Commencing in early June 2023, the internships run for 13 weeks, providing an excellent introduction and insight to the range of career opportunities at Morgan Stanley.
Vida Rudkin, Head of Morgan Stanley Glasgow said,
“Throughout the past two and a half years of the pandemic, Morgan Stanley has remained committed to providing opportunities for young people. The firm has been an Investor in Young People at Gold level since 2015 and an early signatory for the Scottish Government’s Young Persons Pledge, so it is especially pleasing that this year we are recruiting the highest ever number of graduates, Graduate Apprentices and Interns to the Glasgow office. Our new joiners are supported by our early careers training programmes and our Young Professionals Network.”
Rudkin continued,
“Our investment and commitment to young people in Scotland has been more than rewarded through the sheer depth of diverse talent we have been able to meet and recruit from across the country and we very much value the strong relationships we have forged with schools, universities and a whole host of partner organisations dedicated to nurturing and developing future generations.”
Applications for both University Graduates and University Summer Interns opportunities open in September with a closing deadline at the end of November, while applications for Graduate Apprenticeships will open in September and close in early March 2023. Full details, including how to apply, can be found on the Morgan Stanley website atCareers for Students and Graduates | Morgan Stanley
Graduate Apprentices joining Morgan Stanley’s Technology team will have the opportunity to complete a BSc in Software Development in partnership with the University of Strathclyde or a BSc in Software Engineering, in partnership with the University of Glasgow.
Morgan Stanley opened its first Glasgow office in 2000, employing six people. Having grown to occupy two city centre office buildings, the bank moved in 2018 to a new 155,000 sq ft purpose built HQ building on Waterloo Street in Glasgow’s International Financial Services District.
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FinTech focus groups set up to support FinTech Scotland Roadmap
A new FinTech event series focused on collaboration and stakeholder engagement will play an important role in supporting the development and delivery of the recently published FinTech Scotland Research and Innovation Roadmap.
FinTech is driving change in the financial services industry, one of the most important parts of our economy. It presents a significant disruptive force and will shape the future of the digital economy.
The financial services industry contributes £132 billion to the UK economy each year and research and innovation will play a fundamental role in shaping the future of finance. FinTech is already a rising force in Scotland, with over 200 fintech businesses, driving growing levels of investment and creating exciting and interesting high value jobs.
Embracing this growing potential, the R&I Roadmap sets out the foundations to do more. The overarching aims of the Roadmap are the creation of over 20,000 new FinTech related jobs and an increase in economic value (GVA) from £598 million to more than £2 billion – over the next 10 years.
To support the Roadmap, the FinTech Research and Innovation Event Series 2022-23 has been launched, created by FinTech-Tables, supported by FinTech Scotland and global law firm Pinsent Masons.
The events will provide a platform for discussion that will continue to support an industry-led approach to research, innovation and impact across the four key pillars of the Roadmap; financial regulation, payments & transactions, climate finance, and open finance data. The series will see key contributors meeting to discuss actions outlined against each theme in a series of industry roundtables and panel discussions.
The event series is already attracting a lot of support, with speakers confirmed from a number of organisations for the opening event in September this year, including Pinsent Masons, Autorek and the University of Strathclyde, where a panel of experts will convene to consider role of technology and data in financial regulation.
Commenting, Fintech Scotland Chief Executive Nicola Anderson said,
“This Roadmap event series continues to show the demand and ambition across Scotland to play a leading role in the shaping the future of fintech innovation, and enable the future of finance that will serve the needs of citizens and businesses as we continue to see the digital economy grow and emerge. Fintech innovation in Scotland is already demonstrating a future that can drive better outcomes for us all. By building more collaboration and embracing our strengths, in innovation, finance, and technology, we will continue to play a leading role in advancing finance across the world. ”
Yvonne Dunn, Partner leading the Financial services technology practice at Pinsent Masons said
“As Fintech continues to develop and advance it is disrupting global financial markets, but much needs to be done for it to affect genuine change. Put simply, innovation in technology combined with adapting attitudes and behaviours across society will be a catalyst to drive meaningful change. As we look across the international landscape, Scotland will play a vital role in advancing Fintech given its financial heritage, strength of its universities and an ingrained culture of entrepreneurialism. TheFinTech Scotland cluster is a demonstration of what can happen through collective action. This roadmap event series gives us a forum to move in the right direction and genuinely propel Fintech into a new era of innovation.”
Ian Davey, Founder of Fintech-Tables said
“FinTech in Scotland is a movement and what makes this sector unique is the willingness and desire of the entire ecosystem to come together and work for the greater good of the cluster and people in Scotland as a whole. This first of its kind event series will provide a platform for engagement around the FinTech Scotland Research & Innovation Roadmap and an opportunity for the industry to take action as a group to help shape the future of Fintech in Scotland through collaboration, innovation and inclusion”
AutoRek to hire a further 30 positions
Scottish fintech Autorek, is growing its team to cope with an unprecedented level of demand for it financial control and regulatory reporting solutions. The company has already recruited 40 people in 2022 and is looking at filling 30 more positions across the U.K.
This rise in demand can be attributed to a need for more integrity and accountability across the financial services sector, leading to increased regulation, especially across the payments and asset management industries. The FCA’s new Consumer Duty, which was introduced on 27th July, is the most recent example of this market shift.
AutoRek’s CEO, Gordon McHarg comments:
“We currently have 140 employees, and we’re projecting this number to rise to 170 by the end of the year to keep up with the demand from clients and prospects. We’re extremely proud that the average tenure of employees is currently four years – more than double the sector norm for most fintechs, with almost 40% of these employees playing a huge part in the growth journey with four years or more as part of the AutoRek team.”
He continued,
“The demand for greater automation is at the centre of our need to continue hiring. Within the payments, asset management and insurance sectors, the increasingly complex regulatory landscape is forcing firms to automate to keep pace with their competitors and their own customers’ expectations. Therefore, we have a particular focus on hiring SMEs in each of our sectors, with a number of positions available in insurance. As we look to expand our services internationally and focus on growing software engineering, professional services and sales, we expect this growth to continue as the global business world embraces the benefits of automation.”
RegTech, why now is the time to start caring
Season 1, episode 5
Listen to the full episode here.
Financial Regulation Innovation (RegTech) was highlighted in the FinTech Scotland Research and Innovation roadmap published in March 2022 as an essential area of focus for the financial sector.
Understanding and managing regulatory requirements costs financial institutions millions of pounds every year. As regulation evolves all the time to protect consumers, so do new tools and technologies. In recent years new solutions have emerged to help companies reduce cost, better understand requirements, and meet their reporting obligations. Open Banking, AI, Machine Learning and many more technologies have led to increased innovation.
In this podcast we will discuss what RegTech means, adoption within the financial sector and why now is the time for financial firms to consider and explore innovation around financial regulation. This podcast will also be an opportunity to promote the upcoming fintech table event during Scotland FinTech festival.
Guests:
Yvonne Dunn – Partner at Pinsent masons
Callum Murray – Founder and CEO at Amiqus
Encompass Wins Best KYC/KYB Innovation
Scotland-based fintech, Encompass Corporation, just announced that Aite-Novarica Group, a global advisory firm, has awarded them the winner of the 2022 Fraud & AML Impact Awards’ Best Know Your Customer/Business (KYC/KYB) Innovation.
The award recognises the fintech for its capacity to combine a huge number data sources, technology and expertise to deliver best in class corporate KYC due diligence with automation.
Alex Ford, President, North America at Encompass, said:
“By automating the KYC process, financial institutions can pursue aggressive growth agendas and scale while avoiding additional compliance costs. Our platform is used by banks across the globe to significantly improve the onboarding experience of their clients while also future-proofing technology and processes. We’re grateful to be recognized by Aite-Novarica Group for our innovative approach, which brings speed, accuracy and control.”
Encompass’ platform gives financial institutions access to real-time to global public and premium data sources, enabling:
- Search based on pre-defined policy using only bank-approved sources;
- Mapping of ultimate beneficial ownership and corporate hierarchy;
- Screening of entities for PEPs, sanctions and adverse media;
- Cross-checking documents, matching and merging data;
- And the automatic creation of a complete audit trail in real time.
Winners were selected by a global panel of experts on fraud and AML.
Encompass will be presented with the AML Impact Award at the fifth annual Financial Crime Forum, taking place from September 18-19 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.
BR-DGE announces partnership with leading travel organisation, Travel Counsellors
Payment orchestration scale-up, BR-DGE, has announced a new merchant partnership with leading independent travel company, Travel Counsellors.
This partnership will provide the business with access to a multitude of payment providers and alternative payment methods, from Open Banking to eWallets, via BR-DGE’s market-leading orchestration platform, ensuring a streamlined booking experience for all global customers. This will enable Travel Counsellors to utilise BR-DGE’s dynamic rules engine to build a multi acquirer strategy across its global business operations.
Jacob Spencer, Head of Commercial at BR-DGE, said
“We are excited to be working with Travel Counsellors to revolutionise its payments infrastructure with considerable benefits for its customers and business.
We have seen that the sector is on track for a strong recovery; Travel Counsellors was well placed to bounce back and has had a tremendous last six months with record bookings in FY22 as sales levels reach 140% of FY19.
Our research has shown that over 8% of online transactions in the travel sector fail. As demand returns, with consumers expecting a seamless booking experience and merchants aiming to lift margins, payment orchestration is vital to boosting the sector’s resilience and increasing conversion rates.”
Travel Counsellors is a global travel business, turning over £700m per annum and serving over 600,000 customers worldwide by booking over 300,000 itineraries each year.
Mat Hanson, Chief Financial Officer at Travel Counsellors added
“Our core strategic focus of continued growth and delivering a personalised service to all of our customers remains unchanged. Working with BR-DGE is another example of how we’re continuing to enhance our customers’ experience though the use of new technology. Continuing to provide a seamless booking experience remains pivotal and especially at a time when many of our Travel Counsellors are so very busy.”
Legado acquires Wonderbill’s bill management technology
Scottish fintech Legado just announced it had acquired the consumer and B2B bill management technology from WonderBill.
Launched in 2016, WonderBill allows people to manage all their household bills and subscriptions.
Legado will look at using the technology to support its B2B personal data management and engagement platform that counts M&G, one of the UK’s largest and longest established investment managers, among its clients.
Josif Grace, CEO, and founder of Legado, said:
“WonderBill has invested significantly in its technology over the last few years. The integration of the consumer and B2B bill management technology into Legado’s platform will provide our corporate partners with a market-leading and compliant solution to manage, share, and access personal data in a way that is meaningful for customers.”
Nathaniel Mead, Director at WonderBill said:
“We are delighted that Legado will integrate our innovative technology into their platform to deliver on their vision of managing important customer data in a single, secure place that’s easy to navigate. By offering the WonderBill functionality to its rapidly growing set of large B2B clients, Legado will provide increased ease and comfort to millions of households in the UK and beyond.”
Fintech in Scotland – Connect, Collaborate, and Cultivate
Over the last few weeks, the FinTech Scotland team has had the pleasure of working with an intern from Portobello High School as part of a Career Ready programme. It provided us with an opportunity to support a young person think about the future of work, but more importantly it helped us see through a young learner’s eyes, the excitement and curiosity fintech generates. The power of those questions from a someone with no industry baggage or background yet, is striking.
His facial expressions and questions ranged from sheer surprise to genuine delight, and with a work focus on planning the FinTech Scotland Festival we were delighted to have another set of eyes, ears and thoughts help develop the plan.
Our new young colleague summarised his experience under four key themes. In his view FinTech enables communication, connection, and collaboration, and together these are helping to cultivate the future of finance. As we look towards the FinTech Scotland Festival these themes really set the tone.
The FinTech Scotland Festival
This year We will connect and reconnect with new and old colleagues across the UK and across the world. We will share, listen, learn and have the privilege of some key messages, communicating on the journey so far and the ambition for more.
We’ll celebrate the growing strength of the fintech community in Scotland, and the brilliant entrepreneurs cultivating the future of finance and achieving record levels of investment.
Across the festival we’ll hear more about their plans and ambitions including Snugg’s plans to enable us all to make our homes more energy efficient through fintech, DirectID’s global growth in helping people get fairer access to necessary lending, and Legado’s continued focus to help us get all of our financial lives more digitally organised as we move away from paper-based experiences to digital ones.
We’ll also see Know-it who are gearing up to help businesses manage credit, and Waracle who are helping so many larger Enterprises embrace the possibility of doing business through mobile. Amiqus, will share plans on driving fairer access to better services for people, while Float will show the future of financial management for businesses through a business unique financial command centre. The list goes on and we’re proud to show the advances and flourishing potential.
We’ll also explore emerging fintech innovations, be curious about next generation finance and discover the art of the possible as we collaborate across FinTech and Space innovation to help the climate agenda.
The Festival lift off is on the 15th of September with the FinTech Summit. As ever this event and the Digit team set the scene, tone and ambition for the following three weeks where we will explore the world of fintech. We will land on the 6th of October to celebrate the journey with the Scottish Financial Technology Awards.
I’m really looking forward to it all, meeting people, learning, sharing experience and celebrating success.
And a final note of thanks to Jack, our new intern colleague. While Jack will return to school in the next few weeks, he has left an lasting impression that we’ll not forget.
Mansfield Building Society partners with DirectID
To help mortgage applicants to provide digital bank statement, Mansfield Building Society has partnered with Scottish open banking platform DirectID.
Applicants can now allow their bank to share their statements online with The Mansfield, hence speeding up the income and expenditure check and help prevent brokers from having to use PDFs or paper.
Mansfield Building Society Commercial Development Executive, Richard Crisp, said:
“Brokers and borrowers regularly tell us that they value our individual lending approach in providing flexible solutions to slightly unusual or niche circumstances. At the same, they need an increasingly swift and efficient service and, as a result, we’re delighted to be launching this service with DirectID.
This new service is a safe and convenient way for borrowers to provide their bank statements online via DirectID’s open banking platform. This improvement can help brokers reduce the amount of chasing around they do for their clients and help us deliver a faster speed to offer.
Combined with our robotics developments, not only can we continue to commit to our flexible underwriting approach, we can do it with the modern service that brokers and borrowers need.”
How can fintechs access non-dilutive funding?
Entrepreneurs experience a myriad of challenges when it comes to raising capital to fuel their growth, especially at the early stages of their business.
Startups and other SMEs can now access a range of non-dilutive funding solutions at key stages of growth, including R&D Advance funding, Grant Advance funding, and Revenue Advance funding. These are alternatives to equity capital that can provide fast-growing innovative businesses with access to growth capital affordably and quickly.
These funding options help businesses by supporting investment into research and development, bringing forward project delivery timelines and helping to manage project cash flow. They also provide flexibility to support strategic investment outcomes, generally. For example, companies are now looking to R&D funding to help extend cash runway, through fundraising activities (e.g. Series A), to support increased valuations and maintain founder ownership levels.
In the UK, R&D advance funding continues to grow. With an estimated 85,900 R&D claims for the year ending March 2020 (an increase of 16% from the previous year) and expenditure on R&D performed by UK businesses also showing ~3.5% YOY growth, businesses are now recognising the valuable opportunity provided through this form of non-dilutive funding.
Globally there are c. USD 350bn of assets owned by companies that have previously been unrecognized by lenders which can now be used as collateral to lend securely. Advance funding is similar to accessing any type of loan ”“ it simply uses future tax credits, grant payments or revenue, as collateral.
Blog article written by Hamish Gregory, Director Strategy & Operations at Fundsquire
Fundsquire will be at the Scotland Fintech Festival. If you’d like to chat to the team at the event as well as get a chance to attend panel and networking sessions hosted by Fundsquire at the event, register your interest here.
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