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Lightning Reach and Inbest partner with Fair4All Finance to deliver comprehensive access to financial support

Tech for Good start-up Lightning Reach and benefits platform Inbest have partnered with Fair4All Finance to broaden their coverage of support for individuals on both platforms.

Over 15m people in the UK are in financial hardship with the cost-of-living crisis plunging millions more into poverty. However, whilst there is a vast array of support available, the landscape is fragmented and confusing to navigate resulting in people not knowing what support is available or assuming they are not entitled to any support. This lack of awareness and the complexity of application processes means struggling households miss out on over £15 billion in benefits, discretionary payments and grants.

Lightning Reach and Inbest are excited to start a partnership where they will integrate their respective platforms, broadening their combined coverage of support. This integration will allow Lightning Reach to include benefits, grants and discounted tariffs covered by Inbest in its one-stop support portal, while Inbest will add discretionary schemes and grants available on the Lightning Reach portal to its benefits calculator.

The partnership is being supported by financial inclusion not-for-profit Fair4All Finance which is making the portal available to the community finance sector as part of its programs to expand the provision of affordable credit and the pilot for the No Interest Loan Scheme.

Senthan Balachandiran, Programme Manager at Fair4All Finance, said:

“One of the core initiatives in our cost of living response is to make available in as many customer journeys as possible a benefit and grant check because we know that awareness is one of the biggest barriers to claiming entitlement. In addition to the No Interest Loan Scheme pilot journey, we are working with credit reference agencies, price comparison websites, loan management systems, and community and mainstream finance to ensure these checks are provided to all their customers.  

 

Ren Hooi, CEO of Lightning Reach, said:

“With over 8 million people estimated to be missing out on benefits, we are keen to help people seeking support through our portal access all the benefits they are entitled to. We’re also delighted to work with Inbest to enable multiple customer journey options for an embedded and seamless experience.”

 

Manu Peleteiro, CEO of Inbest, said:

“ The Lightning Reach portal is already one of the most popular features in our benefits calculator. Integrating Lightning’s grants engine into our benefits calculator will further increase our leading coverage of benefits and grants, and will also create a seamless signposting experience for customers.”



Scottish fintech Biscuit Tin partners with Age Partnership

Scottish fintech firm Biscuit Tin, is accelerating its growth with a new partnership with the UK’s leading equity release advisory firm, Age Partnership.

The start-up was launched by serial entrepreneur Sheila Hogan in 2020 with the mission to help people organise their life admin. This partnership means that Age Partnership will provide their customers with preferential access to the personalised secure digital vault.

With Biscuit Tin, Age Partnership’s customers will be able to securely store important information, such as account details, documents, wishes and memories all in one place. The solution will guide people on how to plan and what to record within the vault. Biscuit Tin also helps families and next of kins access the relevant information according to the wishes of the individual.

In the last 12 months Biscuit Tin has gone from strength to strength with partnerships and collaborations agreed with other organisations including Scottish Building Society. Biscuit Tin has won several awards and this year the business has been shortlisted for Rising Star, The Scottish Financial Technology Awards; Rising Star and Start-up Business of the Year, Business Women Scotland Awards; Business of the Year, Association of Scottish Businesswomen Awards, and Start-up Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Great British Entrepreneur Awards.

In February 2022, Sheila appeared in BBC’s Dragon’s Den, significantly raising the profile of the business. Biscuit Tin has been recognised as one of the top twenty Scottish Tech Ecosystem potential growth businesses. Earlier in the year founder Sheila travelled to Silicon Valley with StartUp Grind, a trip that brought together Scotland’s top start-ups and scale ups with more than 3,000 of the world’s best.

Commenting on the new Age Partnership collaboration, Steve Auckland, CEO of Age Partnership said:

“From this month we are providing all our completed equity release customers with access to their own digital secure vault, where they can take control of the documents, memories and personal information that are shared with their loved ones after they pass away. Equity release as a product allows people to take control of their later life finances, it is about enriching people’s lives when they need it most; so, this partnership with Biscuit Tin has perfect synergy.”

Sheila Hogan, founder and CEO of Biscuit Tin said:

“I am delighted to be working with Age Partnership to provide their valued customers with a special opportunity to get organised and plan in advance with Biscuit Tin. Creating a structured digital legacy of our lives means we can feel safe in the knowledge that we are making a difference by taking much of the administrative stress and stain away from our loved ones in the future. Biscuit Tin enables everyone to securely organise all of their life information and create a digital biography of their life to leave as a legacy to hand down the generations.

“I’m delighted with the progress we’re making as a business to achieve our vision of making Biscuit Tin a global household brand in digital legacy within the next five years, in world where planning for end of life is the norm, and where we all have virtual biscuit tins containing our digital legacies to hand down the generations and we make a difference by making life easier at every stage.”

Unlock the Power of MSc Student Projects

The University of Edinburgh postgraduate students will utilise their unique knowledge and skills to conduct short pieces of research for the benefit of business and third sector organisations. We are looking for proposals for company-driven projects for several MSc programmes relevant to Fintech and the Financial Services sector. We are particularly interested in data-driven topics in applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, data analytics, cryptofinance and blockchain, distributed finance, portfolio optimization, and behavioural and predictive modelling.

Do you have a business challenge that would benefit from a piece of research and analysis in this area? We are looking to project ideas for our MSc students until the end of December 2022. Projects will be supported by our world-leading academics and delivered by our students over Summer 2023.

 

Want to learn more?

  • Come to our event, Company focused FinTech projects’ on 24th October 2022, 1:30-5pm at the University of Edinburgh Business School Auditorium (includes networking over drinks)
  • Unable to join in person? Feel free to sign up anyway: there will be an option to join the presentations remotely.
  • Already have an idea in mind and just keen to get started, or another way you’d like to collaborate with the University? E-mail Marina, the University of Edinburgh Business Development Executive, at marina.duka-jenkins@ei.ed.ac.uk

 

What are the benefits to your organisation?

  • Use the results produced for your own (commercial) purposes free of charge
  • Raise your profile as a potential employer amongst prospective graduates with specialised knowledge and skills
  • Begin or continue to engage with the University of Edinburgh’s expertise

“Working with the MSc in Fintech student was a tremendous help in supporting us to drive our R&D activities. The student was a really motivated individual and delivered high quality project. The academic supervisor also took a hands-on approach that ensured the technical robustness and quality of the proposed methodologies.” – Manuel Peleteiro, Founder & CEO, Inbest

 

Recent Project Examples:

  • Applications of Machine Learning to Regulatory Analytics: Basel Use Test (with Equifax)
  • Fairness in Machine Learning (with Tesco Bank)
  • Affordability-Driven Credit Decisioning (with Tesco Bank)
  • Macroeconomic default modelling (with Virgin Money)
  • Business Disruption Assessment of Climate Risks (with Climate X)
  • Can change in environmental, social or governance scores be predicted using company characteristics? (with Franklin Templeton)
  • ESG investing, impact investing and socially responsible investing – what’s the difference from a performance/return perspective? (with Substantive Research)
  • A Market Index for Digital Currencies (with Predictiva)

Book to attend the event: https://eil.ac/FinTechProjects

Or e-mail Marina: marina.duka-jenkins@ei.ed.ac.uk

The MSc projects are delivered free of charge, as part of the students’ dissertations. However, companies can choose to remunerate the students for their time, if they wish.

Glasgow based fintech AccessFintech secures $60 million in Series C funding

AccessFintech, the leading Glasgow and London based fintech evolving the capital markets operating model through data and workflow collaboration, recently announced the successful completion of its $60 million Series C funding round.

The funding comes at the heels of rapid growth for the firm. Synergy, AccessFintech’s data collaboration network for global financial institutions, has grown to include over 100 participants and expanded its asset class coverage to include derivatives and syndicated loans. It has also added to its securities offering by extending its lifecycle management through its new claims network and the launch of a ground-breaking predictive fails service.

AccessFintech has a growing presence in Scotland, employing 25 people since February 2020. The funding will help secure further growth in the office over the next period.

The Glasgow office is headed by Pardeep “Par” Cassells, Head of Securities and Claims Products. Par is responsible for opening and growing AccessFintech’s office in Glasgow, where she has purposefully built a diverse team which includes 50% women (compared to an industry average of 12-14%) and 17% people with BAME background. Recruitment encourages both new graduates and women returning to their careers after a prolonged absence.

Par serves as a board member of Fintech Scotland. She leads the organization’s next-generation outreach and has given numerous talks to schools and universities, participated in panels, and worked to promote fintech in Scotland.

On the funding news, Par said, “Our funding is fantastic for AccessFintech and its growth trajectory in Scotland. The funding round will fuel our next stage of growth. Our vision is that data is the catalyst for innovation and growth, and we believe AccessFintech plays a critical role as an essential provider of trusted data governance infrastructure.”

Why you can stay ahead of competition with the 4th generation of data-driven NoCode technology

You might have heard that Lowcode/Nocode are rising fast as one of the most promising enablers of the digitalization, especially with the pandemic situation urging all organisations, public or private sectors to release various apps fast to keep track of staff, customers monitoring as well as keep business running as normal. However, one can be easily confused by so many lowcode/nocode products in the market and not really sure what would really benefit his/her particular company. Let’s take a look at the evolution history of lowcode/nocode first.


Lowcode appeared on the horizon around 30 years ago along with the internet hype where we all had some kind of encounter with the 1st generation of lowcode, which provides pre-stored templates to drag and drop to create some websites without knowing how to do coding. That’s the very first generation of lowcode, we call template-driven, or form-driven lowcodes. Still today in the lowcode market, a majority (around 95%) of lowcodes are based on this mechanism, but this type of template-based lowcodes is not very flexible to change already-set templates and certainly not capable for enterprise-class software development which demands highly complex operational process and logic building. 

Then around 15 years ago came along a more advanced lowcode type called model-driven, today’s most dominant enterprise-class software development market is this type of lowcodes, as they brought along the model-building mechanism which enables much more complicated and sophisticated enterprise-class environment applications. These lowcodes represent the 2nd ”“ 3rd generation of lowcodes. 

However this kind of lowcodes also has a serious drawback, which is inflexibility caused by human-created modelling. As it requires highly skilled IT professionals to build the data modelling to enable front end applications, whenever, yes we all know how often it happens, the front end user requirement changes, or new business situation arises, or any changes happened on the business front, the already-built modelling cannot work with the new changes anymore. With no choice, it demands the backend modelling to be rebuilt. However, in the data model, each data is linked with a complex web of data in a multitude of tables in database, a small change will involve a huge amount of work to redo the whole modelling, which demands not only highly skilled IT staff but also someone familiar with the original modelling, which poses the greatest difficulty for most companies, not to mention time and money to invest in. Therefore, the 2nd-3rd generation of model-driven is not flexible enough to cope with today’s VUCA era with bigdata environment. 

When it comes to the 4th generation of data-driven NoCode technology, it takes a completely different and innovative approach to application development: leveraging integrated data sources from various operational IT systems and turn the data into data assets, it allows data to become highly intelligent and autonomous, can auto-detect relationship with data from heterogeneous data sources to create auto-data modelling, this automatic modelling by data themselves greatly eliminates the human intervention, reduced hefty skilled IT staff workload and ensures high level of flexibility, as the modelling can be broken down and rebuilt at any time- anywhere with front end requirement.

 

 

For data-driven NoCode, it also differentiates from lowcode in the aspect that Lowcode serves more target users of IT professionals by providing system generated coding for them to copy and paste into their programming, but Nocode removes the coding barrier once for all, that the users don’t have to know anything about coding and can drag and drop to build any workflow, analytical reports and applications according to their needs. This character means it allows not only non-IT business users to build their own bespoke workflow and applications they truly need and tend to use more frequently, but also can largely reduce the qualification for software developers for software vendors, reducing their personnel expense and therefore improve bottom line. On Average data-driven NoCode can deliver enterprise-class complex applications within 3-6 weeks with a handful of junior engineers, around 70% further lead time reduction from model-driven NoCode products, and even more from the traditional fully human coding (high code) software development lead time of 1-2 years. 

Till now you must be able to realize, how much faster time-to-market and time-to-cashflow the bigdata powered NoCode can bring to the customers, that’s why in many cases start-ups and scale-ups can attract VC investment much more easily with Nocode platform built in. 

 

Even with the IT skill barrier removed, it does not mean NoCode replaces the programmers. Instead, the programmers can be relieved from many hours of low-value-added mechanical coding work to focus on higher value-added business know-how and customer centric work, while delivering software and applications much faster, thus creating much more value for their companies. 

 

So to wrap it up, you can see quite clearly what values one can get from the 4th generation of data-driven NoCode technology:

  1. Faster software development lead time (Average 3-6 weeks)
  2. Reduced IT skills = reduced personnel cost
  3. Great time-to-market and time-to-cashflow
  4. Eliminated data silo problem due to bigdata platform foundation (this is very important feature which we will have a dedicated article to talk about it, stay tuned in)
  5. Multi-party coordinated development as well as software building on-the-go with auto-modelling, what you see is what you get
  6. Enterprise-class competency and real big-data capabilities
  7. Highly improved profitability
  8. Non-IT business user friendly, higher success rate of applications built

Written By Shan You, SVP / MD for Overseas at Smardaten Technologies

Photo by Christina Morillo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-using-silver-macbook-pro-1181467/

Zumo joins World Economic Forum Crypto Sustainability Coalition

Scottish fintech Zumo, has become the latest member of the World Economic Forum’s Crypto Sustainability Coalition.

This coalition will explore how blockchain solutions can be use to contribute to meaningful progress toward positive climate action. Zumo’s contribution will be around developing the guiding principles and toolkits for companies, regulators and start-ups to leverage the potential of blockchain to reach energy goals.

Particular areas of focus include:

  • assessment of crypto sector energy usage
  • examination of the potential of web3 technology to facilitate positive climate action
  • investigation of the usage of blockchain-based carbon credits.

 

Nick Jones, Zumo CEO, commented:

 

“It’s extremely encouraging to see the level of coordinated activity that has emerged in this area since we started our own crypto decarbonisation journey.” 

“As we all know, there’s a lot left to do and a long way to go; what we’re seeing, however, is the strands of this work in the crypto ESG space really coming together ”“ and, perhaps, the beginnings of a shift in the narrative and the ability to see this technology not just as a problem, but as a potential force multiplier for good.”

“Making sure crypto and blockchain more generally develops in a way that caters to the needs of people and the planet is critical to Zumo and what we’re doing. We’re delighted to be invited to participate in this worthy World Economic Forum initiative, and to continue to build and collaborate with our fellow actors in the space.”   

 

Find out more about the Crypto Sustainability Coalition at weforum.org

Learn more about Zumo’s own industry-leading work to date at zumo.tech

Made in the UK, Sold to the World’ – Government’s campaign to get encourage export

DIT (the Department for International Trade) is focusing on Scottish SME’s in the next phase of its nationwide export campaign.

DirectID, Emergency One and AAC Clyde Space are some of the companies that will feature in adverts on local radio, in print, and on billboards in train stations across the UK until the end of November.

The purpose behind this campaign is to encourage more businesses to export by promoting the free expert advice that SMEs can access through UK Government.

Minister for Exports Marcus Fysh said:

“Exporters create jobs, pay higher wages and help grow our economy, which is why we want the UK to be an export-led economy and reach a trillion pounds of exports a year by 2030.

“This campaign highlights some fantastic businesses punching above their weight, selling their brilliant products and services made here in the UK to the world.  I hope they serve as inspiration to others looking to get onto the exporting ladder. As the campaign says: if you make it in the UK, why not sell it to the world?”

 

In 2019, there were around 12,400 Scottish companies exporting goods or services, and in 2021 Scotland accounted for 9% of all UK goods exports at £27.0 billion.

UK Government Minister for Scotland Malcolm Offord said:

“From fintech to fire engines to our world-famous food and drink sector, Scotland’s businesses have huge exporting potential.

“This campaign will highlight some fantastic Scottish companies that are already benefitting from selling their products around the globe. I hope it will inspire more businesses to follow suit, boosting the economy in Scotland and across the UK and supporting jobs.”

Minister for Trade, Scott Mann said:

“People around the world are lining up to buy British food, and this government is making sure that they can get it. From our fantastic seafood and meat to our world class produce, British food and drink is renowned for its high-quality and exceptional standards.

“This campaign ensures that all businesses making wonderful products have the tools they need to sell them around the world, bringing even more jobs and growth to a flourishing sector of our economy.”

Winner of Phoenix Group’s first Innovation Forum for customer engagement and financial well-being announced

Phoenix Group announces that Behavioural Finance is the inaugural winner of its first Innovation Forum.

In collaboration with FinTech Scotland and TCS’s Co-Creation and Innovation Network (COIN), the Phoenix Innovation Forum invited FinTech enterprises to develop innovative new tools that improve financial wellbeing, engagement and make a genuine positive impact on customers’ lives.

The Innovation Forum launched in May 2022 and seven companies were shortlisted to provide an initial pitch of their idea to an expert judging panel. In June, three companies were selected as finalists and assigned mentors from among Phoenix Group’s senior leadership team to develop their concepts further.

A final pitch took place on September 22nd before Behavioural Finance was confirmed as the winner. The judging panel said Behavioural Finance’s WealthPersonality concept stood out for its ingenuity, creativity and ability to engage customers. It uses psychometric testing so users can see how their personality will affect their relationship with money.

The runners-up were Airfunders and Moroku.

Edinburgh-based Behavioural Finance will now work with industry experts from Phoenix Group to further develop their concept.

Colin Williams, Managing Director of Pensions and Savings at Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, said: “Phoenix Group is always looking to fuel creativity and come up with new solutions that really support our customers and build greater engagement and financial inclusion, which is so central to our social purpose and part of our long term sustainability strategy.

“Our first Innovation Forum has not just met these objectives but exceeded them, and I want to share my congratulations with Behavioural Finance for their winning concept, which will help better engage and support customers.

“Across all the phases of the Innovation Forum, the competition was extremely strong and all deserve thanks for their superb contributions.

“We now look forward to seeing Behavioural Finance’s WealthPersonality tool develop further, and to more great ideas being uncovered at Phoenix Group’s future Innovation Forums.”

Chris Tweed, co-founder and CEO of Behavioural Finance, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as the winner of the inaugural Phoenix Group Innovation Forum, which has been a valuable and rewarding experience for us.

“Improving financial outcomes is the corner stone of our WealthPersonality tool, and we look forward to working in partnership with Phoenix Group to build a new concept that will really support their customers now and into the future.”

Vivekanand Ramgopal, Global Head ”“ TCS BFSI Products and Platforms, commented: “TCS is committed to driving technology advancement that improves our communities and the lives of all people.

“We are honoured to be part of the Phoenix Group Innovation Forum, and join our valued client, Phoenix Group, and our fellow collaborators in congratulating the 2022 winners.”

Nicola Anderson, Chief Executive of FinTech Scotland, commented: “I am delighted to congratulate both Behavioural Finance and Phoenix Group for their success in this programme.

“Behavioural Finance is a truly innovative business and worthy winners from a field of very strong applications. It is inspiring to see the range of FinTech entrepreneurial talent across Scotland and the UK. This talent and aptitude instil confidence for the future of finance.”

Got Capital selects directID To Digitise SME Funding Process

Scottish fintech and global credit risk platform DirectID, have just announced a partnership with SME capital provider Got Capital.

From now on, SMEs applying for financing will be able to use the power of Open Banking within the application journey, letting agents at Got Capital quickly categorise and determine businesses’ true revenue without the need for PDF or paper bank statements. This new solution will allow for a much faster and accurate process, de-risking the financing whilst providing a better experience for SMEs.

Nicola Dunn, Business Development Manager, DirectID said:

“Small businesses are the backbone of any economy, they are continuously struggling to get access to affordable financing. Traditional lenders find it difficult to ensure fast and safe underwriting processes for SMEs. Existing and traditional credit reports lack sufficient credit history information such as bank account information or bank statement data. On the other hand, SMEs often cannot provide any collateral to mitigate this information gap and ensure financing.

This information gap can be filled by open banking data which is highly in demand in the market. DirectID are delighted to be the chosen open banking partner of Got Capital and we are very much and looking forward to working with Got Capital on a variety of use cases in the future.”

Mr. Alex Afek, Managing Director, Got Capital Officer said: 

“We are very excited to get on board the DirectID platform. Got Capital is funding businesses across the UK and we require a very good e-banking coverage. It simplifies the process for our applicants and customers and reduces the time to funding decisioning. Got Capital’s Royalties based investment is a timely instrument and”¯is used by many different types of businesses when they need cash at hand yesterday.”