Growing FinTech Community Driving Digital Economic Transformation through the pandemic
FinTech Scotland announce 50% Plus Growth of Scottish Fintech SMEs and a New Entrepreneur Advisory Board
The number of Scottish Fintech SMEs has increased by over fifty per cent during the eighteen months of the pandemic with the FinTech Scotland entrepreneurial community growing from 119 in March 2020 to 181 today.
The growth in the innovative enterprises reflects the increase in demand for financial technologies as more and more of the economy and society adapts to a digital environment driven by the challenges of the pandemic.
The news of the growth comes as FinTech Scotland announces a SME Advisory Board made up of leaders from the fintech entrepreneurial community focused on ensuring the necessary support is in place to continue the momentum of fintech innovation
Initially, the Advisory Board focus on providing impetus on skills development, experience when it comes to accessing funding and commercialisation opportunities.
The Advisory Board includes a diverse range of founders and leaders; Jude Cook (ShareIn), James Varga (DirectID), Loral Quinn (Sustainably), Anthony Rafferty (Origo), Pardeep Cassells (AccessFintech), Andrew Duncan (Soar), Andrew Veitch (EedenBull), Stuart Lunn (LendingCrowd) and Russell Jaques (Fin-Q).
Stephen Ingledew, Executive Chairman at FinTech Scotland and Chair of the Fintech Advisory Board said,
“There is growing recognition of the valuable role fintech in contributing to the digital economy, therefore, formally bringing together prominent group of entrepreneurs signifies Fintech Scotland ongoing commitment to ensure the best support is available for innovative enterprises in Scotland”
Jude Cook Co-Founder of ShareIn added:
“It’s great to see more entrepreneurs joining the FinTech Scotland community. Scotland is such an interesting place to be in the run up to COP26 climate negotiations here in Glasgow in November. Fintech has a vital role to play as we emerge from the COVID 19 pandemic.”
Nicola Anderson CEO of FinTech Scotland said:
“We are focused on supporting fintech innovation in Scotland and the number of fintech SME’s establishing themselves here is a testament to the talent and experience across the Cluster. This Board helps us build on that talent and expend the practical fintech expertise that continues to build and evolve in Scotland”
AutoRek selected by Superscript for Bordereau Reconciliations & CASS 5 Automation
Scottish fintech AutoRek just announced that Superscript would come on board as a new client.
Established in 2015, Insurtech Superscript is disrupting the business insurance distribution model, placing customers at the core of their business. It uses a flexible monthly subscription model suited to the fast-changing needs of today’s small businesses. With Superscript, customers can obtain quotes, set-up their cover in minutes, pay, modify, or cancel their cover any time, easily.
Autorek will be used by Superscript and become part of their digitally driven architecture to deliver end-to-end automation and to enable the business to scale and meet its exciting growth plans.
Gordon McHarg, CEO at AutoRek, added,
“We are delighted to have a client such as Superscript come on board. It is an exciting time for both Superscript and AutoRek in terms of growth plans and we look forward to collaborating on this project and building on our relationship.”
Piers Williams, Insurance Lead at AutoRek, added,
“We are excited to work with the team at Superscript, particularly as they are strong players in the new wave of digitally driven Insurance firms. We have built our Bordereau solution based on the market need and are looking forward to working with the team at Superscript to implement our market leading solution to deliver end-to-end automation.”
Anil Sharma, Chief Financial Officer at Superscript, said:
“Superscript has ambitious growth plans, and we are scaling quickly. As we are managing an increasing amount of policy transactions, the implementation of AutoRek’s technology will help increase efficiency for the finance team. Importantly, it can be incorporated seamlessly and will be a useful addition to our existing systems.”
Fintechs empowering SMEs
Season 1, episode 11
Listen to the full episode here.
The fintech movement hasn’t just disrupted the way customers and citizen deal with money and access financial products or large financial institutions digitise themselves. Fintech is transforming how SMEs work and organise themselves.
In this episode we’ll explore how fintech is transforming SMEs. We’ll discuss adoption rates, opportunities and challenges faced by fintechs trying to sell their solutions to SMEs. Can collaboration with trusted financial institution be the solution to mass adoption. We’ll also look at ahead and explore future trends.
Anthony Persse – CEO at Optimum Finance
Lynne Darcey Quigley – CEO and Founder of Know-it
Derek Smith – Head of Digital Solutions at Virgin Money
Swipii releases new feature for local businesses
Scottish start-up Swipii has released its latest feature, the Win-Back Offer enabling local business owners to utilise tech to retarget lost customers.
Swipii is a cashback app that rewards customers with cashback when they spend directly with local bars, cafes and restaurants simply by using their own bank card. Business owners can sign up to Swipii at no cost and use the technology to reach and retarget customers without the need for complicated integrations or marketing experts.
Louis Schena, Swipii co-founder and CEO explains; Local independent businesses form the backbone of our economy. The unfortunate truth is they are decades behind online businesses and big corporations when it comes to the technology they have and as a result are at a significant disadvantage. COVID has widened this disadvantage and our mission is to level the playing field as markets open up! We all have our part to play in shopping local with benefits ranging from investing in our communities to even reducing our carbon footprint!’
To date, businesses featured on the app have been leveraging Swipii’s cashBack offers to target customers at various times and days when they want to drum up footfall such as off-peak hours. Since launching the app in 2018, the Glasgow based app has helped local businesses increase customer engagement and spend, generating spend of £440k to date. Even during lockdown, Swipii cashback offers saw businesses increase customer spend by 16% on average.
Now, businesses can maximise their revenues even more by taking advantage of Swipii’s latest Win-Back Offer. The Win-Back Offer works by targeting customers who haven’t visited a business in a defined period of time, anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months or longer. The technology crunches data in the background and identifies a cohort of users that fits this criteria and the Swipii app will send out a special cashback offer on behalf of the business getting customers back in store spending.
Bringing affordable tech to local businesses has never been more pertinent as:
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digital adoption surged during COVID with many companies seeing online customer interaction accelerate by 3 years ahead of expected forecasts*
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75% of UK shoppers said they had been shopping more online compared to before the pandemic**
Backed by VCs such as LocalGlobe and Par Equity, Swipii is the easiest way for local businesses to increase revenue, loyalty and retention as shopping behaviours adapt post lockdowns.
Customer Experience and Fintech
Season 1, episode 10
Listen to the full episode here.
The Digital Banking Report Research by The Financial Brand shows that Customer Experience is the number 2 priority (just after digital transformation) for financial institution around the globe.
New entrants and changing customer expectations have fuelled this need for a greater focus on customer led design. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend by requiring companies to adapt to a fully digital world with no branches for customers to go to and the need to make customer support more efficient for staff working from home.
In this new episode we’ll explore why the focus on CX is so important; if new innovative firms still have the edge on their incumbent counterparts and what future trends we need to watch out for.
Participants
Andrew Duncan – CEO of fintech SOAR
Chris Speed – Professor of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh
Lotta Lindstrand – Senior CRO Analyst at Merkle EMEA
UK Government Ministers visit Scotland’s thriving fintech community
To recognise the global impact of Scotland’s growing fintech sector, FinTech Scotland hosted a visit by Secretary of State for Trade, Liz Truss and Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack on Tuesday 20th July, at the Bayes Centre, University of Edinburgh.
Financial technology (“fintech”) uses digital and data driven innovation to improve and enhance financial services, both for businesses and individuals and is making a significant contribution to innovation and the broader economy.
For example, the collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, FinTech Scotland and industry participants on innovative financial technology initiatives has enabled Scotland to be the home to the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence as well as FinTech Scotland being recognised as the UK’s first accredited fintech cluster.
The meeting at the Bayes Centre provided an opportunity for UK Government ministers to meet with a number of key entrepreneurs from leading firms from the Fintech Scotland community such as Direct ID, Modulr, FreeAgent, Float, EedenBull and Trace AI
Liz Truss, International Trade Secretary, said:
“The UK is a world-leader in FinTech and that’s why we’re breaking down barriers, pushing new frontiers in our free trade agreements and opening up markets to boost this growing industry.
“From Australia to Singapore, we are using our independent trade policy to drive foreign investment into UK FinTech and increase export opportunities worldwide.
“Scotland’s FinTech sector is thriving, and I want to ensure that we fuel the future global growth opportunities for FinTech businesses across the UK.”
Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack said:
“As home to 180 fintech businesses, Scotland is right at the heart of exciting developments as the UK becomes a major force within the global sector. Collaboration between academia, industry and government will ensure that Scottish fintech has a bright future ahead.
“It was great to meet with some of the key people behind the industry’s growing success, and I look forward to seeing how their ambition and innovation will further enhance the profile of Scotland and the whole UK within the global fintech community.”
Stephen Ingledew, Executive Chair of FinTech Scotland, who hosted the ministerial visit said:
“This visit demonstrated how collaborative leadership by entrepreneurs, large enterprises, academia and government can make a significant impact in delivering impactful fintech innovation which will shape the future economy and people’s lives both in the UK and internationally. Our forthcoming fintech research and innovation roadmap will highlight how we will build on momentum created and foster further collaboration with the regional fintech hubs across the UK.”
Peter Mathieson, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, welcomed the Ministers to the Bayes Centre and commented:
“The University has a global reputation for ground-breaking innovation and the Bayes Centre is a great example of creating a creative and collaborative environment delivering new opportunities in data, artificial intelligence and robotics in the emerging new sectors such as fintech”
The Ministerial visit coincides with the unveiling of plans for Scotland’s FinTech Festival in September which will showcase financial innovation from across the UK highlighting progress made since the HM Treasury commission Fintech Sector Review by Ron Kalifa OBE was released in March this year.
The Fintech Festival, now in its fourth year, will be a diverse range of 50 plus events and activities taking place over four weeks with fintech leaders and entrepreneurs attending from the UK and virtually from around the world.
The Festival will include major conferences in Edinburgh and Glasgow with examples of innovation from Scotland and the UK amongst many other global fintech leaders.
Fintechs and cybersecurity
Season 1, episode 9
Listen to the full episode here.
According to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) cyberthreats are on the rise, with more and more Phishing attempts, Identity Theft, Ransomware. The COVID-19 seems to have been an accelerant with attacks on homes, businesses, governments and critical infrastructure. In this podcast we’ll discuss the issue with cybersecurity experts. What are the current threats and those to watch out for in the next few years? What are the new solutions being developed by innovative firms to fight those threats? We’ll ask ourselves if fintech firms, that are introducing new technologies and solutions to the financial services sector, are well prepared to face cyberthreats.
DirectID and Doconomy partner on climate functionality
FinTech DirectID have just entered a collaboration agreement with pioneering Swedish impact tech company Doconomy.
Doconomy is an impact-tech company that uses the power of data raise awareness of the impact of consumption whilst offering solutions to reduce it. With Doconomy users can understand and drive positive movement to tackle climate change.
DirectID is the world’s expert in global credit risk enabled by the usage of real-time bank data. They tackle current problems found within the credit risk lifecycle:
- Affordability
- Income and account verification
- Emerging financial distress
- Spend categorisation & classification
Doconomy and DirectID have decided to partner to bring climate functionality to the masses, helping consumers make more informed decisions and encourage a more sustainable lifestyle.
This is another great example of how using bank data can help develop new innovative solutions beyond greater access to financial products.
James Varga, CEO of DirectID, said:
“As we continue to grow our reach and capability, having a trusted set of partners is critical to our future success. We are delighted to have signed this agreement with Doconomy.
“We are increasingly seeing new and diverse ways that bank data can support use cases across industry and sector. Using bank data to help us to understand business and consumer’s environmental impact is yet one more way that DirectID’s bank data expertise can support another tech company.”
Mathias Wikström, CEO of Doconomy, said:
“With DirectID joining us in shaping a new normal based on impact transaparency, we are excited to see additional opportunities for continuous development of tools in support of climate action. DirectID bring equal amounts of expertise and passion to the table and we are excited to team up on the most important challenge of all.”
LiquidShare selects BTP’s Sextant for Daml platform
LiquidShare has selected Sextant for Daml, a platform provided by Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), the blockchain and smart contract management and operations platform.
LiquidShare, created in 2017 by eight major European financial institutions (AFS Group, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Caceis, Caisse des Dépôts, Euroclear, Euronext, S2iEM and Société Générale), was established with the mission to build a European post-trading blockchain infrastructure for the financial industry. The company’s post-trade offering secures and streamlines back-office operations in financial markets, whilst also enhancing transparency and trustworthiness of post-trading operations, leveraging the open-source distributed ledger Hyperledger Besu, and Daml, an application platform.
“We chose Daml as our smart-contract language for its strong potential to embed business logic, and because it enables us to build multiparty business processes easily and rapidly. The fact that it is supported by BTP on our ledger of choice, Hyperledger Besu, was also a main driver for us,” said Jean-Marc Eyssautier, CEO of LiquidShare. “Sextant for Daml has accelerated our time to market by allowing us to focus on customer needs.”
BTP’s Sextant for Daml solution simplifies the deployment and management of the Daml runtime environment on distributed ledgers, enabling innovators such as so LiquidShare to focus on the application rather than the underlying infrastructure.
“We are delighted to facilitate such financial innovation by freeing LiquidShare from technology infrastructure frustrations,” said Duncan Johnston-Watt, CEO & Co-founder of BTP. “This is a great use case that showcases the business value of distributed ledgers and smart contracts, by lowering the barrier to entry to capital markets.”
Digital Asset’s Daml is an application platform purpose-built for coding complex multiparty business processes. It provides a robust framework to better manage transactional workflows for improved operational efficiency without compromising privacy and trust. This is particularly relevant to capital markets.
“LiquidShare is at the forefront of innovation in post-trade markets,” said Yuval Rooz, Co-founder & CEO at Digital Asset. “Post-trade processes can significantly benefit from the efficiency and trust provided by distributed ledgers and Daml, which is quickly becoming the de facto standard in capital markets. It’s great to see LiquidShare using Sextant for Daml. It is the right platform to help LiquidShare bring its new blockchain-enabled offering to the market.”
Women Driving Fintech
Season 1, episode 8
Listen to the full episode here.
Saying that women are under-represented in fintech is an understatement. According to a 2018 LendIt survey, only 37 per cent of fintech employees are female, with representation dropping to just 19 per cent at C-suite level.
There are however some great success stories. Anne Boden, CEO at Starling Bank or closer to home Jude Cook, CEO and co-founder at ShareIn, Loral and Eishel Quinn at Sustainably and with us today Ana Galitsyna co-founder at fintech Baby Ready.
Whilst not being the majority, they are role models of leadership and real examples of what the “women difference” means in terms of entrepreneurship.
If fintech had a gender it would probably be female (in French it is “une fintech”), a movement destined to change the financial sector as we know it. Fintech is about democratisation, it is about better outcome for citizens and companies, empathy for customer problems and about inclusion; qualities that females have in abundance and are using to develop new innovative businesses.
In this episode we are joined by:
Ana Galitsyna – Co-founder at fintech Baby Ready
Yvonne Dunn – Partner at Pinsent Masons
Sarah Ronald – Founder at Nile HQ and investor at ParEquity