New business models in open finance to be analysed and judged.
Open Future World has launched a prestigious startup pitch competition to reveal some of the most interesting emerging business models in open banking and finance.
Six finalists will receive a complimentary ticket to the Open Banking World Congress in Marbella, Spain, on 24-25 May, where they will present their proposition to an all-star judging panel of industry experts, VCs and investors.
In addition, they will be interviewed on a live-streamed chat show to over 3000 viewers delegates from around the world attended. The winner will be announced at the evening party on the convention’s first day and will get to pitch on the keynote stage on day two of the conference.
“The last two years have been a hotbed for innovation in open finance. I come across so many impressive startups every week. Every one of them is harnessing open finance to transform the customer experience and make real improvements to our everyday lives.
The Open Banking World Congress will assemble leaders at the forefront of open finance from around the world into a dedicated setting over two days of keynotes, networking, discussions and collaborations. By bringing together new startups and seasoned open banking professionals, we hope to help enhance the potential of open finance and give promising startups the best chance of success.” says Marie Walker, Co-Founder of Open Future World.
To qualify for entry, startups must be in the open finance domain, be less than 3 years old and have received less than 3 million in investment.
Entries are open until 15th April with the 6 finalists to be announced on 22nd April.
To enter the free competition:
https://www.openbankingworldcongress.com/pages/startup-pitch-competition For all enquiries, please contact: georgina@openfuture.world
Open Future World
The leading source of information on progress in open banking and beyond. The Open Banking World Congress takes place in Marbella, Spain between 24-25 May.
https://www.openbankingworldcongress.com/
Quotezone FinTech Scholars Crowned
Financial comparison platform Quotezone.co.uk has announced the winners of this year’s Fintech Scholarship, an initiative designed to cultivate more diversity in the sector by encouraging students from outside the world of fintech to explore what it might offer.
Only one winner was chosen from Scotland – Kelsey Hunt, a second-year student at St Andrews University, who wrote Fintech and Small Business: a Dynamic Duo – explaining how fintech plays a vital role in small businesses. In addition, one winner was chosen from England – Ella Henry, a MPhil student at the University of Cambridge studying Biological Sciences, who wrote a piece entitled – Fintech in a finite world: The price of protecting our planet focusing on climate change and the role fintech can play in creating a sustainable future. Ella and Kelsey have both won a bursary of £1,000 to help with educational fees, such as textbooks and course materials.
With 15 universities teaching bespoke fintech courses, over 175 fintech startup success stories, and a wealth of investment opportunities from public, private, and academic investors, Scotland has been hailed as a global leading fintech hub. Stephen Ingledew from FinTech Scotland comments: “Encouraging participation from the diversity of young people across our communities will further spur fintech innovation in all aspects of our personal and business lives, thereby ensuring an inclusive approach to the economic opportunities ahead.”
British fintech firms continue to attract lucrative international investment, having just hit the multibillion-pound peak of investor interest in July 2021. In 13 UK cities, there are now at least ten fintech companies, estimated to employ nearly 53,000 people.
Marja Lahelma-Barnsley, Programme Leader for MSc Financial Technology at Manchester Metropolitan University, comments: “FinTech is reshaping the ways that financial needs are met. Man Met’s FinTech qualifications are built with a recognition that innovation needs new ideas even more than it needs new tech.
Greg Wilson, the fintech entrepreneur behind Quotezone.co.uk, comments: “Congratulations to our Fintech Scholarship winners, Kelsey Hunt and Ella Henry ”“ these insightful blogs were just two of many interesting entries in their year’s scholarship.
“It’s encouraging to see so many students proactively researching and discovering fintech ”“ from all educational backgrounds. Diversity is key to building an innovative team for the future. I studied Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering and started my career as a Stress Engineer at Bombardier Aerospace before I created Seopa, now our brands CompareNI.com and Quotezone.co.uk are household names in financial comparison technology.”
Seopa has been recognised with six Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards, and has been awarded a Deloitte Best Managed Company Award each year for the past five years ”“ now a Gold Standard Best Managed Company since 2020. As a leading fintech employer, Seopa has been investing in recruitment throughout lockdown, with new fintech roles currently available.
Fraud Academy ”“ Cryptocurrency: Opportunity vs Threat
Fraud Academy ”“ Cryptocurrency: Opportunity vs Threat.
Are you familiar with the legislation and rules that pertain to cryptocurrencies in the United Kingdom? What can be done to prevent crime involving cryptocurrency, where could fraudsters go from here, and how do we begin to investigate this?
PwC are hosting a highly informative virtual event and will explore these questions, and more.
Date: Wednesday 9th February 2022
Time: 13:00 – 14:15 (GMT)
Location: Virtual / Webcast
Within the first nine months of 2021, cryptocurrency related fraud is estimated to have cost the UK over £146 million; a figure already 30% higher than that noted for the whole of 2020. Over 7,100 reports of fraud involving cryptocurrency have been made to the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud. More than half of victims were aged between 18 ”“ 45.
Cryptocurrency will only become a bigger part of how we do business, presenting both an opportunity and a threat; yet how ready are we to make the most of the opportunity and to deal with the threat?
Are you aware of the legislation and rules which exist in relation to cryptocurrencies in the UK? What can be done to prevent crime using cryptocurrency, where could fraudsters go from here and how do we start to investigate it?
At this highly informative virtual event, we will explore these questions, and more with a panel of deep subject matter experts.
We are delighted to be joined by Jim Robertson (DCI, Police Scotland), who will give an overview of the current lay of the land’ from a policing perspective in relation to cryptocurrency and discuss how law enforcement is dealing with the challenges of an increase in this crime type.
Jim will be joined by Craig Kennedy (Partner, Dentons), who will discuss the legal powers available in relation to cryptocurrency in the UK and the potential risks and benefits of using cryptocurrency.
We will also be joined by Haydn Jones (Senior Blockchain Market Specialist – PwC) who will share his own opinions and thoughts on the opportunities and threats presented by the rise in cryptocurrencies from his own experiences investigating and providing expert witness testimony on cases involving cryptocurrency.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to put questions to our speakers during a Q&A session.
We look forward to welcoming you to our event on Wednesday 9 February 2022 at 1:00pm.
If you have any questions about this event, or have any issues registering for this event, please contact the team via uk_fraud_academy_scotland@pwc.com or uk_ni_fraud_academy@pwc.com.
Global climate tech investment more than triples, but could be better targeted to cut emissions
In December 2021, PwC Global released the State of Climate Tech report. The analysis examines how investors are improving both climate impact and commercial returns through the emerging asset class of climate technology, helping to keep the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach.
This represents an increase of 210% from the US$28.4bn invested the year prior, with 14¢ of every dollar of venture capital investment now going to climate technology. PwC’s State of Climate Tech 2021 reports that where the investment is lacking is in addressing the largest contributors to global emissions. From the 15 technologies investigated, the top five technologies, which represent more than 80% of emissions reduction potential by 2050, received only 25% of the climate techinvestment between 2013 and H1 2021.
Emma Cox, Global Climate Leader, PwC UK, said: “The world has 10 years to halve global greenhouse emissions if we are to have hope of achieving net zero by 2050. Innovation is critical to meeting the challenge and the good news is that climate tech investment is up significantly across the board. However, our research has found there is potential to better channel and incentivise investment in technology areas that have the greatest future emissions reduction potential. This raises the question of why these sectors are missing out ”“ are investors missing a value opportunity or is there an incentive problem that needs the attention of policy makers?”
To find out more about PwC’s Climate Tech report, please contact Jason Higgs, Partner, PwC jason.c.higgs@pwc.com
PRESS RELEASE: Automation the key to growth and data management for banking and payments sector, finds new report
A new report from leaders in reconciliation and finance automation software, AutoRek, has found widespread concerns around the ability of businesses to grow amidst scalability and regulatory pressures over the next three years, affecting 92% of professionals surveyed.
The report ”“ Banking and Payments in 2022: Digital transformation and trends in financial technology ”“ was designed to provide an insightful view of the key challenges and solutions that will face the financial industry as it enters 2022.
AutoRek gathered insights from senior professionals across the banking and payments industry on the barriers they face surrounding the handling of payments data, compliance and growth, and new technologies in use or consideration.
Automation was found to be a key source of hope for enabling growth and regaining competitive advantage. Other key findings include:
- Manual processes form the biggest roadblock to achieving automation, cited by 46% of firms, followed by legacy systems (42%), poor interoperability (40%) and regulatory requirements (38%).
- In-house IT solutions are the most common for data handling across payment operations, used by 44% of firms ”“ a higher reliance on in-house systems than in most other sectors.
- Almost one-third of firms consider their jurisdiction’s regulatory body audit and control around regulatory reporting infrastructure somewhat or far too strict, while 22% consider it somewhat or far too lax. Just under half consider it appropriate. Financial institutions in central and south America were considerably more likely to view their regulators as lax than their European and Asia-Pacific counterparts.
- When selecting a solution to handle payments data, almost 80% of respondents consider its ability to integrate easily with existing infrastructure a key factor.
- Over half of respondents (56%) either already have or are in the process of deploying modern technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and application programming interfaces (APIs) to help monitor and streamline their data management processes. One-third had onboarding planned in the next 12-24 months. Only 12% reported having no plans to apply technology to improve data management processes.
Firms slow to adopt emerging technologies should be aware that they are now falling behind in an increasingly automated and competitive landscape, according to Nick Botha, Banking Lead at AutoRek.
Commenting on the findings of the report, Nick Botha continued: “While automating data flow has been a priority for some years now, this survey makes clear how many inefficiencies continue to plague firm’s day-to-day operations when it comes to data processing and reconciliation. Legacy banks in particular are grappling with often more than 20 disparate systems written in varying generations of software, none of which are designed to interact with one another.”
“While a decade ago that might have flown under the radar, the last few years have seen control of the payments space shift from banks into the hands of Payment Service Providers (PSPs), whose ability to deliver totally user-native customer service is forcing the whole industry to step up.”
“Beyond competing for market share, it’s a question of compliance. The costs associated with non-compliance are substantial both from a financial and reputational perspective, and regulators are increasingly less forgiving, as we have witnessed in the last few months with significant fines incurred by some of the world’s largest banks.”
“New technologies like AI, ML and APIs can be used to create greater interoperability and remove or significantly reduce manual interventions and use of spreadsheets. Investing in these capabilities today will enable firms to address evolving customer preferences, mitigate risk and achieve regulatory compliance down the road ”“ essential elements for remaining competitive in the payments landscape of today.”