Fintech Fuse – A Festive FinTech Fusion, preparing for 2020!

Just time to fit in a final fusion blog for 2019 before clocking off for 2019 and the festive holiday.

A frantic run in to the festive period has meant I’ve had little time to keep up with a regular blog so please forgive random rambling of the last couple of months!

Festive Community 

Very fitting that the festive spirit was very much in the air at the FinTech Scotland Fusion event with the community last week at one of Edinburgh’s most popular fintech hubs, The Green Room! 

Wonderful to see so many of fabulous fintech leaders and entrepreneurs join us for a glass of wine or two for the occasion magnificently hosted by special friend Sarah Ronald. Big thanks to the brilliant Stuart, Darren and LendingCrowd team for their generous Christmas hospitality.

A similar uplifting spirt was evident at the Modulr fintech community event the previous month, recognising the terrific progress by the team and the exciting plans ahead. It was super to see so many of the fintech community there for the evening. 

The diversity of Scotland fintech community is one of the core strengths and engenders amazing collaboration and innovation.

For example, as shown in the support provided by how the community in getting behind the MoneyMatix crowdfunding exercise recently, inspiring to see. 

Furthermore, collaboration boosted by fintechs coming to Scotland from all parts of the world.

 For example, meetings over recently with Alex and Monika of Polydigi (Hong Kong),  Gopal of BlackArrow , Shendon and Michael of Gobbill as well as Izzy and Paul of Veriluma  (all from Australia) reinforce the global make up of the community. 

This was a key theme I was able to share in presenting at the FinTech World Forum in London last month to a very diverse global leadership audience which I am told further reinforces Scotland position as an International fintech centre attracting entrepreneurs and innovators. 

Meeting our close European partners has also been a key activity over last few months and we are excited to join eight other fintech centres across Europe in the Discovery Collaboration Programme connecting firms with opportunities across our continent.

In addition, it has been great to meet with senior leaders from the French Embassy to talk about collaboration opportunities. 

Our ongoing close engagement and friendship with colleagues across our European continent continues to be a key focus in demonstrating to Scotland remains very much open to shared innovation.

Mickael’s ongoing value leadership in building our global FinTech connectivity to support the community in Scotland continues to play an important role.

Alongside this it has been brilliant to work with our super Scottish Development International colleagues to welcome fast growing fintech firms from Hong Kong , Canada, China, Korea all looking at Scotland as a future home for their innovations 

Massive thanks to the fabulous Andrew Wykes, Kirsty Russell, Sarah Kenrick and team at Lloyds Banking Group for recently hosting the Hong Kong and Canadian delegations and arranging the festive market to add to the fintech atmosphere in December . 

All of this is reflected in the brilliant examples of the FinTech community in the Herald Business supplement a couple of weeks ago. Terrific writing Kim McAllister very much appreciate your engagement and coverage of fintech developments in Scotland. 

Kim and I had the opportunity to discuss these developments with other leaders one evening recently at a session organised by Malcolm Buchanan , Mike Crow and the RBS team . 

The impactful innovation and leadership by Kristen and the RBS team is hugely valuable to the significant progress and we very much appreciate their ongoing collaboration and support. It is also great to see exciting initiatives such as the exciting Accelerator Hub in central Edinburgh 

Festive Collaboration 

Collaboration very sits at the heart of innovation progress across Scotland and one of the most memorable examples of this was the recent Glasgow University FinTech Society challenge event, it was also one of my best FinTech Friday’ evenings ever!! 

Awesome leadership by Elisabetta, Andrea, Davide and the Society committee bringing together the energetic and diverse students, terrific academic leaders John Finch and Dominic Chalmers, fintech entrepreneurs Sustainably, heavyweights Deloitte and the innovative Chris O’Neill of M3. 

Wow, what an evening of fintech, wine, curry and yes a Jazz band with entertaining presentation interlude by the fabulous Lou Smith and a half time fill in by me!! 

Back home after midnight with fintech jazz’ ringing in my ears but the evening said everything that is so special about the fintech movement with focus on people and a festive atmosphere. 

The festive collaboration was also very much in evident at the FinTech National Network investor pitch day’ at Level 39 in London this week. 

Terrific work by the super Hayley, Peter and the Innovate Finance team in bringing together investors to hear from fintech firms from around the UK. Thank you Charlotte Crosswell for fabulous day, super atmosphere and the ongoing leadership in 2019. 

Very proud of the presentations by Nick of Edinburgh based Zumo and Kyle of Glasgow based Financial Cloud in articulating their compelling and innovative fintech propositions

Also, really great to catch up with fintech comrades from Wales, Northern Ireland, North and West as well as Tom Helm from DIT as we all reflected on our shared ambitions for fintech and the collaboration opportunities in 2020.

The investor pitch event followed on from the very first FinTech National Network event in Glasgow back in October. 

Bringing together the Scottish fintech community with peers and stakeholders from across the UK was one of the many big highlights for 2019.

The event saw Alex of Encompass, Laura of  Amiqus, James of Direct ID and Andrew of  Soar from the Scottish community share compelling stories about how they are developing their FinTech proposition to make a real difference.

Also, excellent presentations from the very engaging FCA team Laura Navaratnam and Steven McWhirter as well as Kevin Telford on sharing the impact the world of open finance can have on peoples lives. 

Very fitting the event was hosted in the University of Strathclyde which is leading the awesome development of the Glasgow City Innovation District of which fintech is a growing and significant cluster as brilliantly covered by Eleanor Shaw. 

Many thanks to the University and City Council for supporting this significant event along with Glynn Robinson and the super team from BJSS team. 

Listening to great presentations from Andrew of Northern Ireland, Gavin of Wales , Julian of West and Dan of North on the day reminded us all that we can learn so much from each other as we develop our respective FinTech communities. 

The wonderful finale of the day was a focus on people inclusion and diversity with such valuable insights coming from the panel of Lou Smith, Elisabetta from Glasgow University, Laura and Nicola

It was a privilege to co-host the day with my Ant and Dec’ partner, Chris Sier who was as engaging as always in bringing alive the importance of the FinTech innovation for everyone. 

I know next year will bring even more wider international collaboration opportunities and it was great to chat this through with Phil, Rory and Isaac of FinTech Alliance over a few glasses on Tuesday evening . Thanks guys, looking to hit the ground running early next year. 

Festive Innovation 

The run up to the festive period has certainly fueled fintech innovation examples with the community covering a very broad range of themes

For example, it was great to have the inspiring entrepreneurs Phil from Castlight and Manu from Inbest come along to the FinTech Scotland Citizen Panel to share the positive impact of fintech innovation.

The Panel plays a crucial role in identifying how we can collaboratively address issues such as financial inclusion and tackling problem debt amongst citizens working with the third sector, universities, Government and regulator. 

A huge thank you to colleague Nicola Anderson for leadership on this area and privilege to work with Nicola and have the secondment to FinTech Scotland extended for another year from the FCA.   

More real innovative fintech examples were on show at the University of Edinburgh Business School non executive director course one Thursday evening recently.

This again was a real pleasure for me as I was joined by three absolutely inspiring leaders for the evening to share real life case studies on the leadership needs of growing fintech enterprises. 

Many thanks again to the magnificent three, Colin of Float, Sonia of Level E and Aleks of newly formed Exizent for such engaging evening with the senior leaders from across Scotland . 

Thank you also to John Amis of the University as well as Ailsa and Judy of FWB Park Brown for the opportunity to put fintech in the non-executive programme for senior leaders.

This week the festive innovation extended to the world of crypto assets and I was very proud to invite three leaders in this field to join me at the Scottish Government Working Group with the Lord Advocate and Lord Hodge.

Fantastic contributions to the discussion on the opportunity by Paul of Zumo, Christine of Women’s Coin, Richard of QWallets , thank you and more to come on this in 2020 especially in demonstrating fintech as a force for good. 

This was also very much brought alive during the FinTech session I was invited to host at the Global Ethical Finance Conference at the RBS campus a couple of months ago. 

Fantastic examples shared by Georgia of Tumelo and Christine of Women’s Coin on the role of FinTech innovation having an important social impact.

Another area getting some good focus from fintech innovation at present is cyber security and financial crime being led by Nicola. 

The joint event recently with Police Scotland and National Crime Agency was very insightful. Many thanks to Leanne of Nucleus, Rachel and Dave of Amiqus and Mike of Modulr for their valuable engagement and leadership on this. 

The FinTech collaboration initiatives extend across the public sector and it was brilliant to witness first hand the progress being made in collaboration with the Scottish Government Digital team.

Fantastic to see this demonstrated with Minister Kate Forbes by the fabulous Trish, Hugh, Carron, Mike and terrific teams last week, very much looking forward to the collaboration progress in 2020.

Fintech was very much on show at the CanDo Innovation Summit recently in Glasgow and it was terrific to be part of an amazing event with the other exciting industry clusters driving new initiatives. 

The fintech examples were brought alive in the auditorium by Loral and Eishel of Sustainably, Colin of Float and Duncan of Modulr and it was a privilege to host the showcase. 

Festive Cluster 

The Glasgow fintech cluster is very much going from strength to strength in so many ways and it was great to share the progress with the City Economic Leadership team a few weeks ago, thank you Mark Napier, JP Morgan for the opportunity and continuing collaboration 

The action packed FinTech Scotland partnership with University of Strathclyde team is giving valuable momentum to the fintech initiatives and we are really excited about progressing in 2020 as part of the City Innovation District. 

Thank you to Eleanor Shaw, David Hillier and terrific team for valuable leadership on this 

Building on this with great sessions with innovative leaders Samantha Bedford and Virgin Money team, Tara Foley and Bank of Scotland team, David Ratcliffe, Stuart Brown and Barclays team as well as Ali Law and Paul Gallagher of Royal London provide great new collaboration opportunities for 2020. 

Sharing these Scottish fintech developments with a worldwide audience is always on the agenda and it was great to join Alex Ford of Encompass on a podcast along with Lou Smith. 

Thank you Cheri Burns for making this happen and the opportunity to share the message. Also, very best wishes to Alex has she moves to New York to expand the Encompass innovation on the other side of the Atlantic. 

Of course, the fintech cluster is developing across Scotland and it has been great to work with inspiring Jane Morrison-Ross, chief executive of ScotlandIS along with fabulous Svea, Katy and Ciara on joint initiatives to develop the digital economy. This is a core focus for us in 2020 with much more to come!

The fintech cluster developments require broad collaboration such as with ScotlandIS and Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce who provide valuable leadership in the Scottish economy. 

Great working with the super Liz McAreavey, on the Scottish and international opportunity.

In addition, its been fantastic working in collaboration with our colleagues at Scottish Enterprise and the fintech network integrator team, Vivolution, making the Scottish cluster embrace the innovation opportunities. 

Working with the University of Edinburgh team on a range of opportunities means the fintech cluster in the capital is going to go from strength to strength in 2020. 

The Wayra cohort in Bayes , led by the brilliant Charlotte Waugh is a terrific example of this and it is great to see the progress by James of Xpand and Evangelos of Ocyan 

Then wider across Edinburgh, great to catch up with Paul, founder of  Inifinity Works who have recently set up in Edinburgh as well as Scott and Raymond from Exception to talk through collaboration opportunities. These are just two examples of many that make life so fascinating in Scotland’s developing fintech sector 

We have been running hard to keep up with the fintech momentum across the whole cluster in Scotland and Shery has done an amazing job in keeping us organised between meetings , speaking engagements and project sessions throughout the year.

Festive Running

I’ve also been fortunate enough to maintain my running addiction during this last frantic few months of 2019, infact it seems to have helped my racing performance!

The highlight being the recent Loch Ness Marathon with my best time in nearly three years at 3 hours 16mins which is giving me great hope for my times next year!!

This was followed up a couple of weeks ago with a 1 hour 32mins for the Water of Leith Half Marathon which also left me buzzing. 

As with fintech developments in Scotland, if I can keep this race momentum into next year then we could be hitting some new peaks results in 2020!!However, for now it is time to relax and enjoy the festive holidays with my very special family as well as a bit of running around the roads and paths of Scotland whilst having a few small dreams on what the year ahead will bring. Until then….. 

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Awesome FinTech Atmosphere!!

An awesome August atmosphere has been pervasive across Scotland and the fintech innovation activity, in its many guises, has contributed to this over recent weeks.

Since returning from a few days in the beautiful Mediterranean sun, there has been no respite in the breadth and depth of fintech initiatives which are creating this can do entrepreneurship.

The fintech community gathering at one of the new innovation hubs, The Green Room in Edinburgh, where a good number of us came together last Thursday is a great example.

Entrepreneur Atmosphere

The gathering was a mix of fintech entrepreneurs from across Scotland along with some seasoned investors, coming together to try a few glasses of summer wine.

Delighted that Alistair Forbes from Mercia and Ron Robson from Tavistock Group could join us and a huge thank you to Dag Lee and Sarah Ronald for being terrific hosts at one of Scotland’s newest fintech epicentres’. 

We look forward to repeating the gathering during September’s fintech festival, watch this space.

The week before there was another wonderful atmosphere at the Virgin Start Up event in Glasgow which attracted entrepreneurs from far and wide across the country.

Terrific to share the platform with the inspiring Phil Grady of Castlight Financial and Loral Quinn of Sustainably, who brilliantly shared their experiences with entrepreneurs embarking on the innovation journey.

A massive thank you to Andy Fishburn, Alice Mulrooney and the Virgin Start Up team for their leadership as well as Stephen Pearson from Virgin Money for making all this happen. 

We are looking to repeat a similar event with David Duffy, Stephen and the CYBG Virgin Money team on 12^thSeptember in Edinburgh with the Scotland’s fintech community. 

There are many other exciting activities being planned to build the entrepreneurial atmosphere, such as by James Varga, the awesome leader of The ID Co, in embracing the open banking opportunities. 

Great to meet up with James a couple of weeks ago to discuss how we support the collaboration with fintech entrepreneurs across the ecosystem.

Similarly, terrific to meet up with Stuart Lunn and Darren Cairns from the market leading firm Lending Crowd and put the world to rights over a few glasses back in the Green Room in Edinburgh. 

Thank you Stuart and Darren for your ongoing valuable insights and feedback, looking forward to building on this last eighteen months of Fintech Scotland into 2020 with you.

The awesome atmosphere is not confined to the evenings and it was great to meet up with long standing colleague and one of the very original fintech leaders (for over 30 year) Ian Mckenna for an early morning breakfast.

We were joined by new chief executive Billy Burnside of Criterion Tec, who we are delighted to welcome into the FinTech Scotland community as we lay down the tracks’ for a new data driven innovation future.

In between the Edinburgh fringe festival activity, it was terrific to meet up with Raymond O’Hare last week to share some of these developments and discuss collaboration opportunities. 

Very excited about welcoming the Raymond and the Exception team to the FinTech Scotland community in the coming months. 

The entrepreneurial atmosphere is also being fueled by a global energy and it is really exciting to meet with successful entrepreneurs bringing their firms to Scotland

Really enjoyed catching up with Gopal Hariharan of Black Arrow in Glasgow and very excited about this fintech enterprise being set up in Scotland

 Then it was also fabulous to meet up with Paul Kiernan to hear about the fast developing plans for the innovative Decision Point enterprise in Scotland.

Looking forward to connecting Gopal and Paul into the community and ecosystem across Scotland and building the collaboration opportunities

Collaboration Atmosphere

This last few weeks I have been really enthused about the flourishing collaboration atmosphere and the opportunities to bring together the fintech community with innovative large enterprises.

For example, great to progress the development of opportunities with Sam Bedford, Gary McLellan and the CYBG Virgin Money team as they further extend their market leading innovation initiatives

Similarly, excited to be working with Ali Law, Julian Reichert, Ricky McKinney and the rest of the team at Royal London as they revolutionize long term savings sector.

Terrific also to engage with the Barclays team, Danielle Sheerin, Sonal Lakhani, Stuart Brown and Alex Ball to explore collaboration initiatives, including the Tech Stars programme during the FinTech Festival.

Delighted to be taking forward the collaboration with Aberdeen Standard Investments and working with Mario Cugini, David Scott, Geoff Aberdein and Ruari Grant to explore fintech collaboration in the asset management sector.

The retail banking sector has already demonstrated the value of closer fintech collaboration and my meetings with the inspiring Kristen Bennie of RBS highlight numerous good examples of this.

Sharing the examples of collaboration across the broader financial sector provides enormous opportunity to build the fintech innovation cluster in Scotland. 

In this respect, the last few weeks has seen constructive conversation with Asif Abdullah, Cyndi Shettle and Martin Little of Franklin Templeton from the investment sector and David Skinn from the insurance sector.

It was also valuable to catch up with Tara Foley of Bank of Scotland to consider how we work more closely to progress specific initiatives on consumer engagement working with the fintech community.

On this note, thrilled to see the Chemistry’ Fintech Accelerator go live last week working with strategic partner Sopra Steria and the Edinburgh Innovations team of University of Edinburgh. 

Terrific leadership by Kerry Nicolaides and Mingaile Vaisnoraite, exciting to be working with banks and fintech firms on this.

Brilliant to also talk through with Mags Moore of Sopra Steria on how we can develop the fintech collaboration across Government with similar initiatives to improve citizen and consumer outcomes

The engagement of consumers in fintech is a growing development and I was delighted to join Dave Shaw and the Tesco Bank team in sharing how they are taking a human design centred approach to customer engagement.

Fantastic to see the work with Chris Speed and team of University of Edinburgh come alive, all very much in line with the collaboration co-design atmosphere, and in a super festival setting at the University.

Another example of collaboration that serves social purpose is the great work lead by Nicola with the launch of the fintech customer panel announced today. This initiative will bring the innovation from the fintech firms together with consumer representative bodies to tackle societal and economical issues. You can read more about it here.

Festival Atmosphere

Talking of festivals, we have been overwhelmed with the support for the FinTech Festival in September, amazing engagement from so many people for the three weeks of activities.

Huge thanks to the wonderful Rory Archibald of Visit Scotland and Karen Craib of Scottish Enterprise who have worked tirelessly with Mickael to bring it all alive.

It was brilliant to meet up with Hazel Gibbens of Tech Nation recently to share plans for the Festival, I’m hoping Hazel will be joining me on the stage for a few events to highlight the support for innovative enterprises across Scotland.

It was super to talk about the growing festival atmosphere across the fintech community at my recent catch up with Huw Martin and Joseph Apted of Head Resourcing recently, very much appreciate their ongoing valuable support for fintech leaders.

Similarly, in meeting up with Graeme Jones of SFE to talk through the plans for the next cross industry and Government meeting, FiSAB, which will take place in the middle of the Festival programme.

It is very apt that the first festival showcase event will take place in Glasgow at the University of Strathclyde with the FinTech Future conference.

University of Strathclyde has led the way in both fintech knowledge and skills development on the global stage and I am hugely excited about the broader development of the fintech cluster as part of the Glasgow Innovation District

Fantastic to be working with Eleanor Shaw, Martin Hughes, Mick McHugh, Emma Stephen and the team at the University as we progress the strategic opportunities

Very much looking forward to taking forward the fintech engagement initiatives being led by Daniel Broby, Devraj Basu, George Wright and John Quigley amongst others.

Fintech and broader tech skills are crucial to the further success and progress of the cluster and economy, in this respect it has been a privilege to be working with the awesome teams at Skills Development Scotland and IBM.

A couple of weeks ago it was an excellent workshop session on developing the skills for young people across Scotland with the motivational Damien Yates, Neville Prentice and SDS team along with the inspiring Gary Kildare, Charlotte Lysohir, Nicky Cooper, Dominic Nolan, Mairi Cairney, Bill Hughes of IBM. 

Many thanks to the magnificent Michael Young and Georgia Boyle and the MBN Solutions team for being wonderful hosts for the meet up with the senior IBM team from all sides of the Atlantic the day before.

Once again, the MBN Solutions team are hosting a range of terrific fintech meet ups as part of the festival and their valuable ongoing leadership makes such a positive difference across the community.

Running Atmosphere

The Kirkcaldy half marathon a couple of Sundays ago was probably the best running race atmosphere I’ve experienced from a local community ever, just amazing! 

The Kingdom of Fife community turned out in huge numbers for a very special race and it was a privilege to savour the magnificent support throughout the 13.1 miles. 

Thank you so much Kirkcaldy, I’m still buzzing from the race even now and I think the buzz will carry on to the Fife Fintech Festival event on 17^thSeptember. 

The half marathon was part of my training leading up to the Loch Ness Marathon in October and proceeded another half marathon the week before at Bathgate and a rural midweek eight mile race in the Fife countryside around Ceres. 

Next up is the Kilmacolm half marathon as part of a 23 mile training run next Sunday followed by the Scottish Half marathon in east Lothian, all before the trip to Inverness for the marathon in early October.The next few weeks will be the real test on whether I can get back to my marathon racing best although the atmosphere from the forthcoming fintech festival in September should propel me one way or another!! Until next time!

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Here Comes the FinTech Summer!!

Yes, the FinTech Summer’ has certainly arrived but there has been no letup in the continuing momentum across the country when it comes to a plethora of innovation and collaboration initiatives.

Whilst each of the Fintech Scotland team has managed to grab a few days from the heat of fintech activity for a bit of summer sunshine to recharge batteries, the pace of activities has not waned

Summer of Innovation

Just before my summer vacation it was brilliant to catch up with Andy Smith and Jason Forsyth of Iceflo, the terrific fintech enterprise from Melrose. 

The Iceflo team are now embarking on the next stage of their innovation journey and I’m looking forward to our trip soon down to the Scottish Borders to see the rest of the team.

Another wonderful fintech firm to reach a major milestone is the Sustainably and it was fantastic to see the inspiring Loral and Eishel Quinn announce their official launch at the start of July.

We used part of the Fintech Scotland board meeting to hear valuable insights from three awesome and market leading innovative firms from the community who are moving with amazing momentum.

Jude Cook and Andrew Pickett from Sharein, Callum Murray and Laura Bosworth from Amiqus and Colin Hewitt from Float all gave very engaging presentations, highlighting how Fintech Scotland can help firms who are scaling up.

This week it was great to meet up with entrepreneurs Ed Broussard and Craig Mackay of Mudano, a very exciting fintech data innovation enterprise which is growing at pace from its home in Edinburgh. 

It’s fabulous to have the magnificent Mudano team part of the fintech community and looking forward to working with them on a number of collaboration initiatives

Similarly, excited to meet up with Eddie Curran and David of the very new fintech firm Open Banking Reporting (OBR) and hear about their exciting innovative proposition.

Also, great to see how OBR are part of the Addleshaw Goddard Elevate cohort, the prestigious growth programme along with the Amiqus team.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet up with Paul Coffey to hear about the innovative Birnham Wood and the plans Colin Green and Paul have to set up the exciting proposition from Australia in Glasgow

Great also to hear about how they are developing the enterprise in collaboration with the innovative David Lanc and Cyborn to develop the opportunity from Scotland.

Fantastic to have the innovative Andrew Duncan of Soar and John McHugh from Gigly from the fintech community at the Glasgow Economic Leadership meeting at the end of June. 

This was a brilliant example of the power of collaboration across the range of financial services participants in ensuring that Glasgow is rightly recognized as a fast growing fintech hub.

Super leadership of the evening by Mark Napier of JP Morgan and looking forward to progressing the various collaboration initiatives.

Summer of Collaboration

Collaboration with the fintech community continues to be a hot subject in these summer months and one example of this is the new fintech accelerator programme we are working with University of Edinburgh and Sopra Steria on.

Great to meet up with Kerry Nicolaides from Sopra who is leading on this as they make terrific progress in moving to the initial launch with some valuable customer focused themes.

Mingaile Vaisnoraite from Sopra and I had the opportunity to share some of the details with Stephen Pearson and Scott Brunton from CYBG plc recently and how this collaborative fintech development could focus on the vulnerable customer considerations.

Thank you Stephen, for connecting me with Andy Fishburn and Alice Mulrooney of the Virgin Start Up team, we are very much looking forward to participating in the Glasgow fintech start up event in August along with the fabulous team from Castlight Financial

Over the summer weeks it has also been great to develop the collaboration with the inspiring Sam Bedford who leads the brilliant innovation team at CYBG. We very much looking forward to progressing our partnership with CYBG in engaging with the fintech community.

I’ve really enjoyed meeting up with the engaging Kristen Bennie of RBS over the summer weeks to explore how we further develop the collaboration with RBS in the months ahead. Also thank you Malcom Buchanan for RBS support of FinTech Scotland.

Many thanks also to Andrew Whyte and Maggie Craig of the FCA for the recent terrific catch up on FinTech Scotland’s ongoing collaboration with the regulator in supporting fintech developments.

As a forward thinking regulator, the FCA is a hugely important stakeholder as reflected by their valuable secondment of the brilliant Nicola Anderson to Fintech Scotland.

The early part of the summer has also seen meetings with a range of financial institutions to explore the further collaboration with the fintech community. 

For example, great to catch up with Geoff Aberdein of Aberdeen Standard and Julian Ide of Martin Currie in Edinburgh then in Glasgow, Robert Keenan of Morgan Stanley to talk through connecting into the fintech developments.

Last week, Nicola and I very much enjoyed meeting David Durlacher, Duncan Jamieson, Ella Riesco and Calum Brewster of Julius Baer to consider mutual opportunities to work more closely in developing strategic fintech collaboration in wealth management.

Whilst we were in London, we had the chance to meet up with the inspiring Liz Brandt to hear about the fantastic strategic data innovation and collaboration work at Ctrl-Shift Ltd. 

This was hugely exciting, and we are looking forward to seeing Liz in Scotland and taking this forward in the near future as it will be enormous value with fintech innovation and new enterprise.

Summer of Strategy

The strategic conversations have been very prominent over the Summer and I am very excited about the developing relationships which will support the fintech community growth

For example, valuable meetings with the team at BT, Michael Woodman, Dan Thomas, Craig Muirhead and Emma Cadzow. 

Very much looking forward to the mutual strategic opportunities of working with the BT team in Scotland and globally across financial services to progress fintech opportunities.

Super strategic discussions also with John Innes of Leonardo as well as John Fraser and Madhan Murugesan of Cognizant, we very much valued their engagement and interest in working with FinTech Scotland.

Then I was more than happy to interrupt my summer holiday road trip south to catch up with Gary Kildare of IBM to talk through a very exciting strategic people skills initiative which it would be great to bring to Scotland. More to come on this soon, I hope.

On fintech skills and wider people opportunities, I am also hugely excited by the work with Eleanor Shaw, Martin Hughes and team at the University of Strathclyde as we develop the strategic fintech cluster in Glasgow. 

This will certainly reinforce Scotland position on the global fintech map, watch this space!

Summer of Global Opportunities

The progress of the fintech community across Scotland is certainly getting global recognition and numerous international opportunities have emerged over the summer weeks

It was great to see leading European fintech commentator Martin Best give an overview recently on how Scottish fintech is thriving and brilliant examples of LendingCrowd, Money Dashboard and Modulr.

I was able to share these developments with Andrew Davis and colleague Stephanie Poon of Hong Kong Invest to develop the mutual opportunities. Thanks Andrew for a lovely catch up mixing fintech talk with all things running and music!

Great to be working with Gillian Docherty, Steph Wright and the DataLab team on the opportunities for fintech firms in a visit to Singapore and with Lorraine Mallon of SDI on the trade mission to USA in the Autumn

This alongside the fintech trade opportunities coming up with Ireland, France, India amongst others further demonstrates the growing interest in Scotland’s fintech developments.

Brilliant leadership by Graham Hatton a number of the inward opportunities, for example, the meeting with the team from Samsung Life a few weeks ago.

Closer to home it was great to have the inaugural meeting of the FinTech National Network in Manchester a few weeks ago with the teams from Fintech North and Innovate Finance as well as Tom Helm from the DIT.

It was brilliant to welcome Philip Creed for Fintech Northern Ireland as well as Gavin Powell from FinTech Wales who I’d meet up with a few weeks previously on a visit to Edinburgh.

Very much looking forward to building on a productive session and developing the collaboration across the fintech hubs further.

Many thanks to Julian Wells and the CYBG team for excellent hosting of the meeting and Peter Cunane and for arranging everything behind the scenes and Ali Griffths for the follow up..  

Very much looking forward to hosting the next Network meeting in Glasgow in October as part of the fintech conference being organized with the fabulous Whitecap Consulting team.

Before then we hope to see many of our friends from the UK and the rest of the world come along to the Fintech Festival in Scotland over three weeks in September. 

There will be many meet ups and events taking place including the two day showcase FinTech Summit organized by the super team at DIGIT led by the super Ray Bugg, Duncan Macrae and Pete Swift who we met up with recently.

More to come on the exciting range of activities taking place during the festival, including a fintech running race’ and a fintech wine tasting’ event, thanks to Sara Ronald of Nile on this who I caught up with recently!

Of course, events are happening all the time across Scotland. For example, I was delighted to present at the recent Faculty and Institute of Actuaries knowledge event, thanks Barry Shannon and team for making me so welcome.

Then delighted to get along the Tech Nation meet up Bayes Centre last week and listen to the engaging Hazel Gibbons as well as inspiring Leah Hutcheon of Appointed, all perfectly chaired by the awesome Steve Ewing. 

Great to see so many of the movers and shakers of the Scottish innovation world at this event and very much looking forward to working with Hazel in the new Tech Nation role in Scotland.

Summer of Running

I just love running during the summer, even with the sweltering heat although my performances have been a bit up and down!

The Kirkintilloch10km and Edinburgh Parkrun both gave me my best times at these distances for two years but then the Cumbria marathon last Sunday was six minutes slower than planned!

I put this down to the strong coastal breeze and getting carried away in the sunshine early on!

Anyway, training quickly resumed for the next marathon which is Loch Ness in October and early preparation will be races in Livingston, Ceres, Irvine and Kirkaldy during August!

Then not forgetting the fintech 2 mile race as part of the Festival in September in Edinburgh, combining my two joys, running and fintech. I hope to see lots of you join in for it!! Until next time

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Action Packed Fintech Community!

This has certainly been another action packed few weeks with the fintech community as the financial innovation continues at pace across Scotland.

What makes meeting with the amazing fintech community of firms so exciting is the diversity of action orientated entrepreneurs across the country.

This was very much the case on Wednesday evening with our community FinTech Scotland Fusion evening in Edinburgh.

Action Packed Entrepreneurs

Awesome spotlight sessions from fintech entrepreneurs Daniel of Listing Ledger, Tynah from Money Matix, Adam from Sage City, Dave from The ID Co and Bhairav from Avrium to a very engaged audience.

Once again it was a wonderful buzzing atmosphere of fintech talk, all magnificently overseen by our very good friend and seasoned entrepreneur Aleks Tomczyk.

Big thank you to Kirsty Irvine and Ewan Fleming of Johnston Carmichael for their great hosting of the evening and being such fabulous supporters of the fintech community.

It was a more formal format but just as action packed for the two Fintech Practitioners meetings we held in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the last fortnight.

A great range of conversations on key topics from funding to commercialisation to people development with a spectrum firms from across the fintech community.

Some really key actions from these meetings for FinTech Scotland which we will follow through with the FinTech Network Integrator team at Vivolution and Scottish Enterprise.

Thank you to our strategic partners Anneli at Dentsu Aegis and Yvonne at Pinsent Mason for hosting these valuable meetings with the fintech community.

Prior to this, we had the opportunity to share some of the fintech developments with Government Minister Kate Forbes at Scottish Parliament, who takes a keen interest in the fintech innovation.

The meeting gave us the opportunity to mark the fact that the Scottish fintech community is now over one hundred innovative firms in Scotland.

Fantastic to have some of the newer fintech firms Xpand Access, CU Apps, Womens Coin, Money Matix, Zortrex join us for fabulous session at Parliament along with the fast growing team from Amiqus.

Later that week I really enjoyed catching up with James Gumble to hear about the terrific innovation development by the Xpand Access team, playing a huge role in demonstrating the value of innovation and collaboration.

Another wonderful example of this is from the team at Soar who have recently won the Scottish Edge award, big congratulations to entrepreneurial Andrew Duncan and colleagues.

Similarly, with my catch up on Tuesday with the terrific Rab Campbell of Wallet Services as we plotted how to extend the entrepreneurial action across a range of collaboration initiatives. Thanks for the much need almond biscuit Rab!!

Action Packed Collaboration

The action packed collaboration was very much alive with the fintech community and a diverse range of participants at the European Innovation and Technology event at University of Edinburgh this week.

Brilliant action sessions as always from exciting entrepreneurs Loral from Sustainably and Phil Gillespie.

This was alongside hearing from the engaging Kate of Sainsbury Bank, David from Lloyds Bank and Anurag of Baillie Gifford on their approach to fintech collaboration.

Also joined by Damien from University of Edinburgh to share insights on the crucial role of academia as part of team Scotland in developing fintech.

Great to work with our European colleagues Fergie Miller in delivering the event to a full house and super enthusiastic audience.

This European collaboration also came alive when we hosted a fintech day with fifty executives from the large French bank, Banque Populaire a week or so ago expertly organised by Mickael.

Terrific sessions in sharing their innovations from James of The ID Co, Chris from Nexves, Jim of Renovite and Laura from Amiqus.

Many thanks also to Mark Curran of CYBG for joining us as well to share the fast moving open banking developments with our French friends.

Earlier this week, we were delighted to work with Kevin and the SDI team and Erin Ellis and the World Congress Team in hosting a trade mission of seven fintech firms from Toronto.

Wonderful to hear from the exciting Canadian entrepreneurs and their interest in working in Scotland and becoming part of our vibrant community

It was great to bring them together with some of the Scottish community such as entrepreneurs Bryan Eldridge of Qwallets and Nick Jones of Blockstar at an engaging session with Simon and the IBM team.

This was followed by a super reception at Bute House, home of the First Minister, hosted by Minister Jamie Hepburn.

Global collaboration opportunities are stretching far and wide. It was brilliant to meet up with the inspiring Radoslaw Szmit and Kamil Kwecka of CShark Ventures to discuss the mutual opportunities in Scotland building on their great expertise from Europe.

Thank you also to Kent Mackenzie for inviting me to share the fintech collaboration opportunities with the Deloitte Global Digital Council members recently, great to have the engagement and support.

The global interest in Scotland is certainly growing and it was great to meet with Martin Rueda from fast expanding London fintech firm Iwoca recently and share how the Scottish community is developing.

This was also the discussion with Avere Hill of Singapore fintech firm Cynopsis as well as Andrus Alber, the founder of Bankish from Estonia, both of whom we look forward to seeing in Scotland very soon

Similarly, when meeting up with Consul General Andrew Jackson from the UAE Embassy this week to discuss the potential international trade opportunities for Scottish firms building on the success of firms such as Qpal and IceFlo in this region

Thank you to Hamira Khan and Grace Glass for setting up.

The global opportunity was one of the key themes for the event at Scottish Parliament earlier this week on the plans for the exciting new Scottish Stock Exchange

Always inspiring to hear from Tomas Carruthers who is leading the initiative and also meet up with team making Project Heather come alive such as Edwin Hamilton, Michelle Thomson and Martha Walsh.

The event was also valuable in catching up with some key friends from across the broader ecosystem in Scotland including David Clarke of SIFI and Frazer Lang of SABE as well as media guru Terry Murden of Daily Business

Action Packed People Events

Events with action packed people has certainly been a major theme this last fortnight.

For example, thank you to Nicola Anderson who expertly took the platform recently for FinTech Scotland at the recent SFE event on cyber security

Another example was the impressive Digital Scotland conference in Glasgow a few weeks ago and it was a privilege to be invited to participate on the stage with so many brilliant speakers.

I really enjoyed our afternoon session with the awesome Cat Leaver of Brand Scotland and fabulous Melinda Matthews of CodeClan along with the wise heads of Gerry McCusker and Donald McLaughlin.

Thank you to expert leadership chairing by Alisdair Gunn and super engagement by Hamish Miller, Will Peakin and the super Future Scot team

This carried on to the weekend when I was asked to contribute to the Executive Women Leadership Programme at University of Edinburgh with the fabulous Maeve Gillies and Jacqui Gale on Saturday.

Thank you to the wonderful Judy Wagner and Susan Murphy for the opportunity to join many great leaders such as Sam Bedford, Clare Carswell and Ailsa Sutherland amongst many others.

On the subject of people inspiration, it was terrific to meet up with the brilliant Dr Susie Mitchel and Laura Bell who are leading on the CanDo Innovation Summit plans for Glasgow later this year.

We are delighted to be involved with the Future of FinTech session which will showcase a number of people from across Scotland leading on financial innovation.

This is something I shared with the brilliant chair of FinTech Scotland, David Fergusson this week as we talked about the plans for the coming months and longer. I always value the insight feedback from these sessions with David.

Last week I had the pleasure of sharing the progress of the fintech innovation being driven by a diversity of people in Scotland with Executive Chair Ian Campbell and Bob Martin of Innovate UK.

The engagement with senior figures from across financial services is so important to FinTech Scotland taking forward its plans and it was excellent as always to have a catch up with Philip Grant and of Lloyds and Colin Halpin of HSBC this week.

Action Packed Innovation

On Wednesday I very much enjoyed meeting up with the brilliant Kristen Bennie to hear about the action pack innovation with fintech community across RBS.

We are delighted we will be working more closely with Kristen and the team on this in connecting with the innovative activity across Scotland and wider.

Another example of driving this action packed innovation is the plans with Sopra Steria and University of Edinburgh to develop a new fintech accelerator programme.

Very much value the great ongoing strategic support of Craig Wilson and Rob McElry from Sopra Steria on this

This last couple of weeks has seen a number of strategic meetings with organisations looking to support and engage with the breadth of fintech innovation across Scotland.

For example, we very much enjoyed the conversation with Alex Foster, Michael Woodman, Daniel Thomas at BT on the mutual innovation opportunities.

Thank you, Craig Muirhead, for arranging and we are looking forward to progressing your relationship with the fintech community

Similarly, great to catch up this week with Kevin Spence and Gary Fegan to consider potential strategic innovation actions we can work on together with Fujitsu.

Action Packed Running

Action packed running has also been a theme over this last couple of weeks after the Edinburgh marathon.

This has included a challenging trail race in Denny near Falkirk on a Thursday evening as well as a fabulous 10km race at Kirkintilloch on a perfect summer evening this week.

Both of which have helped me up my pace along with my fastest Parkrun race of the year last Saturday!!

All of which I am hoping will produce a faster marathon time in July when this race comes along in a few weeks time.

In the meantime, it is the Glasgow 10km race on Sunday through the glorious city which is always so special and a father’s days treat for me! People certainly do make Glasgow. Until Next time!

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Exhilarating FinTech Energy!

The fintech energy across Scotland is just so exhilarating in so many ways!

It is an energy that is driving the rapid growth of the fintech community and this has been wonderful to experience again at first hand over this last few weeks.

Innovative Energy

For example, innovative energy has been very much in evident at a variety of meetings such as with Stephen Henry of the exciting Asura Financial as well as with Laura Bosworth and Mel Alexander from the awesome Amiqus team.

Then there were the engaging discussions with Chris Herd of Nexves and Kevin Hollister and Keith Harrison of Guiide at the Scottish FinTech meet up. Big thanks again to Scottish Fintech stalwarts Sergei Miller Pomphrey and Bobby King for being at forefront of community energy.

Last week it was a fascinating catch up with Garry Williams of Phoebus to talk about his innovative future plans and potential for expansion in Edinburgh.

Earlier in the week it was another wonderful meet up, this time with the very special Fife Fintech community to catch up with old and new friends.

Thank you to Iain Shirlaw for the celebratory cake and organizing a valuable discussion in the Adam Smith Theatre in Kirkcaldy.

I get a lot of my energy in seeing the fintech community come together, such as at the University of Edinburgh Futures Institute meeting on Wednesday evening.

Wonderful to see energetic entrepreneurs Helene Rodger of MoneyMatix, Christian Burgin of Visible Capital, George Kelsey and, very new to the community, Nanik Ramchandani of Trade Phi.

It was a great mixer’ event organized by Gbenga GB’ Ibikunle from the University of Edinburgh to share the developments of the fintech cluster being led by the University of Edinburgh

On top of all this engagement there have been some magnificent news from a range of innovative enterprises.

Modulr raising £14m capital to grow, LendingCrowd raising nearly £20m to support SME growth, Money Dashboard hugely successful crowd funding of £2m in 24 hours and then Soar receiving a major financial injection to take their innovation to the next level. Wow!!

These examples of the vibrant fintech community in Scotland is something I find myself sharing with global innovators and entrepreneurs on almost a daily basis on phone calls and in meetings.

For example, it was great to catch up recently with Ambreen and Sophie from Monese to hear about their exciting journey and the potential of being in Scotland.

Then it is spectacular to see all this come alive on line and in print through the Scotsman Fintech supplement this week.

Huge thanks to the brilliant David Lee for leading on such a comprehensive supplement and to the Scotsman team for bringing Scotland’s fintech progress alive.

Collaborative Energy

The innovation across the fintech community really comes alive when combined with the collaborative energy from a range of participants.

This is a theme I shared at the awesome Fintech North conference in Leeds on Thursday.

Building on the success of the Manchester conference, this was another wonderful occasion and it was a privilege to be part of the event with a really buzzing atmosphere.

It was an opportunity to meet a diverse range of people from the Leeds community including David Hoghton-Carter, Glynn Robinson, chairman of BJSS, Daniel de Wolf of Flybits and Andy Thompson (again) of Sandstone. All I hope to see in Scotland soon.

As well as people from the broader fintech ecosystem, David Beer of Fintech Alliance and Peter Cunnane and Clare Black of Innovate Finance. Clare led on terrific session on Fintech and diversity in the afternoon sessions.

Over lunch it was great to catch up with the engaging founder Kyle MacDonald and non exec director Mark Spink of Scottish fintech Financial Cloud to talk through collaboration opportunities in Glasgow especially in the credit union sector.

Also, terrific to meet up with international guests Muhamed Farooque of Excelledia and Kyoungrok Lee and Min Sungjun from Samsung Life, all of whom I look forward to welcoming to Scotland next month.

Thank you once again to inspiring FinTech North leaders Julian Wells and Chris Sier as well as the fabulous Fintech North and Whitecap Consulting and White Label Crowdfunding teams. Magical

Very much looking forward to hosting the FinTech National Network meeting in Edinburgh in June and the collaboration conference in the Autumn in Glasgow.

One area of collaboration I highlighted to people was between fintech and the public sector. For example, the work to develop a new payments platform with the Scottish Government is a hugely exciting collaboration opportunity for fintechs.

It is a real pleasure to be working with inspiring leaders Trish Quinn and Hugh Wallace along with the impressive team Clare, Martin, Alex and Carron at the Scottish Government.

Very much looking forward to the buzzing energy at the collaboration event in June to share more with the fintech community and wider stakeholders.

On the subject of large scale collaborative energy, fantastic to see the news about Lloyds Bank major tech job expansion in Edinburgh.

Last week I was delighted to be invited to the Lloyds Bank pre AGM dinner to talk with Chair Norman Blackwell and give examples of Lloyds Bank energetic support of the fintech community in Scotland.

The collaboration energy was very much part of the discussion with the CYBG Innovation Team a week ago as well.

Great to have such an engaged and imaginative audience looking to develop even closer working relationship with the fintech community.

Many thanks to the inspiring Sam Bedford, Gary McLellan and Jack Mckenna, looking forward to progressing the opportunities.

Also very much encouraged by the meetings with the Barclays team, Ben Davey and old colleague Steven Roberts, especially with the exciting build of the new Barclays campus in Glasgow.

Thanks also to Colin Carmichael and the Sopra Team for a terrific working session with Mark Daisley and the BNP Paribas team

I am very encouraged by the large financial services institutions who are looking to work with us to bring the fintech community in to a closer working relationship to support innovation.

Many thanks to Ali Law of Royal London and David Skinn of Aviva for valuable conversations over the last week or so.

A completely different area where the collaboration energy is beginning to be so powerful is our fabulous engagement with the Money Advice Scotland team

It was very much a huge privilege for me to present at their annual conference in Dunblane on Friday as a double act with my colleague Nicola Anderson.

Infact, it was really quite emotional, as the work of the front line money advisers is something I have recognised as hugely valuable since my childhood.

Just magical to be there with real experts who are focused in supporting people when faced with the most difficult of financial circumstances.

Very much appreciate Yvonne McDermid and David Hilferty giving me us the opportunity to share the role of fintech in supporting their work.

Expert Energy

This expert energy is crucial to the thriving fintech ecosystem and the universities play a crucial role.

This also was a key theme at the Fintech North conference, and it was great to be on the stage to discuss this with Chelsea Hardy, Andrew Maeer, Iain Clacher, George Lodorfos and expertly chaired by Eve Roodhouse of Leeds Council. Very much a shared agenda of inclusive growth.

I am thoroughly enjoying working with the brilliant expert team at University of Strathclyde, Daniel Broby, Devraj Basu, Martin Hughes and James Bowden in developing the plans for the fintech cluster in Glasgow.

Their expertise in bringing together the academic intellect with entrepreneurial new enterprises in the magnificent Technology and Innovation Centre in Glasgow is certainly fueling fintech energy and enterprise.

Bringing together the consortium of stakeholder expertise across the central belt in Scotland is a huge strength in developing the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence.

My meetings this last few weeks with a cross section of key players such as Simon Pink and Mairi Cairney of IBM, Anneli Ritari-Stewart and Richard Gill of Dentsu Aegis as well the brilliant team at Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, Liz Mcareavey and Alex Haramis very much reinforce this.

Broadening the potential range of experts contributing and supporting fintech is key and it was valuable to discuss this with Graham Burns, John and Nia from FWB Park Brown team. Very much looking forward to working with the Aberdeen community on this

Earlier this week I delighted to have the opportunity to share progress on the Global Centre of Excellence with Government Minister Ivan McKee.

Damien McGarrigle and Kevin Collins are doing an excellent job on leading the initiative along with the awesome Gavin Littlejohn driving the amazing global engagement.

The open banking and finance opportunity was highlighted recently by Caroline Stevenson of Womble Bond Dickinson in a great article in the Scotsman.

I had the opportunity to learn about Caroline expert work as part of a six mile running meeting’ around Arthurs Seat one very early morning this week.

What could be better than combining my two passions of running and fintech!

Running Energy

I am going to need all the running energy I can muster this weekend with the Edinburgh marathon on Sunday!

Being only six weeks back from an eight week injury lay off, I know I will need to take it steady over the 26.2 miles, so the pressure is off in many ways when it comes to how fast I go.

This will be the first of three marathon this year and I’ve been helped back to running fitness with a couple really enjoyable races in Coatbridge and Balerno over the last couple of weeks.

The latter made all the more enjoyable on a lovely Monday evening by running most of route with Carron Macnab of Scottish Government when we ended up talking as much about fintech as running!!

Maybe talking fintech is the secret for the marathon this weekend but who will I find to chat with!! Until next time.

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ The Energy Fueling FinTech!

There has been a frenzy of energetic fintech activity over the last few weeks even with the interruption of a sunny Easter break.

I’ve seen this energy fuel innovation and collaboration across a diverse range of engaged fintech participants and it is really exciting to be in amongst the activity.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I had the privilege to judge to the fintech innovation pitches by the University of Edinburgh entrepreneurship students along with David McLeay from Scottish Widows.

I was blown away by the students creative and imaginative new business models to reinvent financial services, many of which could complement propositions being developed by Scottish fintech firms.

Congratulations to Ben Spigel, the Chancellor’s Fellow at the Business School, for leading such a talented group of students. Many of whom I am sure we will hear about in the fintech community in the future.

Energetic Talent

Another example of this energetic fintech talent was catching up with Elisabetta Trasatti and Andrea, the very inspiring President and Vice President of the University of Glasgow Student FinTech Society

Absolutely fantastic to hear about their plans for the year for the Society, recognized as one of the largest student fintech student groups in Europe, and how they are engaging with the fintech sector.

Excited about working with the team, especially looking forward to an energy charged evening with Jazz band and more at the Society’s pitch final competition later this year!

My meetings with the brilliant team at University of Strathclyde have further demonstrated how much terrific energy is going in to develop the fintech talent for the future.

I am very excited to be working with the fabulous Martin Hughes, Daniel Broby, Devraj Basu and Tim Bedford in shaping the emerging fintech cluster in Glasgow and connecting with the financial services sector.

Similarly, working with Ksenia Siedlecka and the University of Edinburgh team on the development of the newly launched European FinTech Digital Office focused on new research areas and investing in new enterprises.

There’s a huge amount of interest in the fintech collaboration event being planned for June and it is great to be working with our European colleagues and fintech firms such as on this initiative.

On Tuesday it was great to catch up with the fabulous Michael Young whose energetic MBN Solutions team do so much in supporting development of talent for the sector.

Michael and the team bring a huge amount of energy to the collaboration initiatives across Scotland, especially through their very successful meet up programme.

Energetic City Collaboration

Later that evening on Tuesday, Michael as well as Elisabetta joined me at the Glasgow Economic Leadership meeting where skills development and collaboration were a key part of the discussion.

I very much appreciated the engagement of the group on how we further develop fintech collaboration across the City and thank you to Mark Napier, and JP Morgan for hosting the session.

This energetic city collaboration was also very much in evident when I was invited to present at the FinTech North conference in Manchester a couple of weeks ago.

A wonderful atmosphere generated by a diverse audience and terrific fintech entrepreneurs sharing their innovative propositions to a very engaged audience.

For me it was also special to meet up with some great entrepreneurs such as Adam Bickell of Jamtoday and David Smith a wonderful colleague from 20 years ago, who gave an awesome presentation explaining the Uinsure proposition

The FinTech North conference captured everything that is so special and energetic about the fintech movement and it was a real privilege to be part of it.

Huge thanks to the inspiring leaders Chris Sier and Julian Wells along with the whole FinTech North and Whitecap Consulting team for delivering such an innovative community driven occasion.

I was given the opportunity in Manchester to share the stage as well as catch up with the terrific Charlotte Crosswell, chief executive of Innovate Finance

It was a recognition of our shared values for the ambition for the fintech movement and the mutual opportunities that prompted us to agree to more formally collaborate going forward.

Hence the announcement on Monday this week of a new Fintech National Network to provide collective support for FinTech Scotland, FinTech North and Innovate Finance fintech communities.

Our aim is to see our collaboration activities and engagements provide more support and we are looking forward also to FinTech Wales and FinTech Wales joining with us in the coming months.

The new Network was announced at the Innovate Finance Global Summit in London which a number of the Scottish fintech community attended.

Including Professor Jane Lewis from Womens Coin, a newer member of the Scottish community, who was invited to share how the exciting developments were taking shape in Scotland. Big thanks to Jane.

The week before was another global event, EIE 2019, with many Scottish fintech firms taking centre stage to share their propositions to an international investor audience. A huge accolade must go to Steve Ewing and the team for a fabulous occasion

Big congratulations to everyone who participated, and a special mention to Callum Murray of Amiqus for winning pitch presentation of the day.

Global Energy

Scotland’s fintech activity is certainly attracting global energy, for example it was terrific to welcome the delegation of Hong King and Singapore fintech innovators to Edinburgh on Thursday.

It was great to share the Scottish fintech developments with a diverse range of firms in the morning with Graham Hatton from Scottish Development International.

Then in the afternoon, to have an engaging session in the afternoon with our friends from the Far East with a fantastic mix of people from Scotland’s fintech community, considering collaboration opportunities.

Great to meet Bettina Wong and Charles Lam of Cybersport and Avere Hill of Cynopsis, Ivy Tse of FreightAmigo as well see Joel Ko, again who has exciting fintech plans for Edinburgh

All brilliantly hosted by the fabulous Kent Mackenzie, Chris Brown and the Deloitte team who are doing so much to develop the global fintech collaboration and energy.

The event with a global diversity was wonderful to be part and embodies everything that Scotland’s fintech is all about. All fantastically organized by Karen Craib and Mandy Cooper from Scottish Enterprise.

Sandwiched in between the two events I was given the opportunity to talk about embracing diversity through fintech at the Women in Banking and Finance conference on Thursday.

An absolute privilege to be on the stage in front of a big audience with the inspiring Sue Liburd, Wincie Wong of RBS and Maggie Craig of FCA.

All expertly hosted by the fabulous Andy Nicol, chief executive of Abstract, who do terrific people leadership work in this space.

Many thanks to Niamh Sims and Nomi Puri for inviting me to join you and for a terrific event and energetic atmosphere.

Scotland is certainly contributing to the positive global energy, for example, it was great to catch up with Chris Tait and Omar Shaikh to discuss the fintech participation in their Global Ethical Finance conference

Delighted we are working together on this global exciting event in October which very much reinforces Scotland’s leadership role in sustainable finance as well as fintech.

Also, on the global energy theme it was a pleasure to catch up this week with Gurjit Singh Lalli, the curator of TEDx for Glasgow, about the amazing event planned for June and future role for the fintech community.

I am hugely excited about the global energy being generated by the planned fintech festival for Scotland in September which Mickael is working hard on.

Excellent strategy meeting with the terrific Rory Archibald of Visit Scotland and Karen Craib of Scottish Enterprise who are doing such fantastic work to help us prepare for the festival later this year.

Talking about how we build on this global energy with developing the strategic international opportunities for Scottish fintechs was the key part of the valuable discussion with Lorraine Mallon and Andrea McLeish from SDI this week.

Strategic Energy

Sharing the strategic energy behind the fintech developments in Scotland is always a key role and there have been so many interactions over this last few weeks to do this

For example, we very much valued the opportunity to present to the team at the Financial Conduct Authority and great to meet the teams shaping the regulatory landscape for future fintech progress and good consumer outcomes.

Thank you to Ed Smith and the team for arranging with Nicola for this. We followed this up with a great conversation with Tom Kegode and the innovation team at Lloyds Bank who are leading some terrific strategic fintech collaboration initiatives

Over this last few weeks I have also had the opportunity to discuss the strategic developments with other major financial groups

For example, very enjoyable and constructive conversations with Ali Law of Royal London, Peter Bole of CYBG and Bob Hair of Cazenove.

Along with exploring strategic fintech collaboration opportunities with Jim McCumesty of SAS, Neil Delany of Contis and Kirsty Irvine of JCCA. Brilliant to have their engagement win working with the Scottish fintech community.

On Monday, I had the opportunity to share FinTech Scotland future plans with a broader engaged audience at the FiSAB (Financial Services Advisory Board) quarterly meeting chaired by the First Minister and Jim Pettigrew of CYBG.

It was great to have fintech on the agenda along with the terrific work being led by Barry Connolly of RBS on skills and Helen Page of CYBG on the social impact of financial services.

Both significant pieces of work align with the fintech developments on skills and inclusion and it was great to continue the conversation on these at the Scottish Financial Enterprise AGM on Thursday evening all expertly organized by the magnificent SFE team.

Thank you, Graeme Jones for the FinTech Scotland progress shout out great to be there with the SFE members. Many congratulations to the awesome Sue Dawe for being elected to the SFE Board

Energetic Running

After an eight week injury lay off, I am back out running energetically and what a really amazing feeling in so many ways.

This included a return to the race circuit with the Stirling half marathon last Sunday which was just wonderful.

Coming up are races in Coatbridge, Dalkeith and Balerno as well as a few Saturday morning Park Runs, all before the Edinburgh marathon at the end of May.

Although I’m having to control my running energy at the moment, so I don’t pick up another injury but despite this I have fallen in love with running event more!! Until next time

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Embracing our role in the European FinTech Team!

My travels and meetings over this last few weeks have again reinforced to me that Scotland’s fintech developments are very much embracing being much part of a wider European team.

With our shared values and ambitions, there are enormous opportunities to work with our European team partners in reinventing financial services through fintech innovation.

This was certainly brought alive on Wednesday evening in Edinburgh with the launch of the ground breaking European Innovation and Technology (EIT) Digital Office with its focus on fintech.

European Collaboration

The new fintech digital office based at the Bayes Centre will deepen relationships between Scotland and Europe, increase innovation and investment in new fintech initiatives, grow knowledge exchange across the continent and attract inward investment.

Working with the EIT team along with Scottish Enterprise, University of Edinburgh, Scottish Funding Council and Highland & Islands Enterprise, it has been terrific to see this initiative international come alive.

It was a privilege to share the platform with Willem Jonker and Morgan Gillies at the launch along with Scottish Government Minister Ivan McKee and Charlie Jeffrey from the University of Edinburgh to explain how the collaboration will boost innovation and investment in fintech.

The atmosphere for the launch was made special by having a packed diverse audience with us representing all corners of the Scottish ecosystem.

Including some of the exciting fintech enterprises such as Tynah and Helene from MoneyMatix, James from Xpand, Loral from Sustainably, Rab from Wallet Services, Daniel from Listings Ledger as well as Kevin from Hylomorph.

The event was a great opportunity to catch up with some of the inspiring people making things happen across Scotland driving innovation such as Poonam Malik, Jude McCorry, David Robertson, Jasmina Lazic, Martin Hughes, Amanda Fergusson and Daniel Broby, Terry Murden.

Thank you to Courtney Garner from SciTech Europa for making the long journey to be with us and to the terrific EIT and Edinburgh Innovation teams for making it all happen on the night.

The European collaboration opportunities were also very much in evident for my recent visit to Brussels with Graeme Jones and Clare Carswell of Scottish Financial Enterprise for a range of very constructive meetings at the EU.

There is so much mutual common ground in developing fintech collaboration opportunities and a huge thank you to the magnificent team at Scotland Europa, Sarah English and Marija Ivoninaite and Fraser Clark from SDI.

It was great to have the opportunity to present on Scotland’s fintech progress with an engaged European audience on the Tuesday evening along with Graeme and John Maciver from Pinsent Masons.

We made a number of great connections and I’m sure there will be many more visits to our European friends in the near future as we commit to work even closer.

I flew back from Beautiful Brussels directly to Glorious Glasgow to present at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries to speak at their knowledge sharing session.

It was wonderful to have a very engaging full house with so many of the profession interested in the role of fintech in shaping the future of financial services.

Thank you, John Taylor and Barry Shannon for inviting me to present as well as to Ji-Hyang Lee and Alan Watson for being terrific hosts for the session. I look forward to repeating in Edinburgh in June!

European Innovation

Europe was very much part of the discussion at the asset management dinner on Tuesday evening with Ministers Derek Mackay and Kate Forbes along with senior members of the investment world.

It was good opportunity to share the examples of how the Scottish fintech community is progressing innovation with the major financial institutions in these uncertain times and highlight the growing global interest in Scotland’s fintech sector.

Thank you to Graham Laybourn and the Baillie Gifford team for hosting the engaging evening as well as for the ongoing support from Anurag Agrawal in exploring new ways to develop fintech innovation in asset management.

There are a growing number of global fintech with a focus on asset management looking at setting up in Scotland due to the depth of Scotland’s investment sector.

Talking last week with Hamish Croll of Singapore based fintech BlueFireAi, there is no doubt the potential in Scotland is very much getting recognized.

The opportunities for fintech enterprises are also rapidly evolving in banking and it was great to catch up with Gary McLellan of CYBG this week to develop how we progress the collaboration opportunities

Thanks also Gary for allowing me to be one of your guinea pigs’ for your innovative approaches to online fintech innovations for personal data security, great to experience at first hand.

The RBS fintech accelerator demo day a week or so ago was another fantastic example of a large institution supporting new fintech innovators.

Inspiring pitches on the day including by Adrian James from Monily, Chris Herd from Nexves, James from Xpand.

It was great to be on the stage with Matt Perkins from FreeAgent and Karen Bird of RBS in sharing insights on developing fintech innovation through collaboration

Fantastic leadership by the RBS team Steve Chown and Janice Cunningham for running such a constructive event.

Unfortunately, I could not stay for all the fintech demos as Nicola and I had to dash off to Glasgow for the University of Strathclyde Enterprise Network event.

Another amazing evening listening to the budding entrepreneurs. I was particularly struck by the innovations coming from the Fing & Pay and Hotei fintech teams, both expertly mentored by our friend and fintech guru Nick Cousins.

Many congratulations to the always inspiring Eleanor Mackay, it is no surprise that Strathclyde has an enviable reputation across Europe when it comes to fintech innovation.

This is invaluable in developing the collaborative innovation opportunities for fintech entrepreneurs across Europe and the world.

European Entrepreneurs

It was super to catch up with entrepreneur Derick James, the founder and CEO of Symphonic, to hear about the brilliant progress his team has been making in Europe and wider alongside the move into the new office in Edinburgh.

Very much looking forward to sharing the Symphonic international innovation story with the fintech community in the coming months.

Similarly looking forward to working with experienced expert innovator George Kelsey with what he is brewing up for the fintech world! Reflecting on my catch up coffee with George this week, I must introduce to Derick James.

I’m thinking it could be another example of one plus one equals five in creating even more fintech innovation in collaboration and what a story that would be!

Last week we shared the awesome entrepreneurship story of FNZ who are a fabulous example of a Scottish based fintech expanding in Europe and worldwide in helping consumers manage their long term savings.

Another inspiring innovation example I learnt about in this last fortnight was Cortex Worldwide.

Terrific conversation with founder and chief executive Peter Proud and such a truly inspiring journey in scaling a market leading technology enterprise. Peter’s experience is invaluable, and I am keen to share to many budding entrepreneurs.

The European and global innovation can come in various forms and I really enjoyed meeting Jordan Stewart of AlbaFX in Glasgow recently and hear how his proposition can help small firms gain the most from international trade.

Very much looking forward to connecting Jordan with the growing fintech community to develop mutual valuable connections.

I had the opportunity to meet Craig Anderson of venture capital firm Pentech in this last fortnight as well and talk through how the fintech community was evolving and the emerging investment opportunities.

In this respect, I also had a very constructive conversation with Andrew Wilson of Charlotte Street Partners on how we could do more to help fintech firms present themselves to potential investors.

I’m hoping that talking about the how the Scottish fintech community of firms is developing will encourage more of the entrepreneurial activity across the country.

So, it was good to be interviewed on Monday by Kim McAllister for a new BBC Radio show which will give live in May on the exciting fintech developments and the impact on people’s lives.

Meeting the engaging media professional David Lee on the same day, who is writing the Scotsman supplement on fintech for May, was a good time to reflect the whirlwind of activity over this last twelve months.

I shared with David that a major strength of Scotland’s fintech progress is our diverse range of people.

Whether this is the data analytic expertise being developed by DataLab and the MBN Solutions team, something which was showcased at Aviva a couple of weeks ago in growing their data centre of excellence.

Then there is the fintech entrepreneurial expertise being developed in our universities

In this respect it was wonderful to share joint plans with Claudia Cavalluzzo and Georgia Goodall of Converge Challenge who do amazing with new entrepreneurs from our universities

The enterprise spirit was very much demonstrated to Nicola and me recently when we were asked to present to the University of Stirling fintech postgraduate students.

A terrific group of people and thank you Andrea Bracciali for arranging the session, really enjoyable and insightful as was the visit to Newbattle Community Campus to see first hand the wonderful progress of this new digital’ school environment

Newbattle is very progressive educational role model for the future and it was absolutely fantastic to spend time with Gib McMillan and leadership team and the inspiring students, in their hands we have a very bright future.

The conversation with David Lee also gave me the opportunity to reaffirm the ambition to be a top five global fintech centre one year into the journey and the importance of working with European and global partners to achieve this goal

European Partners

One such group of partners are of good friends in Ireland and it was just absolutely wonderful to spend a few days in Dublin as part of Scottish Irish Finance Initiative (SIFI) conference on fintech.

Such a warm and welcoming reception from our European partners and the mutual relationships being developed though the SIFI team are going to be invaluable going forward.

Massive thank you to magnificent SIFI trio David Clarke, Pete Townsend and Terry Quinn for organising as well as to the brilliant Dublin Business School team, Andrew Quinn, Andrew Conlan-Trant and Rory Mo-ran.

It was great to hear from so many new friends such as the inspiring Hesus Inoma and the amazing Susan Sweeney as well as Scotland’s leading fintech guru Daniel Broby of University of Strathclyde.

The trip to Ireland also gave the me the opportunity to meet up with Peter Oakes, the highly respected global fintech leader and founder of FinTech Ireland. Thanks Emma Shiel from SDI for arranging and joining us.

It was fantastic to hear first hand the story behind FinTech Ireland and the significant presence Peter has established in Europe and across the globe. Peter’s next trip was to help with the formation of FinTech Cyprus, another European partner for is to collaborate with.

It was poignant that we met Peter in the Hibernian Club and sat in the very chair that FinTech Scotland was conceived five years ago.

Looking forward to developing closer collaboration with Peter and the FinTech Ireland team as European partners.

My return from Dublin was via Hampshire (and Reading to see my mum) as I had the opportunity to meet up with Mark Hanson, Managing Director of Simply Health who provide valuable health insurance plans for millions of consumers.

The worlds of fintech, insurtech, healthtech all overlap, and we had a super conversation on some emerging innovations in this space and the potential to work in partnership with University of Edinburgh and entrepreneurs to explore further.

Collaborative partnership is also very much at the core in developing a Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence in Scotland and we are delighted the joint FinTech Scotland, University of Edinburgh, Scottish Enterprise and FDATA proposal has been shortlisted for funding.

A huge amount of credit for this must go to our very own European and Global Open Finance presidential’ leader, Gavin Littlejohn who is instrumental in the strategic development.

I’m looking forward to seeing Gavin next week when he returns from formidable open finance mission trip to Hong Kong, Australia and India.

The Open Finance initiative is facilitating further collaboration with partners and this is also true of the Ethical Finance Hub team based at Heriot Watt University

It was valuable to catch up with Chris Tait recently and talk through the fintech contribution to the Global Ethical Finance Forum which will take place in Edinburgh in October with many distinguished international partners.

Barry Wingate it would be super to work in partner with you on this following our chat a week or so ago!

International partnerships were the focus of the conversation with James Bernard of the Dubai DMMC, the enterprise agency, when we met in Edinburgh last week, thank you Russell Dalgleish for making the connection.

Encouraging a European and global innovation and growth mindset with the Scottish entrepreneurial community as a key focus of the conversation for the executive dinner of fintech organized by FWB Park Brown last Wednesday evening.

I very much valued the challenge and constructive feedback from the diverse group of successful business leaders from sectors outside of financial services and fintech and thank you to those who have reached out to follow up.

Big thanks to Graham Burns and Michael Dickson for expertly arranging and professionally hosting the engaging evening, I look forward to the next one, maybe in Aberdeen or even another European city?

Running Europe

Unfortunately, and to much frustration, my toe injury has not cleared up which means my running opportunities in Europe have been somewhat curtailed.

Whilst the buzz of the exciting fintech activity with so many fabulous people has kept me occupied, I am a bit of a bear with a sore head’ as I have not been able to get out and run.

I have tried swimming, but my limited breaststroke ability does not replace the three hour runs I so much enjoy!!

I know I will need to be patient in recovering but if I look angst when you see me you will know why!

Let’s hope I am going to be ready for the Stirling, Livingston and Lock Leven half marathons in the run up to Edinburgh marathon in May!! Until next time.

Interview with Stephen Ingledew on why fintech matters

What support is available for fintech businesses?

What examples are there in terms of existing fintech businesses?

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Falling in Love with FinTech!

It is just so wonderful to see so many people falling in love with fintech and how it is fueling the opportunity to innovate through collaboration and inclusion.

This was very much the case on Wednesday morning when I joined the Lloyds Bank and Google teams for a Falling in Love with FinTech’ breakfast meet up.

The diverse audience from the fintech community, academia, large financial enterprises and many other organisations made a terrific atmosphere.

Big thanks to Misha Cunningham and Google Digital team for their fabulous hospitality

This meet up was brilliantly led by the inspiring Sarah Kenrick along with Tom, Kegode, Lisa Caldwell and Lloyds Bank team.

Lloyds, one of the initial founders of FinTech Scotland, are developing impressive innovations and collaborations by engaging the fintech community.

Community Love

The community love continued the next evening as we held FinTech Scotland Fusion’ gathering where we had a fantastic buzz and atmosphere. I know some carried it on into the very late hours!

The Fusion’ was expertly organized by our entrepreneurial friend Aleks Tomczyk with great collaboration and generosity from Kirsty Irvine and Johnston Carmichael.

Wonderful mini spotlight talks from Myles Stephenson of Modulr, Hannah Rudman of Wallet Services, Loral Quinn of Sustainably and Stuart Lunn of LendingCrowd as well as our fintech grandfather’ Gavin Littlejohn.

They all brought alive the evening by sharing their experiences and latest news and reaffirmed to a very diverse and engaged audience why falling in love with fintech was so easy.

We all decided that Fusion’ meet up will be a regular event in addition to our frequent fintech practitioner forums across Scotland so more on this to come

The community plays such an important role in welcoming new fintech enterprises working in Scotland and it was terrific to see firms new to the community with us on Thursday such as SageCity, Listings Ledger and Miconex.

The role of the community is something I shared with Stuart Harvey of Datatics and Graham Paterson a couple of weeks ago and we look forward to seeing them both at future events.

Supporting the growth of new fintech enterprises will see the community expand across Scotland and it is fantastic to be working with the Craig Wilson, Colin Carmichael of Sopra Steria and Gordon Donald and John Lonsdale of University of Edinburgh with a new accelerator programme.

Supporting the love of fintech innovation was very much in evidence when Mickael and I spent some time last week at Codebase with the Barclays Eagle Lab team.

Always wonderful to catch up with Trish McClay and talk about their terrific engagement along with the magical fintech entrepreneur Suhail Ahmad of AdviserDirect and the awesome Colin Hewitt of Float, who have now expanded into twenty plus nations.

We had been in Codebase the previous week for two fantastic sessions of massive significance in bringing more love into fintech, both of which will spread the fintech love far and wide.

Downstairs we had a FinTech consumer inclusion workshop with the Karen Rodger, Andrew McConnell from Scottish Government and along with Yvonne Macdermid, David Hilferty from Money Advice Scotland, Allison Barnes from Money Advice Service and other consumer groups.

The session was led by the inspiring duo Barbara Mills from CivTech and Nicola Anderson in developing a roadmap on how fintech can play a significant role in addressing financial inclusion challenges. This was all about the building new demand for fintech

Then, in parallel, upstairs, we had the Scottish Government session with entrepreneurs on how the engagement with small enterprises could be developed to improve the supply of innovation. This was a fantastic session led by Clare Mills, Carron McNab and colleagues.

It is a privilege to be part of this valuable work being led by Trish Quinn and hugely exciting to have the fintech community being involved in the opportunity to really impact big innovation with Government.

We shared these mutually aligned initiatives with the Digital Minister Kate Forbes and the FiSAB sub group with Graeme Jones the following day and it was great to get the endorsement to build on this big love’ opportunity for fintech.

Big Love

The broader love of fintech on a big scale is going to provide exciting opportunities to scale up the innovation in Scotland.

For example, in working with the rapidly changing M&G Prudential business engage with the fintech community and it was valuable to catch up with Mark Simpson and the Managing Director, David Macmillan a couple of times over this last fortnight

Then on Wednesday it was terrific to meet up with Sam Bedford, Gary McLellan and innovative team at CYBG in Glasgow.

Fantastic to see the leading edge examples from Jennifer and Jack of how they are innovating to improve customers financial engagement and the opportunities to engage with the fintech community in Scotland.

Really looking forward to progressing with the Sam and the team and combine our mutual love of fintech with real purpose.

The combination of big and small coming together to love fintech was one of the key themes for the discussion with Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce members on Thursday morning.

Thank you to everyone for the engagement and support, especially Liz Mcareavey and Rebecca Meish for inviting me to discuss how Scotland can develop the fintech love on a bigger scale.

This is something we were very much putting into action with senior executives Frank Tong and KC Tsui from HSBC Global who flew from Hong King to meet with us and firms from the fintech community.

Thank you to Ahmed El-Ryias from the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh for setting up the meeting, it was a terrific session late into the last Wednesday evening and onto the Thursday as well.

Thank you also to Colin Halpin who led HSBC to be one of Fintech Scotland initial founding partners and has played an important supporting role in our progress in the first year.

It was the fantastic presentations and engagement from the Scottish fintech firms which very much illustrated the innovative developments in Scotland and the significant opportunities to collaborate with the HSBC Global team.

In fact, Frank mentioned that the activities in Scotland were world leading and certainly made Scotland stand out as a global fintech centre, especially with date driven innovation.

Global Love

The global love continues to be an important part of work and this has been increasing even more over this last few weeks.

For example, absolutely I loved catching up with our good friend Thorsten Terweiden, who leads on fintech developments at Hong Kong Invest, on his visit to Scotland.

Great engagement with Thorsten and his team as we work with Graham Hatton and the SDI team in developing he Hong Kong Scotland bridge for our respective fintech communities.

This opportunity to share the mutual love of fintech opportunities was very much on the agenda when I met up on Tuesday with the fabulous Dan Roselli who is the founder of the impressive FinTech Accelerator Hub in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Dan took time out of his vacation to share the amazing story of what the team has achieved and there were so many parallels with the what we are building in Scotland.

I thanked Dan with one of the great Scottish beers and we agreed to take forward a joint number of areas to develop the mutual love of fintech both sides of the Atlantic.

The collaboration opportunities with USA was also the focus of my conversation with Jennifer Ericson, a Global Scot based in Minnesota and I very much value the connections Jennifer is helping us build for our fintech community.

Exporting is an important part of the fintech agenda, and it was valuable to catch up Suzanne Henderson from the Scottish Government team who is leading on the work to identify global market priorities for all sectors.

Very much looking forward to progress this work with Suzanne, Lesley Ward, Scott Strain along with Lorraine Mallon from SDI and build on the progress being made by a number of firms.

A great example of this is hearing last week about The ID Co, who are part of the DIT fintech trade mission to New York in a couple of weeks and Craig Buchan, the founder of QPal, who are progressing amazing innovations in the Middle east and Africa.

Last Monday, I was delighted to be invited by Graeme Jones of SFE to join him and SFE members for the dinner with the City of London Mayor Peter Estlin for an engaging conversation on the global role for Scotland in financial services and fintech.

I had met with Peter Estlin the previous week at the latest Department of International Trade Fintech Board meeting which considered a number of areas in developing the international reach of fintech.

In particular, it was great to hear from the very engaging Laura Royle from the FCA who outlined the valuable work in developing the Global Financial Innovation Network.

Laura recently led a fantastic FCA Project Innovate event for the Scottish fintech community and we are looking to do this again to cover some of the global regulation opportunities for fintech firms.

Collaborative Love

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to share this global opportunity for fintech at the City Deal Conference and the importance of collaboration to deliver data driven innovation success for the country.

I very much enjoyed the chance to share the stage with Digital Minister Kate Forbes as well as Professor Mark Parsons and Professor Charlie Jeffrey along with the distinguished panels.

To highlight the importance of collaborative love I was given the challenge by Andy Nichol form Edinburgh City Council to finish with the words from a song by The Men They Couldn’t Hang!!

This I duly did with the very apt words from their song Great Expectations’!

Huge thanks to Hamish Miller, Will Peakin and the Future Scot team for putting on such an important collaboration conference. Looking forward to the next one in Glasgow in May.

I’m also looking forward to speaking at the FinTech North events in April and May and always valuable to catch up with Julian Wells on Monday to talk through sharing the fintech collaboration love both sides of the border.

There are some great expectations from the data driven innovation programme and with the momentum growing now behind building the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence then Scotland’s fintech enterprises will play a central role.

It was hugely exciting to be part of the collaboration bringing alive the Centre of Excellence working with various partners including Damien at University of Edinburgh and Gavin with his FDATA team.

You’ll hear more on that in the coming weeks although if you were with us on Thursday night at Fusion then Gavin gave you some of the exciting snippets of news!

Another wonderful collaborative initiative for Scotland is the forthcoming launch of The European FinTech Digital Satellite Office in Edinburgh next month

This is a first for Scotland and for Europe and it is brilliant to be collaborating with our friends in the EU to make this significant investment happen with the University of Edinburgh and Scottish Enterprise.

This Digital Office will invest in academic research in fintech as well as new start up fintech enterprises. Watch this space for more.

The collaboration with Scotland’s world leading universities is a hugely important and it was a real pleasure to be invited to speak to Heriot Watt students on career opportunities in fintech by the inspiring David Steinberg.

The talent from all disciplines is becoming an even stronger pull with international fintech enterprises, Datafest is a fantastic two weeks of sharing this with the world.

Terrific to work with MBN Solutions and Deloitte with excellent fringe meet up events as part of DataFest.

I shared this and the wider talent and diversity attraction of Scotland with long standing innovator and friend Nish Kotak of Talecco on his recent visit to Edinburgh.

Very much looking forward to working with Nish to encourage some large enterprises to come to Scotland.

The week finished off with the quarterly FinTech Scotland board meeting expertly chaired and hosted by David Fergusson at the impressive Nucleus Financial offices.

A very valuable and constructive conversation on the longer term future strategy for FinTech Scotland as we look to the next stage of our journey.

It was great to have Digital Minister Kate Forbes join us for the discussion and I am looking forward to progressing over the coming months.

Running Love

My running love has been hugely strained over this last two weeks as illness and unusual toe injury have meant I have not run for a fortnight!

Going from running 55+ miles a week to none is really tough in so many ways although the intensity of the fintech engagement and presentations has taken my mind of this a little bit.

However, it has even more reinforced my passion and love for running and I hope to be back on the road and the Spring races in the next week.

With trips to the EU in Brussels and Dublin to build Scotland fintech collaboration over the next two weeks I am hoping to take my love of running and fintech to Europe! Until next time.