Paul Forrest joins Blockchain Technology Partners
Scottish fintech Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), just announced it had appointed Paul Forrest as its first chairman.
Paul has been advising many FTSE 100 and Global 500 businesses in the past 25 years including Ford Motor Company, Wal-Mart, Virgin Galactic and AkzoNobel. Paul is also on the board of Glasgow based recruitment firm MBN solutions and is involved in the Virgin Startup Programme as a mentor. Always interested in blockchain he founded the IdeaGist Blockchain Incubator.
Duncan Johnston-Watt, CEO & Co-founder of BTP said: “Paul understands the potential for growth in enterprise blockchain adoption, having been involved in this space for several years and at the cutting edge of successive waves of innovative enterprise technologies throughout his career. We are delighted Paul has decided to take up this role and help us scale the business and lay the groundwork for future investment.”
Paul Forrest said: “I am excited to be joining BTP at a pivotal point in their journey. Their management team has demonstrated an ability to develop a scalable product and close early enterprise deals. Given the present circumstances I was particularly impressed by their ability to secure a contract with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to deliver their innovative blockchain-based securities lending platform.”
Paul was involved in BTP’s latest angel funding round which was led by Aberdeen Asset Management co-founder Martin Gilbert and former deputy Andrew Laing.
Ex-Paypal CEO joins Money Dashboard
Scottish fintech Money Dashboard has just announced that Renier Lemmens would join the company as Chairman.
This is a great news for the fintech as Money Dashboard is gearing up to launch payment capabilities. With experience on the board of Revolut and as CEO of PayPal EMEA, Renier brings a lot of fintech knowledge.
Those are busy times for Money Dashboard with recent announcements about partnerships with Nutmeg and Wealthify.
Steve Tigar, Money Dashboard CEO commented:
“We’re delighted to welcome Renier to the board. His impressive experience as a fintech VC, CEO of Paypal EMEA and board member of Revolut will be invaluable as we enter our next phase of growth. We are particularly excited to have Renier on board as we prepare to launch our payments service, in addition to a number of other features that will revolutionise the way people organise and grow their money.”
Renier Lemmens, Money Dashboard Chairman added:
“Steve and the Money Dashboard team have done a fantastic job at building a product that truly helps people master their money. I am delighted to join them on this mission and look forward to helping the company go from strength-to-strength and leverage open banking to help millions of people.”
Scottish fintech Soar secures major funding boost
Scottish fintech Soar, together with Nivo (a Barclays spin out), has secured £200,000 from the Affordable Credit Challenge. This challenge was created to help with the development of innovative solutions to make credit more accessible and affordable, particularly for those who are financially vulnerable.
This is a very important problem to tackle as a recent piece of research shows that 82% of people think more needs to be done to create alternatives to high-cost lenders and 75% believe not-for-profit, community lenders need more support to succeed.
This boost will allow the fintech to work on a mobile app and its automated loan application processes available 24/7.
“We’re excited to have won this prestigious challenge. It’s testament to the hard work of our team and the close collaboration with our partners at Capital and Nivo. Our aim is also to ensure the technology developed for Capital can be rolled out across the UK to positively affect the lives of millions of people.”
Soar’s founder and CEO, Andrew Duncan
The scheme is run by Nesta Challenges in partnership with HM Treasury and three finalists from across the UK were each awarded £200,000.
“The UK’s world-leading fintech sector has a huge role to play in helping the most vulnerable access alternatives to high cost credit. That’s why we set up the Affordable Credit Challenge, bringing together fintechs and community lenders to develop new, pioneering solutions to this challenge. The three winners have done amazing work and I look forward to seeing how they help more people to access affordable credit products.”
John Glen, Economic Secretary to the Treasury
“There is a huge need for affordable credit, and we know that technology can help credit unions and others to both reach people who need it and provide the kind of service that mainstream financial institutions offer. The panel was really impressed by all the finalists – and we’re looking forward to seeing the results of these exciting partnerships.”
Joanna Elson, CEO of Money Advice Trust and Chair of the Affordable Credit Challenge judging panel
AutoRek wins contract for IFRS 17 Reconciliations
Scottish fintech AutoRek has announced that they have been chosen as the preferred reconciliation tool for a major international underwriter. The Glasgow based fintech firm will help its new client to comply with IFRS 17 standards.
IFRS 17 is very complex and one the biggest, if not the biggest, changes to financial accounting in insurance since Solvency II. AutoRek had helped many of its customers with Solvency II and is now working with them on IFRS 17 infrastructure.
By performing all reconciliations, Autorek will ensure that data quality and completeness are following the highest standards as defined in the IFRS 17.
One of the key reasons AutoRek was selected was the flexibility the solution offers in relation to the ever-changing future requirements.
Autorek will enable its new client to achieve:
- Efficiency ”“ Significant time saving due to the reduction of manual processes.
- Transparency ”“ Clearly defined process and controls framework which maintains the integrity of reconciliations.
- Data Quality Assurance ”“ Each time data is loaded it is validated for its accuracy and completeness to ensure integrity.
- Audibility ”“ The system maintains a full audit trail at a transactional level ensuring accountability.
“This represents a significant win for AutoRek and we are looking forward to continuing to develop our IFRS 17 offering as we work towards the go live date in January 2023”.
Piers Williams, Head of Insurance at AutoRek
Scottish Fintech Giftround doing its bit to help
Scottish Fintech, GiftRound has taken quick actions to assist the most vulnerable amid Coronavirus pandemic.
By changing its fee structure, it will help those in need. The company will be adding a small fee of £1 to every contribution made into a group gifting collection. Every £1 will be given in full to a UK charity working to help people in communities who’ve been affected by the COVID-19.
“Individuals, families, small businesses and large corporations are all going to feel the fall-out of this unprecedented pandemic. We need to pull together as a community and support one another in every way we can. We believe the future of GiftRound lies in the gift that gives again’. We need to be supporting the organisations that are working on the frontline with the most vulnerable in our communities.”
Craig Forsythe, Founder of GiftRound
GiftRound’s vision is to change the way we group collect for gifts in the future.
Money Dashboard recognised once more at the British Banking Awards
Scottish fintech Money Dashboard, was named Best Personal Finance App at the 2020 British Banking Awards. Money Dashboard also won this award in 2017 and 2018. The British Bank Award is a celebration of new innovative services which benefit UK consumers.
The company now has over 500,000 registered users who use the platform on a regular basis to manage their finances.
The solution allow people to see all their accounts in one place and now connects with products such as Revolut, Monzo, Starling and Wealthify – all of whom also took home awards on the night.
“We’re delighted to have been recognised by our customers as the UK’s best personal finance app for a third time. This is such an exciting time for independent fintechs like Money Dashboard. Millions of customers are now embracing new fintech products and are therefore benefiting from cheaper, faster and better services. We play a crucial role in bringing all those services together on a personalised dashboard for our customers.”
Steve Tigar, Money Dashboard CEO
Money Dashboard is preparing for a major product launch in the coming months and people can register their interest now.
Modulr, new principal issuing member of Visa
Scottish fintech Modulr just announced it has become a principal issuing member of Visa. As such they have access to the industry-leading global payments network and have the opportunity to enhance their proposition with new features (optimised pricing, faster and easier ways to launch Visa products).
Modulr removes the need for an intermediary bank. They can issue Visa products directly, which, in terms, allow for greater control over delivery, payment infrastructure and scheme compliance issues.
Modulr will use the partnership to accelerate its impressive growth in Europe. The fintech will launch card capabilities in both the consumer and business spaces soon, as well as additional issuing currencies.
“Gaining direct access to key financial infrastructure, such as the Visa network, means that we gain more control and are able to deliver faster, simpler and increasingly friction-free full payment capability to our clients. By opening up access to non-banks such as ourselves, it also helps to provide a more level playing field for competition in the sector.
We look forward to extending the functionality of Modulr’s core platform with a leading card scheme, enabling us not only to build a more reliable service, but to pioneer payments innovations even faster.”
Myles Stephenson, CEO of Modulr
“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Modulr, an exciting payments platform that enables digital businesses to offer innovative, user friendly, payment solutions. We look forward to working with Modulr as it looks to expand its portfolio and grow across key sectors in Europe such as travel. We look forward to seeing how our partnership will enable even more businesses across the UK and Europe to benefit from Visa products, driven by powerful payment solutions built by Modulr.”
Jill Docherty, Head of Business Development, UK & Ireland at Visa
In 2019, Modulr became one of only a few non-banks to gain direct access to Bacs and Faster Payments and recently won Best Initiative from an SME at the Card & Payments Awards 2020.
Scottish fintech iDelta launches Open Banking Insights app
Edinburgh-based fintech iDelta announced the launch of its Open Banking Insight app to traditional banks combat the rapid rise of online challengers.
Last year, the implementation of Open Banking required the UK’s 300 banks and 45 building societies to release customer bank transaction data to authorised third parties with customer approval. Customers can therefore access their bank accounts using new solutions that make it easier to see several accounts in one place.
Scottish fintech iDelta developed a new app that provides retail banks with data driven insights on all aspects of business and infrastructure performance.
The iDelta Open Banking app allows incumbents to gain visibility on whether or not they are satisfying their customers needs. Indeed, with iDelta they can analyse and understand the interactions their customers are having with other providers.
“Open Banking is intended to increase competition in the marketplace, and in a competitive environment you get innovation. While challenger banks and other financial third parties are revolutionising the marketplace, there is still huge opportunity here for the incumbent banks to drive forward innovation, using insights gleaned from existing customer data to develop customer-focused products”.
“Our app gives the market a low-cost, highly efficient and extensible way of providing a business with a central view of their customer banking channel. Banks that choose to fully use the data they are generating, with the app we have built, will position themselves at the forefront of this new channel of business.”
Stuart Robertson, director at iDelta
The app uses an abstraction layer to deal with the fact that every bank will have different technology stacks. This allows its dashboards and reports to work with each bank’s systems with minimal customisation.
Money Dashboard and Wealthify to team up
Money Dashboard, the Scottish fintech that helps people manage their finances has just announced an integration with robo-investor Wealthify. This integration will let users view their investment accounts alongside the other current, credit and savings accounts they hold.
The Money Dashboard app lets people aggregate their various accounts and understand their spending habits to help them save and budget. Wealthify are the first investment integration rolled out by the app.
Wealthify provides an an online investment service. People can easily start investing with as little as £1. The investments are made via investment products such as ISAs, General Investment Accounts, and Junior ISAs and soon-to-be-launched Self Invested Personal Pensions.
This announcement follows Money Dashboard’s recent collaborations with leading challenger banks including Monzo, Starling Bank and Revolut.
“Our mission is to help people from all walks of life master their money, so we’re delighted to be rolling out integrations with innovative FinTechs such as Wealthify and making it simple for users to track their investments as well as their day-to-day spending and saving. Having complete visibility over one’s finances in real-time makes it much easier for people to understand their overall financial situation and to progress to where they want to be. This integration is one of a number of exciting new connections we’ll be making with providers across the financial landscape in the coming months”.
Steve Tigar, Money Dashboard CEO
“At Wealthify, we aim to make investing as simple, accessible and transparent as possible. Our integration with Money Dashboard is a fantastic fit for both brands, allowing our customers even greater visibility and control of their money. We are thrilled to be the first digital wealth management platform to partner with Money Dashboard ”“ our values are closely aligned and we have great respect for what they are doing.”
Richard Theo, Wealthify CEO
Fintech business leader named 2020 AccelerateHER Awards Rising Star
Monika Ohashi, CIO of Edinburgh-based fintech business PolyDigi Tech has been named as the Rising Star for this year’s AccelerateHER Awards, an accolade which recognises a female company founder with the best early stage business idea.
Monika co-founded PolyDigi in 2012. The company has already gained recognition from Bank of China’s Hong Kong division for its SIM card authentication-focused patent.
As the Rising Star she will benefit from a package of in-kind support from AccelerateHER’s network of professional partners. She will also have the opportunity to further showcase her business at the awards finals in March where 12 aspirational female company founders have been shortlisted.
This year’s programme called for applications from businesswomen whose companies fit into one of four specific categories: CleanTech and Climate; Disruptive Innovation; MedTech and Science; and FinTech and Cyber Security. Three companies from each sector made it onto the 2020 shortlist.
The three finalists from the CleanTech and Climate category were Jacqueline Morrison of Cedeco Contractors, developers of an offshore wind turbine installation solution; Aslihan Penley of Nomad Engineers, a green wave energy business; and Elaine Galston of Tubular Sciences, creators of a low carbon pipeline connection system.
Shortlisted under the Disruptive Innovation category were Fiona Gillies of content creation market disruptors SMASH; Chantal Epp of performance sports music licensing solution ClicknClear; and Tersha Willis of Terrible Merch, an app-supported music merchandising business.
Among the MedTech and Science category winners was Diane Harbison of health data platform Decipher Analytics. The other category finalists were Claudia Freigang of Hearing Diagnostics, developers of hearing screening technology; and Lise Pape of mobility equipment supplier Walk the Path.
The FinTech and Cyber Security category finalists were Sheila Hogan of Biscuit Tin Planning, developers of a digitally secure data storage vault; Dr Tayyaba Nafees of CyberShell Solutions, developers of a cost effective cyber security system; and Kiran Bhagotra of ProtectBox, a cybersecurity comparison web service.
The short-listed companies were announced following pitches by 24 semi-finalists to the AccelerateHER Awards judging panel. Four winners, one from each category, will be revealed at the finals event on 26 March at Barclay’s Eagle Lab within Edinburgh’s Codebase. Each winner will secure a free slot on a market-building trade mission to Europe or North America to showcase their business to industry contacts and global investors.
“I’m delighted to announce Monika Ohashi as the Rising Star for this year’s AccelerateHER Awards. While PolyDigi may not be quite at the right stage to benefit from winning a place on our market building missions just yet, we join others in seeing its huge future potential. This latest accolade for Monkia will help in their growth journey.“I would also like to congratulate our 2020 finalists. We’re delighted to have received so many great submissions from technology, life sciences and environmentally-focused companies. It is encouraging to see so many innovative businesses being developed across four core sectors which are firmly on the radar of the global investment community.”
Jackie Waring, CEO of Investing Women