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Interview with Stephen Ingledew on why fintech matters

Our CEO Stephen Ingledew was interviewed by the Enterprise Pathway Programme team from Strathclyde university.

He gave his view on why fintech matters, the impact it can have on society and why it provides exciting new jobs for the future.

What is Fintech?

Fintech is the blend of new technologies, digital including data, with the world of financial services. Now that’s important because every one of us, in our personal and our working lives are impacted by the role of financial services. So Fintech is actually the opportunity to reinvent the way that those financial services are delivered through to all of us as individuals but also through to businesses as well

Why is it important to innovate in Fintech?

There’s real importance behind Fintech, the opportunity here to innovate. One is because of our needs as consumers are changing, in terms of our expectation, the need to access good quality products, the need to understand our money in a far better way.
And secondly the opportunity to innovate comes from the new technologies. Of course the digital world whether it’s the mobile phone, but the access to data, the use of artificial intelligence all provide new ways in which financial services can be delivered to us all.

What opportunities are there to innovate in fintech?

So there are a significant number of areas where there’s an opportunity to innovate. The key is to start off with the human need, and so think of yourself as individuals, think of the communities you live in, think of those around you and how actually, if they had better access to financial products a better understanding the way that financial world works, the better use of financial data, and how that could improve accessibility and all the other benefits that come from that. And then work back to think, well actually, the new technologies can actually improve that engagement, can improve that experience
So the key with fintech is not to start with the fin tech is that you start with the human being and work back from that and then think about how new technologies can be applied in the future.
The big opportunity here, that students have, is that you can come at it with a fresh pair of eyes, fresh thinking and more diverse thinking. So rather than think: “how do we actually in a small way slightly improve some of the financial products?”, actually, go back to the real need of why those products are in place, the way they’re delivered, whether it’s through a mobile phone or even through some other ways in a community.
So it’s that fresh thinking, diverse thinking, you don’t have to be a financial expert to be involved in fintech. In fact, sometimes, it’s an advantage not to be a financial expert.

What support is available for fintech businesses?

Fintech in Scotland is particularly exciting because there is a an environment that’s encouraging innovative new businesses such as Strathclyde University. Alongside that you’ve got an established financial services market, very big organisations, the big banks whether it’s RBS, HSBC. the international banks, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are all here in Scotland and they all want to innovate.
If you blend that together with the opportunity of bringing together new enterprises with established enterprises and that University sort of pedigree you’ve got a real blend of all the key ingredients to generate a new innovative environment.

What examples are there in terms of existing fintech businesses?

So let’s just take an example of an increasing number of people working in the gig economy. The gig economy is where your your working day your working week is up and down and therefore your pay is up and down and therefore how do you make sure the financial products relate to a much more variable way in which you earn money and want to earn money.
And when you work and when you don’t work rather than the traditional approach expecting you’re in a 9 to 5 job for 40 years. Those days have gone. Much more flexible working means much more flexible way in which people earn and their financial products need to relate to that.

What advice would you give to those considering a career in Fintech?

What I would really emphasise to the teams is the importance of focusing on the human need. The opportunity about meeting that need in a very different way, to deliver financial services in a better way.  I wouldn’t focus really on the technicalities of how the products have worked in the past or how the taxes work or even how some of the technologies are being applied.
Don’t get into the nuts and bolts of blockchain and artificial intelligence. There’s enough out there really for that to be addressed at the right sort time. What’s important with fintech is actually the focus around the need and the different ways that need can be met with a different type of thinking, diverse thinking again going forward that allows us to really make a real shift in the way that financial services is provided through to individuals and to businesses.
Actually fintech provides a real significant opportunity. Yet clearly from an economic point of view the opportunity for economic growth in financial services, very crucial to the Scottish economy. But also in terms of employment the new jobs of the future. But alongside that is the economic with the social benefits as one of the social outcomes greater inclusion more diversity a richer way in which more communities are engaging in financial services  rather than being left out or excluded. So this is an opportunity to combine those economic and social benefits alongside each other to the benefit of everybody.

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.

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.

The UK FinTech Census 2019 has launched

Building on the success of the 2017 initiative, this second edition will create a unique and accurate fact-base for the UK FinTech sector, and attract the attention of international investors and domestic policymakers, particularly officials at HM Treasury, who are keen to use this data to inform their support for the FinTech Sector.

 

The census will provide Scottish FinTechs with:

  • A clear picture of the sector to Government: the 2017 census was used to inform policy across the areas of tax, employment, regulation and investment
  • Greater visibility of the sector to investors and talent: the census will help promote the opportunities in Scottish FinTech to international investors and those looking to work in the sector
  • Sector benchmarks: the census will enable you to benchmark your business against the broader FinTech sector

 

To help us gain an inclusive view of the industry today, and ensure that the FinTechs based in Scotland are represented, please complete the survey by Friday, 22 March 2019.

 

Please click here for the survey

 

The previous 2017 census can be found here: https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-UK-FinTech-Census-2017/$FILE/EY-UK-FinTech-Census-2017.pdf

UK Ranks #2 for Startups in Europe. How Does Scotland Compare?

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Article written by Erin Yurday at NimbleFins 

A recent study by NimbleFins showed that the United Kingdom ranked #2 in a study of the best countries in Europe for startups. Germany finished first, in part due to stronger economic health and a better business climate than in the UK. Scotland certainly had a hand in the UK’s second place finish, for instance pulling up the UK’s GDP growth estimates.

 

In order to compare the 50 European countries in the study, NimbleFins analysed data from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the OECD and UNESCO to arrive at their rankings, using metrics related to economic health, the cost of doing business, business climate and labour quality.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses in the UK

The UK’s #2 overall ranking is driven primarily by a strong showing in the Cost of Doing Business category, where they ranked third behind the Czech Republic and Estonia. Lower-than-average costs of living and salary expectations mean that a new company in the UK should benefit from lower expenses than in many other European countries.

A plan for decreasing corporate taxes will only serve to make the UK even more attractive to new startups, from a financial perspective.

The UK was held back by weaker economic health and, perhaps surprisingly, less trust in the justice system than in most other top 12 countries. While educational attainment levels were lower in the UK than many other European countries, the UK ranked 4thout of the top 12 for offering specialized training services””enabling startups to help develop their employees’ skills and individuals to advance their skills in order to apply for new jobs and improve their marketability.

 

How Scotland Compares: Survival Rates

While most of the data used in the study was not available for Scotland specifically, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) produces other data that lets us see how startups in Scotland fare compared to the rest of the UK.

Using the ONS’s Business Demography study data, we can see that startups in Scotland have slightly higher survival rates after 5 years than the UK average (43.7% vs. 43.2%) and noticeably higher survival rates than those based in London, the startup capital of Europe (43.7% vs. 39.3%).

 

 

How Scotland Compares: Startup Births

Around 5% of the UK’s startups are located in Scotland. In 2016, the most recent ONS data available, entrepreneurs began 22,270 new companies in Scotland.

 

Over the five years between 2012 and 2016 the annual birth rate of Scottish startups rose from 17,385 to 22,270, an increase of 4,885 startups per year representing 28% growth over the five years””proving that the Scottish startup scene is active and growing.

 

 

On top of this solid growth, the active community of entrepreneurs, support networks and development programmes in Scotland (e.g., The Data Lab’s MSc. Placement Programme) surely contributed to Scotland helping the UK achieve the #2 spot for Best Countries in Europe for Startups.

 

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Spreading The FinTech Network Far and Wide

This last couple of weeks has reinforced to me once again the enormous value in developing the fintech network far and wide.

I’ve believed from the outset that developing a broader and deeper network will enable the community of fintech SME enterprises to thrive and grow as well establish Scotland a significant global fintech cluster.

Therefore, it was a real privilege to share this philosophy at the Scottish Business Network (SBN) event on Tuesday evening in London

 

Scottish Business Network

The SBN team is by far the exemplar role model in how to bring a diverse group of business leaders together to establish a dynamic network of people sharing a mutual interest in enterprise and innovation.

The event on Tuesday evening very much demonstrated this, organized expertly by Christine Esson and hosted by Alex Threipland and the Silicon Valley Bank team

It was wonderful to hear from Jo Halliday of Talking Medicines and Isobel Brown from Internet of Equals share their stories on their terrific enterprises

I very much appreciated the opportunity to share with the full house of SBN members and guests the role of Fintech Scotland in leveraging the Scottish fintech network to establish a global centre of excellence.

Big thank you to the inspiring host of the evening, Russell Dalgleish, who for a number of years now has provided me with valuable counsel, encouragement and insight.

The SBN event was of real value in further building the Scottish fintech network in London but also on a broader global level.

This is something SBN team is extremely well versed in doing with its community of global scots around the world and something the fintech community will be able to leverage going forward.

 

Global Network

Building visibility of the fintech developments on an international level is something we are seeing the benefits from in this early part of 2019.

My time in London coincided with a visit from by Avi Karani, the founder and CEO of Alice Financial, the market leading New York fintech firm.

Great to catch up and looking forward to welcoming Avi and his CTO Paul to Scotland very soon.

Earlier in the day I enjoyed meeting up with Miten Amin of VendEx Solutions, a new exciting fintech enterprise platform which we are looking to collaborate with to develop the global network connections for Scottish firms.

Following the recent trade mission to Switzerland I was introduced to Shantanu Bhagwat of the Department of International Trade Venture Capital Unit, who I met in London on Tuesday.

Great conversation with Shantanu on how we can leverage their global network of investors to connect with the innovative fintech enterprises in Scotland.

There will be opportunities to expand on this in late April with Fintech Week and it was useful to catch up with Peter Cunane of Innovate Finance to discuss working together on their Global Summit in London

Looking forward to working with Charlotte and the Innovate Finance team along with Julian Wells of FinTech North on demonstrating the value from an extensive global fintech network.

There are also plans for major global conferences in Scotland which will certainly expand the fintech network.

For example, very much appreciate the great introduction by the wonderful Amanda Fergusson of Marketing Edinburgh to the ESOMAR team regarding their global data conference

This will provide great opportunities to demonstrate data driven fintech innovation from Scotland and looking forward to working with seeing Angela, Neda and Rhiannon on this.

Then also brilliant working with Professor Emilios Avgouleas, Paul Mosson from Law Society of Scotland, Gordon Dow from the University of Edinburgh and Laura Henry from Marketing Edinburgh on the proposed International Law Conference coming to Edinburgh.

Global events such as this reinforce the innovation taking place in Scotland and help build the international connections for Scottish fintech enterprises

A super example of this is the Well Being Alliance, a global movement with firm roots in Scotland in which fintech can play a major role. Thanks to Una Bartley and Jock Encombe, another wonderful long standing network connection, for involving me in this great initiative.

Very much enjoyed the inaugural meeting at the Scottish Parliament with excellent presentation from Dr Katherine Trebeck, Peter Kelly of Poverty Alliance and Andrew Cave of Baillie Gifford

It was great to be there with some of the larger financial institutions such as Aberdeen Standard, RBS and Baillie Gifford collaborating in this valuable network as well as meeting new network contacts such as Charlotte Millar from New Economy

 

Collaboration Network

There are an increasing number of examples of larger organisations recognizing the value of the Scottish fintech network and looking to play a more active role.

For example, useful to catch up with Robert McKillop and Ross Hayter at Aberdeen Standard Investments on Thursday to discuss mutual fintech innovation opportunities in the asset management sector.

Then also to meet up with Mark Napier of JP Morgan on how to give greater visibility to the exciting developments in Glasgow across fintech enterprises and large organizations.

This was discussed further with the inspiring Michael Young and Rob Huggins of MBN Solutions, who already do so much in amplifying the data driven innovation and talent being developed across Scotland

I’ve also been encouraged by the new interest in the Scottish fintech network and cluster from large organizations hearing about the developments for the first time.

For example, I enjoyed meeting Laura Mason, chief executive of L&G Retirement to talk through mutual areas to explore on innovation

Alongside this the FinTech Scotland strategic partners play a crucial role in the expanding network.

It was valuable to catch up with Simon Pink and Mairi Cairney of IBM to plan joint initiatives and then while in London meet with the Equifax executive team to talk through collaboration progress.

Thank you, Neil Stephenson and Robert McKechnie for hosting me, I very valued the conversation with Equifax colleagues Suzanne Brown, Rhona Parry, Jorge Hernandez, John Power and the breadth of their strategic engagement with Fintech Scotland.

HSBC was at the forefront in creating FinTech Scotland just over a year ago through Colin Halpin’s leadership, and it was fantastic to catch up with Marc Ellis, Paul Macdonald and KC (Kwok Ching Tsui) on the areas we can progress

Excited about connecting more Scottish fintech community into the HSBC innovation sandpit’ and developing fintech collaboration opportunities with the University of Edinburgh

We’ll be progressing this in a couple of weeks when Frank Tong, KC will have an opportunity to meet some of the Scottish fintech community in Edinburgh.

Thank you to Ahmed El Rayis from the University’s School of Informatics for arranging this exciting session which will be a great opportunity to showcase the expertise of the Scottish fintech network in action.

 

Expert Network

The expertise of the Scottish universities in the fintech network is a significant component of the innovation and entrepreneur activity.

Very evident this week, with the launch by Daniel Broby and his team at University of Strathclyde of a new fintech enterprise Listings Ledger.

Hugely exciting and another example of how fintech activity in Glasgow is thriving in so many ways

This was something which was high on the agenda a meeting with Charlie and Billy from HPE with Adrian, Olga and Tim from University of Strathclyde a couple of weeks ago.

Later that day, it was fantastic to meet up with the newly formed Strathclyde University Student Fintech Society who are going to be another fabulous active addition to the Glasgow fintech network.

The meeting with students wanting to be involved in the fintech network is always very motivating and I was delighted to join Louise of Common Purpose to support the Heriot Watt students on their innovation task.

The role of students, amongst a host of other areas related to the fintech network, was also a key part of the conversation with Gail Boag, David Potter and Brian Windram of Edinburgh Napier University recently.

Excited about working with the team to embrace the academic and student expertise in the coming months.

Similarly, with the initiatives at the University of Edinburgh such as the setting up of the new European Digital Office focused on fintech in the Bayes Centre.

Great to catch up with Morgan Gillies, Gbenga Ibikunle and Damien McGarrigle on this and sharing this fantastic opportunity with the fintech network across Scotland.

Another initiative which is progressing in putting resource in place to take forward is the global open finance centre of excellence.

Thank you Damien for the updates and coordinating the support from the University, Scottish Enterprise and FDATA.

The Open Banking Excellence meet up on Monday evening gave me the opportunity to share the latest developments on the Centre of Excellence with people from across the network.

Thank you to the terrific Dave Jennings and The ID Co team for hosting the session and to the always insightful Stephen Hart for his impromptu session on open banking evolution.

 

Communication Network

The various meet ups across the Scottish network are hugely valuable in engaging the broad range of participants, I just wish I had more hours in the day to participate!!

Therefore, I always find it valuable to catch up with communication leaders who support the fintech network such as Andy McIver from Message Matters.

Thanks, Andy, for your ongoing support and looking forward to pushing forward on building the Scottish fintech communication channels even further, especially with open banking.

This week it was also an absolute pleasure to meet up with Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood Communications and share our mutual objectives and plans.

Very much look forward to working with Mandy and the team, especially with the exciting emerging developments in respect of fintech, GovTech and CivTech.

The Scottish Enterprise team have always played a leading role in working with FinTech Scotland in developing the network

So, it was valuable to catch up with John Booth when I was in Glasgow to talk through the collaboration opportunities to amplify the substantive examples of positive innovation.

 

Running Network

My running network is almost as dynamic and diverse as the Scottish fintech network!!

Everything from Strava to Garmin to Good Run Guide to Facebook running groups and more!

My latest running race adventures took me to South Lanarkshire and the town of Strathaven for the Run with the Wind half marathon’.

The reality was it was more of a run against the gales and hailstorms whilst climbing several hundred feet!! It was a great tester and the warm Scotch broth at the end was most welcome.

Next up is the Meadows Half Marathon a week on Sunday, involving nine laps of Edinburgh Meadows!

Before then, there is lots more network connecting to be done around the streets of Scotland and beyond. Until next time

Engage Invest Exploit

Scotland has long been recognised as a nation with an established financial cluster and a reputation for innovation – we even invented the Bank of England! By bringing together entrepreneurs, the established financial sector, public sector, government, accelerators and universities, Fintech Scotland has facilitated collaborative innovation across the fintech ecosystem and the momentum behind it has been palpable.

The talent pools in Scotland in financial services and technology have ensured that in the past year alone the number of fintech companies in Scotland has grown threefold. In addition to the growing international fintech companies taking advantage of the reduced capital cost of salaries and office accommodation in Scotland, innovative new homebuilt businesses are creating disruptive and exciting fintech ideas; ensuring that Scotland is building firm foundations to support its aspiration to become one of the top five fintech hubs in the world.

It’s little wonder, then, that within the data driven sectors to be represented on 24thApril in Edinburgh at Engage Invest Exploit(EIE), fintech make up almost a third of the 50+ companies taking part. Now in its 11th year, Engage Invest Exploit draws a global audience of investors and connects them with some of the most ambitious and innovative data-driven companies.

EIE, powered by Informatics Ventures,was at the genesis of the tech ecosystem in Scotland and currently occupies pole position as an International thought leader at the cutting edge of data centric innovation. From its humble beginnings within Appleton Towers at University of Edinburgh, Engage Invest Exploit (EIE) has grown exponentially to become Scotland’s premier tech investor showcase.

Informatics Ventures, located at the heart of the University of Edinburgh, part of the School of Informatics and nestled within the new Bayes Centre  (the first of the City Deal Data Driven Innovation hubs designed to foster collaboration and drive the ambition to establish Scotland as the Data Capital of Europe) provides an eclectic mix of practitioner-led entrepreneurship, education, networking and an intense investor ready programme to ensure the participating companies are pitch-fit for the event.

EIE fintech alumni include companies such as Float”“ an intuitive visual cash flow forecasting business ”“ which has drawn on the wealth of tech talent located in Edinburgh. The investor readiness programme developed by Informatics Ventures allowed us to refine and hone the Float pitch for investors and potential customers’ CEO Colin Hewitt commented. From the founding team who pitched way back in the early days of EIE, Float continues to grow beyond its current team of 20and expand its customer base to create a revenue generating, sustainable business with ambitions beyond the 40 countries it already operates in.

Companies taking part in previous EIE events have gone on to attract over £650Million from seed through series A and follow on funding. Last year’s cohort has already secured investment in excess of £4.8Million.

On 24thApril, at McEwan Hall in Edinburgh, more than fifty new and returning businesses will take to the stage to pitch to the investor audience, hoping to stand out from the crowd. Amongst them are the 14 fintech and cybersecurity’ ventures, includingAllatus Unity(creating a powerful regulatory reporting and data governance tech solution),Amiqus  (fast secure anti-money laundering identity and compliance checks) and Squarebook(addressing the capital raising needs of high growth companies and introducing a new approach to the IPO process).

EIE attracts around 1000 attendees ”“ international investors, young companies and a high-calibre business audience. It’s the must attend tech investor event in Scotland. The advanced saver discount is available until 31stMarchfor ticket and table sales. Keynote speakers at this year’s event will include Nagraj Kashyap, Corporate Vice President of M12, previously Microsoft Ventures.

 

Jane Kennedy is Product and Community Manager of TalentSpark, powered by Eden Scott. TalentSpark is a gold sponsor of EIE and Jane is seconded to the Informatics Ventures team to help deliver EIE.

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Developing the Global FinTech Fellowship

This past two weeks has involved a range of international activities which have further contributed to Scotland being recognized as a global fintech centre.

The time has never been so important to empahsise our global collaboration and inclusive international mindset with all corners of the world, especially Europe.

Importantly, the positive engagement from the international community to fintech developments in Scotland has been hugely encouraging, very much reflected in last week’s trade mission to Switzerland.

 

European Fellowship

Last week it was a privilege to join seven Scottish fintech firms on the trade mission to Zurich to meet with a range of financial institutions and stakeholders from Switzerland.

Each of the senior leaders from the seven firms delivered compelling presentations on their business propositions to a very engaged European audience.

Congratulations to Jason Forsyth from Agenor Iceflo, David Waddington from Asura Financial, Wayne Johnson from Encompass, David Smith from Renovite, Dave Jennings form The ID Co and Tom Butcher from Trakz Labs for fantastic engagement and showing fintech innovation at its very best.

Massive thanks must go to the brilliant Pat Kunz of Scottish Development International, Noel McEvoy, Marie Gow and James Penn of the Department for International Trade who engineered the delivery of such a constructive trade mission.

We were hosted by the wonderful Sabrina Schenardi at the excellent SIX Group offices for the mission which was chaired by the awesome Manuela Andalora who acted as the magnificent master of ceremony throughout the event.

It was a terrific to join an esteemed panel of Gavin Littlejohn, Katharina Bart, Keith Phillips of the Investment Association and Michael Coletta of London Stock Exchange to share thoughts how fintech can really change the financial services landscape for good.

Later in the day it was great to hear from major influencers, Catherine McGuiness of the City of London Corporation, Maria Leistner of UBS, David Bundi of PWC, Angela Yore of SkyParlour and Petra Arends-Paltzer on driving creating diversity through fintech initiatives.

On the Thursday evening, I was given the opportunity to host a Scotland dinner to bring together the fintech firms with a range of key influencers, investors and senior executives.

This gave me the opportunity to share Scotland’s international mindset based on community, collaboration and a progressive culture.

This was then brought alive even further by the inspiring Gavin Littlejohn who shared the emerging developments of a Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence in Scotland

I must also thank Catherine McGuiness who shared so eloquently her thoughts on the close collaboration between the City of London and Scotland in supporting shared objectives.

The visit to Switzerland also gave the opportunity to catch up with some of the Avaloq team including the innovative Anders Christensen and Philippe Meyer.

Avaloq are certainly a “Rolls Royce’ fintech enterprise making great strides and it is a real privilege that they are one of FinTech Scotland’s founding partners, further demonstrating their strategic leadership credentials

The links with Switzerland are growing stronger and it was wonderful to meet Caroline Rosenberger and Mike Johnson from the Chamber of Commerce team who are doing so much to build on this

Our European engagements have also extended to France this last two weeks and Mickael Paris has been at the Paris FinTech Forum, where once again we were given a very warm welcome and support.

Developing the European fintech collaboration and fellowship opportunities will continue to be an important focus for FinTech Scotland in 2019.

 

London Fellowship

The Switzerland trade mission also gave me the opportunity to meet and listen to some exciting London based fintech enterprises such as Rebecca Peche from Smart Pension, Sean Hunter from Oak North and Justin Farr-Jones from Creditscript.

I’m hoping they will all make a visit to the fintech community in Scotland soon.

This week saw many of the Scottish financial services and fintech leaders in London for the official launch of Scotland’s financial services prospectus at the Mansion House in the City.

It was a wonderful Burns night occasion hosted by the City of London Mayor which was brought alive by an inspiring speech by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon and then followed by an awesome Address to a Haggis’ by Steve Ewing of Informatic Ventures.

The evening was a special fellowship opportunity to catch up with many of the inspiring leaders in Scotland such as Gillian Docherty, Russell Dalgleish and Jamie Coleman as well as make new friends such as Anyi Hobson of Commerzbank.

Big congratulations to Clare Carswell and Bronwyn Torrie from Scottish Financial Enterprise for a wonderful evening and for bringing alive Scotland Is Now’ with the prospectus.

The next morning it was along to the London Stock Exchange for the launch of Elite Scotland, the investment funding programme to support high growth companies such as Encompass.

Terrific to listen to Gordon McArthur of Beeks Financial on their impressive journey as well as hear from many of the leading figures from the Scottish investor community such as Sarah Hardy of Archangel Investors, Fraser Lusty of Equity Gap and Jackie Waring of Investing Women.

Supporting fintech firms in accessing funding options is a key priority and it was valuable to have a session recently with a range of investors on progressing this.

Many thanks to Andrew Coleman of Equity gap, Ian Mitchelmore of British Business Bank, Thomas Brock of BE Group, Michiel Smith of Apollo, Aidan Macmillan of Par Equity and Andrew Sloane of ADV for a very constructive session with actions we will follow up on.

The time in London gave me the opportunity meet up with Vishal Patel of Anthemis Group to discuss how we may work together in connecting with fintech investment opportunities in Scotland.

Very much looking forward to welcoming Vishal to Scotland in April to introduce to some of the exciting fintech firms developing a national and global presence.

 

Global Fellowship

The global connections are a key part in building Scotland’s fintech reputation for international development as well as inward investment.

Fantastic news last week to hear that the Hong Kong based fintech Actelligent will be developing their exciting enterprise in Scotland. Great leadership by Graham Hatton, David Leven and the SDI team.

We are delighted to welcome Charmaine Lo and the team to the Scotland fintech community and support the next stage of their journey along with many other exciting international fintech firms.

There is an opportunity to develop Scottish fintech opportunities with Hong Kong with the opening of the Bridge Pilot Programme. Thank you to Thorsten Terweiden for this.

It was great to share Scotland’s international fintech ambitions with the Global Scot community last week as well and give examples of how we are progressing to be a major fintech centre

Huge thanks to Collette Hughes from SDI for setting up the double webinar to cover all quarters of the world, it was really useful to share the plans of fintech in Scotland

Very much encouraged by the follow up feedback from the Global Scot community from around the world and the offers to support firms as they progress their international plans.

Collaborating to develop the international opportunities is a key part of our partnership with the fantastic team at Deloitte and it was really useful to catch up with Kent Mackenzie and Chris Brown on the areas to focus on for 2019.

The brilliant insights and support from the Deloitte team is a valuable asset for FinTech Scotland.

The global opportunities were also very much on the agenda for the meeting in London with Tom Helm and Sameer Gulati at the Department of International Trade as we discussed the opportunities for leveraging international opportunities.

Very much looking forward to progressing the important work of DIT FinTech Board with Tom and Sameer as well as collaborating for the FinTech Week in Spring of this year along with Graham Hatton and the SDI team.

The FinTech Week showcase event will be the Innovate Finance Global Summit and it was very helpful to catch up with Charlotte Croswell and Rolf Merchant this week in London to develop joint plans.

We’ll also be working with the Fintech North team on this and it was great to catch up with Julian Wells to hear about the terrific work he has been leading in developing the various new initiatives.

I’m very much looking forward to taking up Julian’s offer to speak at the forthcoming FinTech North events in the cities of Manchester and Leeds in the Spring.

Then we’ll be reciprocating by supporting Julian and the team with an event as part of the Fintech Festival in September which will take place across Scotland’s cities.

 

City Fellowship

Scotland’s cities are further enhancing their reputations as major fintech areas of activity and none more so than Glasgow.

On this it was great to meet up with Graham Smith of Glasgow City Council as well as Paul Hughes, Graeme Rennison, Jamie Rankin and Jacqui Cosgrove of Scottish Enterprise on how we can amplify the great activity to a higher level.

From the exciting developments at the University of Strathclyde through to ongoing progress of firms such as market leading Castlight Financial and Previse, there is much to share with the wider world.

Many congratulations to Previse and Edinburgh based LendingCrowd for being selected for the Tech Nation Upscale programme, well deserved recognition of their high growth potential.

I had the opportunity on Thursday to share these and other examples of the exciting fintech developments with the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce members including Niki McKenzie from the highly respected Archangel Investors and the leading academic Professor Joe Goldblatt of Queen Margaret University.

Many thanks to Liz McArevey, Alexia Haramis and Rebecca Neish for inviting me to the meeting which was unfortunately cut short by the firm alarm on the coldest day of the year!

I hope we can reconvene for part two’ of the session to share how the fintech developments in the City are relevant to all sectors and businesses

The close collaboration with the Financial Conduct Authority is a key enabler which further demonstrate the value of fintech fellowship.

In this respect I found it very helpful to catch up with Ed Smith of the FCA in London earlier in the week at the Stratford HQ and highlight some of the valuable work Nicola Anderson is leading for FinTech Scotland whilst on secondment to us.

Then yesterday it was fantastic to see so many of the fintech community and the wider financial services sector come along to the FCA Project Innovate event on Thursday afternoon.

A very big thank you to Maggie Craig for her inspiring leadership and to the engaging Steven McWhirter, Molly Benjamin, Katherine Brown, Laura Royle and Thomas Ward for a valuable event

Many thanks to the other contributors to the discussions, including David Mcllwaine from our strategic partner Pinsent Masons, Fiona Kinsler from the exciting Cyber Security firm EncompassIT and the brilliant Nilixa Devlukia from the Open Banking Team

The collaboration being developed across Scotland between fintech firms, established financial services businesses, Scottish Enterprise, the FCA and the Scottish universities is very powerful and is attracting a lot of interest.

It has been really useful to progress these plans with our strategic partners Craig Wilson and Colin Carmichael of Sopra Steria as well as Neil Cunningham and Robert McKechnie of Equifax especially in connection with university collaboration.

Also great to catch up this week with Anneli Ritari-Stewart and Steve Farquhar from our strategic partner Dentsu Aegis on how we can amplify some of the collaborative innovation taking place across our cities.

There have been other fantastic examples over this last few weeks of collaborative fellowship to support the development of fintech opportunities

For example, wonderful to hear about the successful Fife FinTech Skills Academy pilot which completed this week and the plans to build on the success and take to the next stage

Magnificent example of collaboration between innovative fintech firms such as Renovite and Ingenico along with Fife College and Fife Council. So inspiring.

 

Running Fellowship

My running is often a solo activity, so it was fantastic to have the opportunity to go on a run with fellow runner Pat Kunz of SDI on arrival in Zurich last week.

When Pat said he was going to show me the beautiful sights of Zurich I did not expect this to be a three mile run upwards into the sky above the City.

However, with Pat’s encouragement we made it to the top and the FIFA HQ before enjoying a more leisurely run downhill for three miles.

This all did me a power of good because on Saturday I ran my best Parkrun time for over a year so I guess hills (or should I say mountains) are good for me!!

Thanks Pat, next time it is race around Arthurs Seat when you come over to Edinburgh

My next race is the Strathaven half marathon in a couple of week’s times which I know will involve a few more hills and some wind!! Until next time.

 

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Energised by FinTech Intimacy!

The intimacy of the fintech community and participants across Scotland has certainly given me an energised start to the year after the festive holiday.

Over the this first two weeks of 2019, the opportunity to engage and collaborate with the many people driving fintech innovation has enabled me to hit the ground running.

 

Coffee Shop Fintech Intimacy

And the many welcoming coffee shops across the country have been the venue of choice for the numerous meetings with inspiring fintech entrepreneurs during the last fortnight.

For example, this week it was brilliant to catch up with serial innovator Ross Laurie to hear about his new venture to reinvent part of the way financial services operates.

Scotland is the ideal home for launching Ross’s exciting initiative leveraging the open banking environment before taking to the rest of the financial world.

Open banking and data science are also being capitalized on by the engaging Adrian James (AJ) and his innovative Shoppa enterprise and we had much to talk through when we met last week.

In a short space of time AJ has developed a unique proposition that is going to have a positive impact on customer engagement financial services and beyond.

This will also be the case with Women’s Coin, a truly brilliant innovation which is going to have a world-wide impact in so many ways.

Wonderful to see the dynamic duo, Christine Bamford and Dr Jane Lewis, last week at one of our favourite coffee shops, Nomad.

We are delighted they are looking to develop their enterprise here in Scotland and become part of the diverse fintech community.

Then it was a late afternoon coffee with the magical MoneyMatiX team a few days ago, with the amazing Tynah Matembe and Helene Rodger.

Fantastic to see how their financial engagement prototype is developing and talk through the various take to market strategies.

This is just four examples amongst many others over this last two weeks of meetings at four very different types of coffee shops with Scotland’s diverse fintech enterprises.

Earlier this week the fintech intimacy moved away from the coffee shops to the offices of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for an engagement session with the fintech community.

It was great to having a very diverse group of the fintech community at the meeting and a massive thank you to Nicola Anderson, who is on a year long secondment from the FCA to FinTech Scotland, for putting on such an engaging event.

Many thanks also to Maggie Craig, Alan Drainer and Steven McWhirter for sharing their valuable regulatory insights and experiences.

I know there will be as much interest in the FCA Project Innovate event In Edinburgh on 31stJanuary.

This opportunity to have an intimate constructive engagement with the fintech community is something I am also looking forward to developing with the Scottish Government team leading on digital transformation.

Great to further develop these plans with Clare Mills and Carron Macnab from the Digital team this week along with Paul Gaffney from Hanya.

I’m really looking forward to the next stage of this initiative as it will demonstrate how the fintech community can play a constructive mutually beneficial role with a large organization such as the Government.

 

Big and Small FinTech Intimacy

This big and small fintech intimacy was the focus of the discussions with the very progressive and forward thinking team at Baillie Gifford.

It was great to meet up with Richard McGrail, Evan Delaney and Anurag Agrawal from Baillie Gifford to further develop how they can play an active role in shaping the fintech innovations being developed in Scotland.

This was also the theme of the discussion with Jackie Leiper of Lloyds Banking Group earlier this week as we explored the numerous ways in which to connect into the fintech community and innovative people developing the ideas for the future.

Derek Smith is leading some amazing initiatives at Lloyds demonstrating that big and small can develop a fintech intimacy.

This was even more apparent whilst in the Port Hamilton HQ as we bumped into the brilliant Manu Peleteiro, founder of the Inbest enterprise, which is helping make financial management accessible and inclusive to all.

Consumer inclusion was a key part of my update to the Financial Services Advisory Board (FiSAB) meeting on the second day back after the holidays last Tuesday

This was an opportunity for me to demonstrate how the growing fintech community can play a significant positive role from both a social perspective as well as economic outcomes.

Thank you to Scottish Government Ministers, Derek Mackay and Kate Forbes along with Jim Pettigrew of CYBG and Graeme Jones of the SFE for allowing me to celebrate FinTech Scotland first anniversary at the Board meeting.

Thanks also Shery for producing such a wonderful birthday cake to celebrate the occasion!

Our first anniversary has been well received in the global media over the last few days noting the various developments in Scotland over the last twelve months

Of course, on the ground, fintech innovation will only flourish if the big scale infrastructure is developed for the longer term

There is no one more inspiring to explain this than Keith O’Donnell of Morgan Stanley and it is hugely impressive to listen to Keith on this last week.

On a broader level, it was great to meet up with James King, the founder of Host in Scotland, and the always insightful Polly Purvis of Scotland IS and David Smith of Scottish Enterprise with John Trower and Graeme Malcolm to discuss the importance of data infrastructure for future innovations.

The role of data skills in driving fintech innovation was the focus of the conversation with Katriona Cunningham, Richard Matthews and Gordon Ritchie of Aviva last week as well.

It was great to have Michael Young and Rob Huggins of MBN Solutions with us to talk through their experiences of developing the data talent for the future.

 

University Fintech Intimacy

The fintech intimacy with the Universities across Scotland is something which has enormous potential in so many ways beyond the pure development of new young talent and skilled people.

This was reinforced to me this week in catching up with the fabulous Ellie Mackay from the Entrepreneurial Network team at the University of Strathclyde.

Very impressed on how Ellie and the team are engaging a diverse range of students on potential innovations as part of the fintech cluster development at the University.

Similarly, the potential development of new fintech enterprises through an accelerator programme at the University of Edinburgh with Gordon Donald and John Lonsdale of the Edinburgh Innovations team along Myron Hrycyk and Colin Carmichael of Sopra Steria.

Such an initiative will form an important part of the Edinburgh Futures Institute and it was good to catch up with Lesley McAra and Damien Mcgarrigle last week to discuss how fintech intimacy can have a very big role to play with new collaborations.

The fintech intimacy with the public sector opportunities and working with the CivTech programme is going to be key over the coming months.

This was also the discussion with the inspiring Glasgow School of Arts team, Irene McAra-Williams and Gordon Hush, this week as we considered how to progress the consumer inclusion initiatives further.

Later in the day we met up with Yvonne MacDermid and David at Money Advice Scotland to share the progress we are making and agree next steps in developing the intimacy with the range of fintech innovations to support their work.

The potential powerful impact that fintech could have on peoples lives was further recognized when catching up with Ewan Aitkin, the inspiring chief executive at the Cyrenians who deliver such amazing work.

Ewan and I first met over 35 years ago at university where we were both trying to positively change the world to be more progressive, a mission which we remain true to today albeit our tactics have changed slightly!

 

Enabling FinTech Intimacy

One of the exciting aspects about the fintech intimacy across Scotland is the numerous and diverse participants enabling innovation to flourish.

For example, it is great working with Mark Roger and his Vivolution team as the FinTech Scotland Network Integrator on a range of initiatives.

Developing the access and options for funding fintech enterprises is one such important area and this will be a key focus for our activity in 2019.

Furthermore, working alongside Graeme Rennison and the team at Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Investment Bank is valuable to ensure the fintech community can best leverage the range of product and services available.

There are many other active enabling participants, for example, on Monday in Glasgow it was really useful to catch up with Evelyn McDonald and Steven Hamill, who lead the Scottish Edge team, to discuss collaboration opportunities

We also enjoyed catching up with FinTech Scotland board member Yvonne Dunn, from our strategic partner Pinsent Mason, to discuss plans for the year and build on their fantastic fintech engagement last year.

A very full day in Glasgow finished off with a fascinating and constructive conversation with Nick Cousins, Mark Roger and Doug Morwood on enabling great fintech intimacy with large banks . Thanks Nick for progressing the opportunities on this.

I am hoping to leverage this Scotland strength of enabling fintech intimacy on a global scale in 2019

The first opportunity for this will be next week when I join Pat Kunz on SDI in Switzerland for a fintech trade mission along with Gavin Littlejohn and leaders from a number of market leading fintech firms.

Thank you to Manuela Andaloro for the catch up this week and guiding me through the presentations we will be giving next week in Zurich. More on this in the next Fuse blog in a fortnight.

 

Running Intimacy

I am hoping some of the Scottish fintech leaders joining me in Switzerland next week will join me on a few runs around the beautiful city of Zurich along the Limmat River and a full circuit of Lake Zurich!

Just now I’m up to running 50 miles a week and I need to keep the mileage high with the first marathon in early March fast approaching.

Ive been boosted by my first race of the year, a half marathon at Strathclyde Country Park on the first Sunday of January, which saw me take third place overall and a new trophy for the cabinet.

And yes, there were more than three people running the race!

Whilst I am keeping my feet on the ground, this is my best start to a running year in over four years and I am hoping to defy the physical challenges of getting older with a year of personal bests!

Of course, also planning for the best year yet’ in fintech too! Until next time

The banking landscape of tomorrow

Blog written by Chris Herd, CEO and founder at Nexves

 

Today, fintech companies are innovating around existing products and services to create a better customer experience, tomorrow they will need to do far more. The first wave of challenger banks has amassed huge user numbers by doing little more than providing a more functional user interface, the next leap forward will come from enabling things which were previously impossible.

The future we imagine is akin to a Netflix of Financial services. Fintechs are on the brink of offering consumers a personalised menu of products instead of one-size-fits-all services.

As innovators and disruptors, we have a window of opportunity afforded to us by a unique confluence of circumstances.

The unlocked door to previously inaccessible data endows customers with the chance to receive insights into their spending habits which could save them a fortune.

 

The need to focus on the long term

Ultimately if companies like us do our job properly we’ll end up with a win-win situation. The value to the customers will be as a direct result of our ability to deliver simple products which people use and understand. The more money we keep in our users’ pockets, the higher they will value our services, the more they will trust us to deliver services which are of greater financial benefit. That won’t be achieved over night.

At Nexves, there are a number of key innovations that enable us to achieve things that no other company in the world can match. Mostly, this is through our ability to acquire a level of data which is exponentially more granular than our nearest competitors ”” enriching our intelligence and insights to an extent which was previously unimaginable.

 

How the world is changing


It is always essential to abreast of forthcoming technological developments and trends. They influence people and revolutionise the way we deal with finances.

Our 2018 reading list: https://hackernoon.com/a-cryptopunk-startup-founders-2018-reading-list-a52c7fb6bc0a]

  • The internet as it currently exists will capitulate. The revenue model of advertising only will give way to a distributed model of digital taxation. This will take the form of metered-micropayments for all products, services or content you consume online ”” compensating creators equal to your engagement. Where industries have died, digital tokens will enable those things which acquire most attention to thrive. Cryptocurrency has been fascinating but we are currently in the replication phase ”” where people are trying to reinvent what currently exists ”” instead of doing things with blockchain and cryptocurrency which were previously impossible. We hope to imagine then deliver the latter.

 

  • Peer to peer has been awesome for platform creators but terrible for gig economy workers. As Ubers Valuation has skyrocketed into the hundreds of Billions, rewards for drivers have plummeted. In short, the compensation for providing the service and maintaining the platforms are misaligned. This will change. Service providers will be rewarded with equity in the underlying business through new fractional ownership models. Every trip will equate to a higher stake of ownership. Drive more? Own more.

 

  • Last mile delivery is about to explode. It’s relatively cheap to get a large volume of goods from one geographic location to another but It’s ridiculously expensive to get it from one place in that city to a large number of addresses. Look for there to be a number of VC backed players emerge in this space in the next 18 months. They will initially tie together D2C companies and their community, enabling those businesses to leverage the engagement of the crowd to let their customers benefit and lower delivery costs significantly. I guarantee a unicorn emerges in this domain by 2020.

 

  • Crowdfunding is dead, long live crowdfunding. Investing in equity is prehistoric, consumer purchasing behaviour will become a new form of investing. Voting with your wallet will mean owning through your decisions. Buy something, own it, buy more, own more. Instead of purchasing stocks and shares, everyday consumers will accrue ownership of the futures most exciting companies through their existing purchasing behaviour. This means that the can of coke you are drinking would be a tiny fraction of equity in the business, equally the chocolate bar in your pocket or the soap in your bathroom. Wealth will be redistributed. Where in the past the only beneficiaries of our actions were the shareholders in the business which produced the things we consume ”” there will be a mass reaction against this. Technology will enable a swarm of individuals to cohesively act as one for mutual economic benefit. This will give rise to co-operatively owned brands which produce a vast number of the things we consume. People will be incentivised to act as selfishly as possible, benefitting everyone who does so as well.

 

New solutions needed

That is the world in which we see Nexves playing a central part. In order to participate in this cyclical economy, we need a digital passport which collects our data, protects it, lets you monetise it while enabling the payments alluded to above. We need a mechanism which enables us to hold the equity we earn through our behaviour and access markets to cash out when we desire. We layer on top of any existing bank account and will be the thing which facilitates participation

Strong opinions weakly held is the worst advice we’ve ever heard. Things that are weakly held are cheaply discarded and doing this leads to uncertainty. Instead, continuously challenging the things we believe ”” either destroying or improving them ”” is the framework we operate within. Candour is the most efficient vehicles which enable us to discover things as a startup and challenge conventionally held belief or the dogma which holds others back.