Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ We Have a FinTech Movement

Wow, what an incredible couple of weeks we have had with FinTech Fortnight’, clear evidence that Scotland has a fintech movement on the march!

My head is spinning and adrenalin still pumping as I reflect on the amazing engagement from so many wonderful people at over thirty plus events in the last sixteen days.

The range of events and conferences from Falkirk to Fife, from early mornings to evenings, from Parliament to a pub, from grand places such as Surgeons Hall to Strathclyde University TIC and with guests from Africa to America, and much more, brought alive the fintech movement.

A Community Movement

During recent days many people mentioned how Fintech Fortnight’ was very much a community driven initiative which made it all the more special.

This was evident from the very start two weeks ago with the launch by the local community of the ground breaking Fintech Skills Academy and then carried on everyday thereafter.

For example, the MBN Solutions team delivering three absolutely fantastic events in Edinburgh and Glasgow on topics ranging from Dirty Money, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies and the world of data science.

A massive thank you to the brilliant Michael Young, Rob Huggins and the MBN team for your ongoing fabulous community leadership with these meet ups and for organsing such great talks from Susan Ramonat of Spiritus, David from Castlight Financial, Richard of Previse and Ashrith of H2O.ai.

It was great to talk about the fintech community at the Modulr launch event along with the panel of Myles Stephenson, Jude Cook, Jennifer Houston and Rob Devey, all superbly hosted by Lisa Thomson from Purpose HR. What a terrific atmosphere.

The fabulous atmosphere was also in evident at the Innovate FinTech event held in Codebase, Stirling last Monday evening.

This was expertly organized by the magnificent Rory Archibald and team at Visit Scotland and I must add that Rory has played a broader instrumental role in bringing the whole Fintech Fortnight’ alive.

In Stirling we had three inspiring presenter, Alex Ford of

In Scotland , delighted to see Pinsent Masons launch the first of their regular monthly fintech meet ups this week and it was very appropriate that the theme was global opportunities with so many international friends visiting Scotland in the fortnight.

A Global Movement

FinTech Fortnight neatly coincided with Scottish International Week, a brilliant series of initiatives highlighting Scotland’s global outlook led by the entrepreneurial Russell Dalgleish and the team at Scottish Business Network

This enabled us to demonstrate that fintech in Scotland was also very much a global movement.

Brought alive with the Global Fintech Opportunities event at the start of the fortnight with terrific examples of exporting fintech by Bill Tennent of Payment Centric, Jason Forsyth of Agenor Iceflo and James Varga.

Complemented by hearing from international guests Stefan Pryor, Secretary of State for Commerce from Rhode Island, USA and Joel Ko from Marvelstone, the world leading fintech incubator in Singapore.

Then added to by really great expertise from Lorraine Mallon of SDI, Mark Roger of Vivolution, our Fintech Scotland commercial partner and Nick Sherard from strategic partner Deloitte.

Wow what a session that was for a Monday afternoon!

The worldwide opportunities for Scottish fintech are numerous and so it was great to have specific sessions with our fintech friends from Ireland on Thursday organized with David Clarke of the Scottish Irish Finance Initiative. Thank you to Pinsent Masons for being such fabulous hosts.

Many thanks also to Frazer Lang of Scottish African Business Exchange for inviting Money Matix, Payment Centric and Caseblocks to join me in presenting to the African Heads of Trade from fifteen different countries. A terrific opportunity to develop fintech global collaboration.

On Monday it was great to meet up with Natalia Lyarskaya from Zest Money to share more on why global fintech firms are looking to grow further in Scotland.

Thank you again to the MBN team, Susan Ramonat and the DataLab for meeting with Natalia on Tuesday to share more about Scotland as well as to Cherise Mascarenhas of SDI in India for setting up.

Tuesday evening, I managed to squeeze in time for the Scotland Germany Group meeting at Parliament to consider joint technology opportunities. Good to meet you Stephen Taylor of Technology Scotland.

On Wednesday morning it was good to have an early morning coffee with Brian Brodie to chat through the benefits of building fintech enterprises in Scotland, hope to see you back home’ again soon Brian.

The Deloitte fintech home and away’ event on Thursday was a great way to consider how Scotland can accelerate its move to being a top five global fintech centre.

Many thanks to Kent Mackenzie and Chris Brown for their valuable insights and ongoing strategic support for Fintech Scotland.

Last Thursday evening I was invited to share with the Edinburgh Ambassadors group our ambition to make Scotland a major global fintech centre and how our focus on inclusion and collaboration was key to the success of the fintech movement.

It was a super evening to meet wonderful people from very diverse backgrounds and I very much appreciated the opportunity, thank you the Marketing Edinburgh team and the inspiring Amanda Fergusson.

Talking of taking the message to a wider global audience, it was fabulous to hear about Graeme Jones, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise take the Fintech Fortnight’ messages across to Brussels and the important European Union audiences.

Very important as we enhance Scotland’s collaboration with Europe and demonstrate how the Scottish fintech movement is global, innovative and dynamic.

A Dynamic Movement

The two day Digit FinTech Summit at Dynamic Earth was very much the mega cornerstone event of the Fintech Fortnight’.

Storms and gales could not stop there being a full house of four hundred plus people on each day to hear from a range of thought provoking and innovative fintech leaders.

Ray Bugg, Pete Swift and the Digit team did an amazing job in putting on such a superb summit which brought alive the very best of the dynamic fintech movement in Scotland.

It was great to share the platform with Stuart Lunn from LendingCrowd, Sofie Blakstad of Hive Online and the Government Cabinet Secretary Derek MacKay MSP.

Congratulations Team’ Digit for a mega magnificent couple of days. Thank you also to Callum Sinclair and David Goodbrand for hosting the speakers dinner the night before.

The FinTech Summit was followed on Friday by the excellent Future of FinTech’ conference at Strathclyde University Technology and Innovation Centre led by fintech pioneer Daniel Broby.

It was a privilege to be on the platform with such esteemed speakers including the fintech leaders Martin Leonard of Castlight Financial, Amy Roberts of Spotcap and David Brown plus team from Previse.

The Fintech Fortnight’ has also shown we have much to look forward to with new talent and innovations coming through to grow the fintech movement in Scotland.

The University of Glasgow FinTech Society is a leading example of this and the student engagement at the event last Tuesday was absolutely fantastic.

I am very much looking forward to working with the President of the Society Elisabetta Trasatti and Society team, especially on the Applied FinTech Project.

On the same evening Strathclyde University held their inspiring S100 event for emerging entrepreneurs who are leading fintech initiatives. Congratulations to John McHugh from Gigly, Chris Herd from Nexves and Fraser Edmond from Broker Insights for dynamically leading the way on this.

The conversation at the fintech pub quiz in Glasgow was also very dynamic on Wednesday although a slight hiccup meant it was happening in two places at once! A replay is definitely called for and many thanks to Sergei Pomphrey, Bobby King and Kim Ndungu.

The deep technical know how and leadership of Scottish fintech movement was further in evidence at the Scotland IS Scotsoft Conference on Thursday.

I was delighted to chair the fintech stream and host such brilliant sessions from Ulrich Meyer of KAL ATM, one of our longest established fintechs, Nicola Marham from our strategic partner Sopra Steria, Colin Hewitt, CEO of brilliant Float and Thomas Leritz of the ground breaking Blockpass.

Many thanks to Polly Purvis and the team for such a terrific dynamic conference and the opportunity to show the fintech movement is deep and diverse.

A Diverse Movement

Being a diverse fintech movement is a key Scottish strength and FinTech Fortnight’ has enabled me to share the fintech opportunity to a wider audience

For example, it was great to do a double act with Yvonne Dunn, from our strategic partner Pinsent Masons, at the Financial Services Law Conference on Wednesday chaired by Miller McLean.

Many thanks Anna Bennet for the opportunity to share how the development of fintech and lawtech are very much aligned.

This is a conversation I’ve been having in recent weeks with Paul Mosson from the Law Society of Scotland as there a major areas we can collaborate on.

The importance of being a diverse movement was also a key focus in the presentation to the SFE Professional Services Group with Graeme Jones this week.

Thanks, Ruari Urquart for arranging to discuss how mutli disciplinary collaboration is key to fintech future success.

In addition, being a diverse movement enables us to explore how fintech can be a key enabler in other sectors, including the public sector. I am enjoying the opportunity to work with Trish Quinn and Hugh Wallace on this.

It was a real privilege to meet and listen to Ricky Nicol last week, reinforcing to me the opportunity of fintech enterprises building scale by collaborating with larger institutions.

What a truly amazing story Commsworld is for anyone building a sustainable successful business. One day the story could be a best selling book and even a film!

Developing a business from its early stages was the theme of the Conference on Wednesday for SME’s organized by the engaging David Hood of Edinburgh Institute.

Thank you, David, for inviting me to share the relevance of fintech and our diverse movement with the business leaders during Fintech Fortnight.

I was also given the opportunity to talk about the importance of the fintech movement with other sectors at the Scotland CanDo Forum this week sharing innovation snapshots along with Claire Mack from Renewables Scotland and Henk Berits from the tourism sector.

We very much appreciated the support of Joanna McKenzie from DataLab along with June Love and Karen McAvenue in presenting to the Government Ministers and Forum members.

The breadth of the opportunities for fintech is enormous and in the coming months we will need to prioritise on key areas

This was a key discussion point at the quarterly FiSAB meeting chaired by the First Minister last Wednesday as it was at the FinTech Scotland board meeting a few days before.

It is certainly encouraging to have the broad set of Government and industry executives engaged in the progress of the fintech movement.

Marathon Movement

Fintech Fortnight’ has at times felt like a very demanding albeit enjoyable marathon and I must give a shout out to Shery and Mickael for their continuing unstinting valuable support. Fantastic

Especially as I was suffering from a bug for the early part of the fortnight which had meant I could not do the planned marathon race in Lancaster two weeks ago.

However, I recovered in time to do the Scottish Half marathon in East Lothian last Sunday and surprised myself with a personal best time for the year of 1 min 33 sec !!

This Sunday coming, I hope to follow up with another race, the Great Scottish half marathon in Glasgow.

What a very appropriate place to finish off the FinTech Fortnight. The City’s slogan is People Make Glasgow’ and this also rings true for FinTech Fortnight. People Make Fintech’.

The people across the fintech community and wider have been very much behind bringing the fortnight of activities alive across Scotland, demonstrating we very much have a fintech movement.

Thank you again to everyone involved who participated and joined in, until next time!

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ FinTech Momentum and More

This fortnight has further reinforced the massive momentum behind the plethora of fintech initiatives across Scotland and wearing my running shoes has been essential to keep up with the pace!

What is especially exciting about this momentum is the diversity of participants engaging in the fintech opportunity, all embracing our mission of making a better world for all through financial innovation, collaboration and inclusion.

For example, I was very much energised on meeting David Duffy, chief executive of Clydesdale Yorkshire Bank Group last week, hearing how a major financial institution was very much pioneering to embrace the fintech momentum.

Key to this is the open and progressive way in which the CYBG leadership engage with smaller entrepreneurial enterprises to ensure effective collaboration, fueling new innovation for the Bank.

Collaborative Momentum

This collaborative momentum was also very much in evidence at the Baillie Gifford Fintech Event on Wednesday, held at the impressive new Tynecastle Park.

Anurag Agrawal, Adrian Fern and the team put together an excellent programme bringing together the expertise of Baillie Gifford with a range of entrepreneurs from the Scottish fintech community to share insights and mutual opportunities.

Importantly this collaboration extended to involving other key partners on the day such as DataLab, University of Edinburgh, Scottish Business Network and Scotland IS.

It was super to share the stage with Keith Phillips from the Investment Association and hear about their exciting fintech accelerator initiative, Velocity, which we will be collaborating with the team on to link in the Scottish fintech community.

On a broader level, it was great to demonstrate the collaborative momentum with the announcement of Prudential as a strategic partner to Fintech Scotland.

David Macmillan, the managing director for the wealth solutions division, has significant international experience in fintech innovation in the investment and pensions sector and we are looking forward to engaging his innovative team with the fintech community.

Building on the collaborative momentum was very much key to the meetings with the HSBC team led by Colin Halpin who is brilliantly leading inspiring collaboration initiatives in respect of future skills and education, all are imperative to fintech longer term success.

People Momentum

On the subject of skills, it was very poignant to have an advance start to FinTech Fortnight on Thursday in the Kingdom of Fife with the launch of the FinTech Skills Academy.

The community led momentum behind setting up the Fife FinTech Skills Consortium to develop the skills base is really impressive and it was a massive privilege to be at the event hosted by Paywizard in Kirkaldy.

Very much inspired by the people leadership by Jim Tomaney and Jamie of Renovite Technologies as well as Iain Shirlaw and Krystyna Marett to making this happen. Very much an initiative we hope to build upon.

It was great to share thoughts with the Fife fintech community on how we can build on this momentum and further reinforce the region as a leading driving force of innovation working with Fife College and Fife Council.

I must admit it was a bit of a rush over the bridge to Kirkaldy on Thursday as I was speaking at the Inspiring Futures annual Scottish conference beforehand in Edinburgh. This tough was no dress rehearsal!

Thank you to Anna Halliday and the team for inviting me to share with their professional education audience of teachers and career advisers on how the world of fintech was relevant to everybody and the importance diversity of skills the sector needed to thrive in the future.

Hopefully, one day, maybe some of the young people they are guiding on their career journeys will join a fintech skills academy or firm so we can maintain the momentum of innovation across Scotland

Importantly, the focus of the people momentum is also on diversity, for example in progressing a much better gender balance in the skills such as technology that are key to the future of fintech.

So it was fantastic to attend the Women in STEM event last week at Codebase, expertly organized by Lisa Thomson and the PurposeHR team. Terrific to hear from Marcus Corner on how the practical steps the fintech firm Modulr are putting this at the forefront of their people development.

This is also a key strategic theme I very much look forward to further working with Aileen O’Hagan and the Equate Scotland team on to ensure there is continuing momentum behind the question of gender diversity in fintech and broader financial services.

Strategic Momentum

At a strategic level there are a number of initiatives which are gaining momentum across the fintech community.
For example, it was terrific to catch up on Monday with Anthony Rafferty, Ken May, Michael Roe and Iain Muir at Origo on their brilliant leadership in respect of the high profile pensions dashboard initiative.

A challenging but hugely valuable strategic project which will have a direct impact on millions of people in the future as well as importantly playing a key linkage to the open banking developments.

Open banking continues to be a strategic priority and great to be working with Andy Maciver and Gavin Littlejohn in crafting the market positioning for this hugely significant development.

It was also invaluable as always to get the insightful strategic feedback and thoughts from Ian Mckenna of FTRC last week in London on this whole area and share our mutual enthusiasm on how open banking presents a massive opportunity to reinvent financial services.

Infact, it goes beyond financial services and meeting with Lucinda Rivers and Daniel from UNICEF reinforced to me the broader opportunities of strategic collaboration for fintech.

Executing strategic opportunities with Scotland’s fintech community was top of the agenda in meeting Myron Hrycyk and Colin Carmichael of Sopra Steria in London and I am excited about how we can accelerate the strategic momentum working with the University of Edinburgh.

This will be further complemented by of our recently announced academic and industry fintech initiative with the University of Edinburgh being planned for November which will play a key role in driving forward the strategic fintech momentum.

The strategic momentum also extends to working across sectors to develop broader innovation opportunities in Scotland and it was great to continue this conversation with Trish Quinn, Hugh Wallace, Sarah Thomson, Ian Spencer and Promilla Caughey from their respective Scottish Government teams

The strategic opportunities on a global scale are also very important to our ambitions and in this respect I have very much valued the engagement of the Deloitte team of Kent Mackenzie, Chris Brown, Daniel Cheddie and Noornet Singh. Excited about we further build Scotland’s fintech visibility on the world fintech stage.

Visible Momentum

The momentum behind Scotland’s fintech visibility is certainly growing and it was fabulous to see a number of people from fintech community profiled on BBC Scotland News this week with its special news item on the fintech momentum in Scotland.

Terrific TV interview pieces with Steve Tigar of Money Dashboard, John McHugh of Gigly and Tynah Matembe of Money Matix, huge pride in how their fintech innovation was shared across the national audience.

The Money Matix also had the opportunity to showcase on the big stage at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Edinburgh where their fintech innovation received a wonderful response.

Also massively proud of Loral Quinn of Sustainably and Colin Hewitt of Float for creating their fintech visibility by being selected by Tech Nation for their innovation programme,

Congratulation also to Loral and the team for moving into your new home in Leith, it has been wonderful have you all live with us this last month inside our FinTech Scotland home. We miss you already.

On an academic level this visible momentum is going to continue with the launch of the very first Journal on Financial Technology and it was great to catch up this week with Jamie Gabbay from Heriot-Watt who is leading on this, more to come on this soon.

Marathon Momentum

I am planning to take all this momentum into my running this weekend with a marathon race in Lancaster although as I write this blog I am not sure if that is now going to be realistic!

I’ve been hit with a bug this last week and I am wondering whether I can do the 26.2 miles justice or whether I should defer to another race in a few weeks time!!

Some family time on Friday night will allow me to make a decision. What I do know is that I will need to be ready to join the fantastic fintech community and friends across Scotland on Monday for the start of FinTech Fortnight.

Absolutely amazing the programme of events and activities out together by everyone plus so pleased we are able to welcome so many international guests from all parts of the globe during the two weeks.

I hope to see as many of you as possible over this next fortnight and thank you again for making this all happen.

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ The Home For FinTech

I’ve always been sure that Scotland is a natural home for fintech growth and innovation and my journeys over the last few weeks has reinforced this belief in so many ways.

The home of fintech really came alive for me during the meeting last Friday to discuss the development of the Fife FinTech Academy with Iain Shirlaw, John Mcfarlane, Krystyna Marett and Ann Salt.

Developing the skills for a bright fintech home of the future is crucial and the Academy initiative with an initial focus on financial payments will ensure the Fife region continues to lead the way globally.

You’ll be hearing more details on this following the launch event as a curtain raiser for FinTech Scotland Fortnight in September.

However, in the meantime the fantastic news from the global fintech player Renovite Technologies to expand further is testament to Fife being a key area of Scotland’s fintech home.

Innovation Home

Meeting new and established fintech firms demonstrated that innovation is alive and well in our home. For example, the credentials and track record of Inside Secure were wonderful to hear about when I caught up with Douglas Kinloch and Neal Michie at their Glasgow office one evening.

I’m excited about connecting the Inside Secure team with the fintech payment firms in Fife to take advantage of collaboration opportunities.

Similarly, from our meeting recently with David Eccles from Wallscope we can see potential to drive innovation in the home by making connections with key stakeholders

The value of an innovation led home was very much in abundance when Mickael and I met up with Mark Doherty, Stephen Pollock and Jason at Avaloq yesterday and then had the chance to join their All Hands’ meeting. Fantastic people with a fabulous working environment.

As initial founding partners of FinTech Scotland, Avaloq play a significant role in Scotland and globally and it is exciting working with them to support their growth and people development plans.

During their session, I was asked whether we can measure the real level of innovation taking place in Scorland.

This gave me the opportunity to highlight the innovation audit’ work we have been progressing with the Scottish Government CanDo team along with a couple of other sectors. I’m looking forward to progressing this work with June Love, Joanna McKenzie and the team.

Sharing the exciting innovation happening in our Scotland fintech home is always a privilege and on Wednesday there was the opportunity to do so with Scottish Government Minister Kate Forbes and UK Treasury Minister John Glenn.

Wonderful to hear the broad range of fintech leaders share how they are reinvesting financial services as well as candidly expressed the challenges in driving forward innovation in financial services.

Thank you to all who joined me for the Ministerial visit to Fintech Scotland, you all did the fintech community proud. Big thanks also to Shery, Fiona and Niamh for making everything run so smoothly.

Later that day I ran over Glasgow to join the MBN Solutions and DataLab fabulous event for data scientists to share thoughts on why fintech is a wonderful home to develop a career path in Scotland.

Many thanks to Paul Forrest, Mickael Young, Rob Huggins and their super team, sorry I had to rush off at the end to get back for my daughters 18th birthday!

In a slightly different part of the fintech home, catching up with Suhail Ahmed of Advisory Direct and then later that day with Eleanor Tucker of GangHut at the Product Tank event highlighted to me the power of new collaborations in the fintech home.

Collaboration Home

The subject of collaboration opportunities was very much on the agenda with my catch up with Nucleus Financial chief executive David Fergusson, and of course, chair of FinTech Scotland

David rightly challenged me on whether larger enterprises were genuinely innovating and embracing collaboration opportunities in the market with fintech firms.

There are some terrific examples happening such The ID.Co work with CYBG and the Castlight Financial team with HSBC.

Meeting up with Philip Grant of Lloyds Bank Group and then separately also with Sarah Barry of Sainsbury Bank highlighted that the banking sector is seeing the value in fintech collaboration to strengthen our collective home.

Meeting Colin Carmichael from our strategic partner Sopra Steria allowed us to develop plans to progress this and, furthermore, identify new emerging collaboration opportunities.

For example, my meeting with the Hymans Robertson team John Taylor, Scott Finnie and Barry Smart made it clear that there are fintech collaboration opportunities very much in the pensions and employee benefits space going forward.

Fintech collaboration can go beyond the various financial services sectors and so it was good to meet up last week with Christian Beveridge and Derek Toal of Virgin Media explore cross sector opportunities. Great to hear about their role at the FinTech Summit in September.

For me one of the exemplars of collaboration is JP Morgan, reinforced in my conversation with Douglas of Inside Secure.

So it was a privilege to plays a role in last weeks JP Morgan FinTech Roundtable with a broad spectrum of guests from the asset management sector. Thank you to Stephen Flaherty, Sandy Brodie and the team, much to take on board on how to unlock the collaboration potential in our home.

In this respect, I am delighted to have worked with Scottish Enterprise to welcome the Vivolution team as the FinTech Scotland Network Integrator and into our home to foster the collaboration and support fintech firms in Scotland with growth.

Home of Excellence

Building a home of excellence for fintech firms is a key objective and the expertise of the Vivolution team will support fintech firms with funding and commercial development.

It was good to talk this all through at the FinTech Practitioners Group Meeting recently and it was terrific to have such a great attendance from the community, even if it was a bit of a squeeze!

Thank you to everyone who came along and your valuable contributions and feedback, next main meetings in October will focus on funding sources and options plus a fintech home social’.

Our appreciation to Anneli Ritari-Stewart and the team from our strategic partner Dentsu Aegis for hosting and making us all feel so much at home in Scotland’s epicentre of digital and marketing. And of course, wonderful to see the Whitespace team now part of the Dentsu Aegis family and in the fintech home.

A few days before the Practitioners Forum, we had the latest Open Banking Excellence meet up, great conversation and super to see even more new faces. Thanks again to James Varga for hosting.

Developing the Open Banking Centre of Excellence continues to be a key priority working with the inspiring Gavin Littlejohn plus a core team from the University of Edinburgh. Thanks again Damien, Douglas, Kevin and Triinu Hansen

Really useful meeting with Colin Garland, director of the Competition and Markets Authority on the subject of the centre of excellence strategy and plans, thanks Colin very much appreciated your enthusiasm for this initiative and great to hear about your expansion plans in Scotland.

Similarly, it was tremendously useful to catch up with Simon Thompson, chief executive of the Chartered Bankers Institute who have a key role to play in the emergence of a global open banking centre of excellence. Very much appreciate your insight and engagement Simon, looking forward to collaborating further on a local and international level.

International Home

Another of our key objectives is to embrace the global fintech opportunities for our home here in Scotland and sharing the story to gain interest in what we are doing is something we always grasp.

So, it was brilliant to be given the opportunity to present to some significant Middle east and Far East sovereign fund and institutional fund investors who were being hosted by the University of Edinburgh

Thank you to The ID.Co, Money Dashboard and Sustainably for supporting me with the conversations as well as George Baxter, chief executive of Edinburgh Innovations for including us in the opportunity.

The recent late Friday afternoon meeting with Kent Mackenzie and Chris Brown from our global professional services partner Deloitte got me excited on how we can develop the fintech home on a international stage going forward.

Reinforced this last two weeks with international conversations on our fintech home stretching from as far away as Rhode Island, USA and as near as Ireland. Thank you Paul Snape and David Clarke I look forward to seeing you both during our Fintech Fortnight with your colleagues.

We are delighted that Scottish International Week led by global leader Russell Dalgleish starting 17th September coincides with Fintech Fortnight and we look forward to welcoming many global guests to our fintech home during this time.

A huge thank you to everyone across the community who is contributing to making FinTech Fortnight happen in a few weeks time and the great support from our friends at Visit Scotland.

On the subject of international themes, many congratulations to my global mentor Promilla Caughey on taking up a new role with the Scottish Government, a fantastic career move and so well deserved.

Running for Homes

I’ll be running for homes on Sunday as I take part in the 15 mile urban rush race from South Queensferry to Holyrood for the charity Shelter Scotland.

The Shelter Scotland fight to address the impact of homelessness has always meant a great deal to me and this is my small way of contributing to their great work. Everyone deserves a home that is safe and secure.

This will be a great practice race ahead of my marathon in two weeks time just prior to the official start of FinTech Fortnight on 17thSeptember. Until then!

Fintech and Gamification

This article was written by Phil Smy from Pocket Sized Hands. Pocket Sized Hands is a software company who have developed games using gamification techniques for St. Andrews University and for other clients.

There’s a consistent theme in the challenges that financial companies face when interacting with existing and new customers, engagement and education. Customers find interacting with financial services to be unengaging due to lack of understanding, complexity and jargon.

Many fintech companies are utilising new ways to tackle this problem, namely gamification. Gamification is the application of game concepts, features and game design principles for non-gaming applications. In practice these techniques come in the form of rewarding good behaviour, implementing interactivity to engage customers or visualising data.

The purpose of this is to engage and inform individuals through novel means. In the past, gamification techniques have been used within various sectors. Education have benefited from gamification to inform and engage students. Fitness companies have used gamification to encourage a healthy lifestyle. For many businesses, gamification has been found to be a cost-effective method of training in comparison to traditional training techniques.

Education

Gamification within education is a growing trend. The basis of using gamification within a teaching context is that if users are engaged with games that communicate lessons through gameplay mechanics or objectives, users can learn without even realizing it. If you give a young person the option to play a mobile game, doing their homework or attending a lecture, most young people will want to play the game.

Applying this to the fintech industry and you can see how young people (or people of all ages) could play gamified applications with rewards and interactions to better engage with their financial future. Through feedback loops, customers can learn to make good choices with their money and stop spending their money recklessly. By utilising these techniques, fintech companies can reward and condition good financial behaviour.

Rewards

Gamification rewards can be divided into two different sections, extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. An example of an extrinsic reward within gamification is the accumulation of points, achievements, places on a high score table etc. For fintech, instead of earning points, the user can be saving money.

For example, if a user saves some money through their pension pot or financial plan, the application would be able to visualise and summarise how much they have saved and reward the user for saving a certain amount, this can also work with real word rewards.

Companies in the past have experimented with real life rewards such as vouchers and money off products and services. In terms of intrinsic rewards, educating users of financial plans and other elements of finance can help financial companies engage and inform their customers.

Conclusion

The overall goal of gamification applications is to change the behaviour of consumers on a wide scale. Gamification does this by educating users of potential bad habits and rewarding users for their good habits. Dr. Iain Donald of Abertay University, the leading games design university in Europe summarises it perfectly.
“The application of game design and technology to engage new audiences has proven to be extremely beneficial, both in the education and entertainment sectors. Increasingly that potential is being harnessed in other industries from medicine through to finance.“