First Minister praises “expertise and talent” of Edinburgh FinTech Origo

This blog was written by Anthony Rafferty, Managing Director at Origo.

Scottish Fintech and Insuretech received much praise from Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the recent ABI Annual Conference and we were delighted to come in for a specific mention in respect of our thought leadership on the Pensions Dashboard initiative, currently being run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

We were encouraged to hear the First Minister say that she and her government were keen to support companies that are “active in the Fintech field” and pleased to be cited by her as “one example of the expertise and talent that we have in our Insuretech sector.” Expertise, she added, on which government wants to build ”“ part of which initiative was the setting up last year of Fintech Scotland, a body which we at Origo firmly support.

Asked specifically how she saw the future role for Fintechs like Origo in Scotland in serving the rest of the UK in such pivotal industry projects as the Pensions Dashboard, Nicola Sturgeon said, “I think the future is bright and strong for companies like yours in Scotland.”

The Pensions Dashboard will allow consumers to access information on their pensions, wherever they may be, in one place. It is an initiative of enormous ambition and significant social purpose.

Pensions Minister Guy Opperman has tasked the Department for Work and Pensions with taking forward the development of the Pensions Dashboard, and a feasibility study is due to be published by the end of March 2018.

However, the pensions industry will need to be ready to respond quickly if it is to meet the Pension Minister’s challenge of a 2019 launch.

Origo is a not-for-profit financial technology company which is run by the industry, for the consumer. We were involved in developing a Pension Finder Service for the prototype Dashboard, which was demonstrated to the industry in April 2017. The Pension Finder Service is, in effect, the engine which takes the request for pension data from the consumer, delivers it to the pension company and then conveys the return data to the Dashboard interface ”“ another element of the project, which displays the information to the pension holder.

While the feasibility study has been ongoing, we have been continuing to work on the necessary technology and we are confident we can establish the central architectural components this year which will support the required Industry integration effort for a 2019 launch. Testing of our Pension Finder Service is being undertaken at population scale and we stand ready to deliver.

We believe that the Pensions Dashboard will be transformative in helping engage consumers with the vital information required to plan for better long-term saving and retirement outcomes. We can’t wait to see the industry’s collaborative work on this come to fruition.

About Origo

Origo is the not-for-profit FinTech company dedicated to improving connectivity between financial services companies, boosting efficiencies, improving performance and reducing integration costs for industry participants, while significantly improving financial outcomes for consumers.