Lloyds Banking Group Partners with Scottish FinTech Inbest to Launch New Benefits Calculator
Lloyds Banking Group has partnered with Scottish fintech Inbest to launch a new tool aimed at helping millions of UK households access unclaimed benefits. The benefits calculator, now available in the Lloyds mobile banking app, is designed to bridge the gap between people and the £23 billion of unclaimed benefits such as Universal Credit and council tax support.
How It Works
The calculator is simple and intuitive. Users start by answering six quick questions about their household, income, and living situation. Based on this initial input, the tool provides an estimate of potential benefits they might be entitled to. For a more detailed analysis, users can complete a five-minute questionnaire to receive a final summary of their benefits eligibility.
If eligible, the calculator doesn’t just stop at telling users what they might claim; it also provides direct links to begin the application process. Additionally, the tool highlights potential grants for home improvements or energy efficiency upgrades.
Tackling a National Problem
Lloyds Banking Group’s initiative is a direct response to the estimated eight million UK households missing out on financial support. With the cost-of-living crisis intensifying, the “More Money in Your Pocket” hub in the Lloyds app aims to provide tangible assistance to those who need it most.
Since its soft launch, the benefits calculator has already helped thousands of users identify new sources of financial support. The tool is available on both iOS and Android devices, ensuring broad accessibility for Lloyds customers.
A Collaboration for Impact
This innovative solution was developed in partnership with Inbest, a leading Scottish fintech specialising in financial inclusion technology. Inbest’s expertise in building user-friendly tools to simplify financial complexity was instrumental in creating the benefits calculator.
FinTech Scotland, which supports collaborations like this, continues to highlight the power of partnerships between established financial institutions and fintech innovators. By joining forces, Lloyds Banking Group and Inbest are leveraging technology to deliver impactful financial solutions for everyday consumers.
“We’ve launched Benefit Calculator, helping customers to identify the benefits they may be eligible for and providing clear guidance on making a claim.”
This partnership with Inbest is a testament to the growing importance of fintech collaborations in addressing societal challenges. By combining Lloyds’ reach and resources with Inbest’s innovative capabilities, this initiative marks a significant step towards greater financial inclusion across the UK.
Scottish Fintech Level E Research Leads the Charge in Satellite Data Innovation
Satellite Data for Smarter Decision-Making
Level E Research develops AI-driven solutions that help organisations make better, data-informed decisions. With this new funding, the company aims to extend its capabilities by integrating satellite data into its existing AI frameworks. This integration will allow businesses to benefit from real-time data that can significantly enhance their strategic planning, risk management, and operational efficiency.
The use of satellite data offers a wealth of possibilities, from monitoring environmental changes to optimising supply chains. For example, by analysing satellite imagery, businesses can gain insights into everything from agricultural yields to urban development trends, enabling them to make more informed decisions that are both timely and impactful.
Advancing Financial Services through Satellite Insights
Level E Research’s specialises in the financial services sector, where their AI solutions are already helping clients navigate complex market conditions with greater confidence. The addition of satellite data to their analytical toolkit is expected to revolutionise how financial institutions assess risk and predict market movements.
For instance, satellite data can provide valuable information on economic activities, such as the level of industrial output in a particular region or the state of infrastructure development. These insights can be crucial for financial institutions looking to invest in emerging markets or assess the impact of natural disasters on their portfolios.
A Collaborative Effort for Maximum Impact
The success of these satellite data pilots depends on collaboration across industries. By working with other organisations in the pilot program, Level E Research will be able to refine its models, ensuring that the solutions developed are both practical and scalable.
Moreover, the insights gained from these pilots are expected to have a ripple effect across various sectors, from agriculture to insurance, demonstrating the broad applicability of satellite data when combined with cutting-edge AI.
How Ionburst is helping to protect critical data in a hybrid world
“It’s critical financial institutions consider how they can best mitigate risk. With Ionburst’s platform, we’re working to give organizations control and visibility over their data everywhere. IBM Cloud’s focus on compliance and security is helping us make this possible and enabling us to give customers confidence that their data is protected ”“ which is critically important in the financial services sector”
Photo by Manuel Geissinger: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-server-racks-on-a-room-325229/
FinTech and Space ”“ propelling Scotland forward
We all know that two heads are better than one so imagine the power of two of Scotland’s strongest and most innovative industries coming together to develop tools and capabilities to tackle large scale challenges.
“FinTech meets Space” event in January was the first in a series of joint activities between FinTech Scotland and Space Scotland to spark collaboration between the two clusters and harness the power of cross sector working.
The event brought together thought leaders, industry experts, academics, government agencies, innovators and corporates to start the process of understanding how two very different industries can utilise the capabilities of each other to face off to solve real time challenges.
“You don’t know what you don’t know, so be open to possibilities” was the provocation that started the day off, and it certainly worked. Conversations ranged from the strength of Scotland as a centre of excellence in both fields, to leading edge use of Spatial data to tackle unexpected issues in the health and social care sectors, to more focussed discussions on some live use cases within Financial Services.
These examples spanned a wide range of activities, including understanding insurance risks, building confidence in investments, supporting emerging regulatory requirements and a number of areas of ESG development.
Presentations from Global Surface Intelligence, D-CAT, AstroSat and Earthblox brought some of the possibilities to life, with a joint presentation from the FinTech and Space leads at the University of Strathclyde reinforced the potential for interconnection and collaboration.
The objective of this event was to introduce and to spark conversations between the sectors ahead of a broader Accelerator programme funded by the UK Space Agency.
The programme which will run over the course of a number of months will take the live problem statements and use cases which sparked such enthusiasm in the room and create the opportunity for us to all come together and start working on some tangible prototypes and solutions
We will build on the connections made in the room to form some long lasting relationships and potentially partnerships across our sectors. The potential is vast and the opportunity for Scotland to build on our strengths in both domains to become a world leader in this area is hugely exciting”¦”¦ watch this space!
Introduction to Scottish fintech Alluvie
Article written by Emmanuel Bernieri, founder and CEO at Alluvie
It’s a safe bet for me to assume that most of you have already had conversation with a friend, acquaintance, or relative about cryptocurrency or the current stocks skyrocketing everyone’s talking about. You may even have spent at least a few minutes daydreaming about investing some money, doing THE smart move, based on your greatest hunch, and multiplying your investment by 2, by 10 or more in a matter of weeks.
Perhaps Tesla should be the horse you should bet on? Or what about Gamestop? Dogecoin?
Lately, new brokers have entered the game, such as eToro and Robinhood. Their marketing is impeccable. Their ads keep popping up on our feeds on all the apps and websites we use, making us the very sweet promise only 0 fees trading app can make.
Because as non-professional traders, we are their target.
Indeed, today the market of non-professional investors (also known as retail investors) is booming. More than 100 million individuals around the world are investing money on financial markets. A booming market! But there is a catch: a recent large-scale study focusing on this emerging market has shown that, on average, 80% of us, retail investors, will lose money on financial markets. Less than 1% will be profitable in the long run. It’s a lesser chance than winning the Hunger Games, if you’ll allow me. Sure, trading can be a hobby!, but the hard cold reality is coming right back at us. It’s not magic, and it can’t be just luck. Skills are required and it can even be a full-time job for some of us. You may need mathematical skills, coding ones, or even law, geopolitics, etc.
While most people believe that trading is just knowing the right information before anyone else, the reality is different. 99 times out of 100, being a good trader means analyzing a situation and trying to balance the risk/reward inherent to the situation. Guts, glitter, and speedy heated arguments phone calls are just completely outdated since we’ve entered the era of algorithmic traders. Now, a professional trader/team of traders build and rely on algorithms able to define when to buy and when to sell a selected financial asset.
Nowadays, we estimate between 60 and 80% of the share of total orders on the US market that comes from algorithms. The problem with algorithmic trading is that it requires hundreds of hours just to build your coding environment to test your trading strategy properly.
This is the main reason why, at Alluvie, we have decided to build a platform where anybody can test their ideas on historical data before executing it. In a nutshell, we are taking care of all the technicalities. Thanks to our platform, you can test ideas on the fly without having to know how to code. You just need to write your rules of buying and selling (when to buy and when to sell) and then select the assets on which you want to test your strategy, and that’s it. You will automatically access the backtest of your strategy and you will be able to assess the quality of your idea before
making a bold move without prior knowledge.
Of course, we know that lots of retail investors don’t really know what their strategy could be. That’s why we are continuously creating trading strategies that are free to use by any of our members and we also develop a marketplace where other retail investors will rent their trading strategies to others. Finally, we are also developing direct bridges with brokers to fully automatize your strategy, if and when you are happy.
Our goal is to make your investment safer, easier to manage and more profitable in just a few clicks, with no hassle, no hidden hurdles and as few steps as possible. The platform is already live. You can register now and test it for free for 1 month.
Don’t waste your time trying to “feel” the market!
Join us and make the right move today. We are waiting for you. Welcome to trading 3.0.
Unlock the Power of MSc Student Projects
The University of Edinburgh postgraduate students will utilise their unique knowledge and skills to conduct short pieces of research for the benefit of business and third sector organisations. We are looking for proposals for company-driven projects for several MSc programmes relevant to Fintech and the Financial Services sector. We are particularly interested in data-driven topics in applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, data analytics, cryptofinance and blockchain, distributed finance, portfolio optimization, and behavioural and predictive modelling.
Do you have a business challenge that would benefit from a piece of research and analysis in this area? We are looking to project ideas for our MSc students until the end of December 2022. Projects will be supported by our world-leading academics and delivered by our students over Summer 2023.
Want to learn more?
- Come to our event, Company focused FinTech projects’ on 24th October 2022, 1:30-5pm at the University of Edinburgh Business School Auditorium (includes networking over drinks)
- Unable to join in person? Feel free to sign up anyway: there will be an option to join the presentations remotely.
- Already have an idea in mind and just keen to get started, or another way you’d like to collaborate with the University? E-mail Marina, the University of Edinburgh Business Development Executive, at marina.duka-jenkins@ei.ed.ac.uk
What are the benefits to your organisation?
- Use the results produced for your own (commercial) purposes free of charge
- Raise your profile as a potential employer amongst prospective graduates with specialised knowledge and skills
- Begin or continue to engage with the University of Edinburgh’s expertise
“Working with the MSc in Fintech student was a tremendous help in supporting us to drive our R&D activities. The student was a really motivated individual and delivered high quality project. The academic supervisor also took a hands-on approach that ensured the technical robustness and quality of the proposed methodologies.” – Manuel Peleteiro, Founder & CEO, Inbest
Recent Project Examples:
- Applications of Machine Learning to Regulatory Analytics: Basel Use Test (with Equifax)
- Fairness in Machine Learning (with Tesco Bank)
- Affordability-Driven Credit Decisioning (with Tesco Bank)
- Macroeconomic default modelling (with Virgin Money)
- Business Disruption Assessment of Climate Risks (with Climate X)
- Can change in environmental, social or governance scores be predicted using company characteristics? (with Franklin Templeton)
- ESG investing, impact investing and socially responsible investing – what’s the difference from a performance/return perspective? (with Substantive Research)
- A Market Index for Digital Currencies (with Predictiva)
Book to attend the event: https://eil.ac/FinTechProjects
Or e-mail Marina: marina.duka-jenkins@ei.ed.ac.uk
The MSc projects are delivered free of charge, as part of the students’ dissertations. However, companies can choose to remunerate the students for their time, if they wish.
How fintech AccessFintech is enabling multi-party collaboration
Blog written by Andrew Mill, Synergy Trainer at AccessFintech
Who are we?
Access Fintech was established upon a profound desire to bring self-service, transparency, risk mutualisation and efficient supply-chain management to the global financial services industry. Our founders, Roy Saadon and Steve Fazio, started the business in 2016 and we currently have over 120 employees across offices in Glasgow, London, New York, and Tel Aviv.
Our leadership team has a proven track record in building businesses and products that change the face of financial technology and operations. Since inception, AccessFintech has seen multiple client onboards and product launches, been awarded Capital Markets Start-up of the Year by Financial News in 2021, and we now manage over 1 billion transaction updates per month.
What challenges did we see?
Middle and back-office functions in financial services typically centre around significant internal and external email, Excel, chat, and telephone exchanges across numerous participants to share data, request and provide status updates and resolve exceptions. Add to these processes an array of internal systems individually managed by each financial institution, each of which require significant ongoing maintenance, development, and operational staff training.
The redundant practice of sending an email followed by a chaser and then an escalation phone call has been the industry norm for years. The follow up process of sending further chasers’ and looping in additional contacts has resulted in a communication breakdown across Teams, Counterparties and Markets as a whole. A myriad of Do you know?’ and Please amend to match’ type queries have been deleted, filed, and quite frankly ignored. The lack of shared systems means that clients lack the data transparency they need and therefore cannot self-serve due to being unable to view statuses, commentary or even track exception resolution progress.
The bottom line is that this way of working increases the chance of error beyond what it has to be. This fundamental issue is why AccessFintech exists, and solving it is how we supply massive value to our clients..
How have we solved them?
To achieve better efficiency, financial institutions must break the limitations of their four walls and embrace a collaborative approach to industry-wide challenges as they emerge. This is why we built our Synergy platform.
Synergy was designed to release massive, locked value that firms cannot unlock individually. Data transparency is at the centre of the Synergy network’, which offers self-service data solutions to users that extend and enrich their datasets, allow them to share data across workflows, and provides technology across the transaction lifecycle to increase transparency, speed resolution, reduce fails, and benefit from valuable benchmarking insights.
Synergy provides a single, secure environment for multi-party collaboration and is underpinned by three core capabilities: Data Collaboration, Workflow Optimisation and Technology Distribution.
Data Collaboration: Collaborating in the AccessFintech User Interface means all participants are communicating in the same place with no communication lag and all interactions are systemically audited. The UI also allows for clients’ workflow lifecycles to be managed efficiently and automatically generates information for users that shows them areas of inefficiency, importantly, what the root cause is. AccessFintech Synergy DataLake’ enables collaboration across different companies as well using data and shared technology access. In other words, everyone gets to see a single source of truth, no matter what organization they work for.
Business as usual needs to change, not just for one institution, but for all. As such, Collaboration advances the entire ecosystem by automating operations, reducing capital requirements, and speeding workflows.
Workflow Optimisation: The AccessFintech UI delivers solutions for transaction automation, resolution, and decision-making in a multi-provider environment. Users are granted the ability to digitally execute interactions from purchase to settlement to payment in one place. Consequently, workflows and workforces can be optimised by letter users better evaluate and manage risk, recommend solutions, share workloads, and track actions.
Technology Distribution: AccessFintech is focused on seamlessly delivering continuous technology-driven operational transformation. Benefits can be realised across entire organisations simply by leveraging the power of data and collaboration. Organisations have reduced the total cost of ownership of technology resulting from data aggregation, enrichment, normalisation, and distribution to relevant stakeholders.
Once part of Synergy, individuals and organisations alike have the power to onboard new technologies with minimal complexity, resulting in dormant system retirement and the adoption of a cloud support strategy.
Concluding Remarks
AccessFintech enables organisations to share data securely with appropriate stakeholders, whether internal or external. At its core, data is paired across participants via the network to support efficient exception resolution. This notion is underpinned by customisable risk profiling and data transparency, allowing for prioritisation and significantly reducing incoming and outgoing queries.
In other words, our clients’ financial workflows are systematically organized. Structured communication protocols permit seamless collaboration on exception resolution and the creation of report and analytics to support root cause analysis and future fails reduction. We help organisations benefit in multiple ways, most notably: System Transformation, Cost Reduction, Risk Reduction, Enhanced Client Service and Digital Solution.
Fintech Aiming to Help Businesses Access Cash Faster
A new Fintech, Saltare, has just launched with the ambition to help businesses improve cashflow, strengthen supply chain relationships and give more certainty over payments.
Saltare is headquartered in Bristol and employs people around the UK including Scotland. It was created because 82% of businesses fail through difficulties of accessing cash (there is currently a whopping £200bn tied up in unpaid invoices). Saltare is about incentivising buyers to pay early, and in giving them the tools and reasons for doing so.
The solution comprises mobile-led technology to allow buyers to manage their entire supply chain in a way that works for them and their key suppliers. Saltare will address the needs of some of the more challenging sectors and industries, where extended supply chain are the norm (public sector and local authority bodies through to retail and construction).
Chief Executive Anthony Persse says:
“By shifting the debate away from the negative commentary around late payment’ and moving it towards a more positive conversation about early payment’, we will do much more than simply improve payment performance. We will help create more jobs, deliver greater levels of investment and generate deeper social value with long-term sustainability at a time when the country needs it most.”
“Our mission is to develop a series of tools that bring the certainty of payment, and the certainty of cashflow, that support both ends of the supply chain. Bigger than this, our mission is to change the mind-set of businesses once and for all, to embrace a new approach that is simple to make, and yet will have positive consequences for future generations”
Transforming the Everyday Life of People and Business Through Pioneering FinTech Innovation in Banking
Fintech Scotland announces new strategic partnership with NCR Corporation
FinTech Scotland, the cluster management body, has announced a new strategic partnership with NCR Corporation, a leading enterprise technology provider to further advance innovation for financial institutions.
The partnership builds on NCR’s strong innovation track record as a software and services provider with a long-established heritage of applying new technology developed through its Dundee Discovery Centre.
The announcement follows the recent release of FinTech Scotland’s ground-breaking Research and Innovation (R&I) Roadmap which, developed in conjunction with key players in the financial industry, includes a key focus on the future of payments and transactions and financial regulation.
Spanning more than 130 years, NCR has a rich history of delivering innovative solutions for consumers and businesses. With expertise in payments, transactions, digital banking and strategic advisory services, NCR will join FinTech Scotland and its other thirty strategic partners, including fourteen of the largest financial services firms, to drive forward a customer- and digital-led financial innovation transforming how people, communities and businesses engage with money and finance.
FinTech Scotland, the cluster management body for strategic partnerships within the country, will work closely with NCR, a major employer in Dundee, and its 600-strong financial experts in the region to develop innovation opportunities with fintech firms and financial institutions, plus the wider cluster stakeholders such as universities and innovation centres.
Nicola Anderson, Chief Executive, FinTech Scotland, said,
“We are hugely excited to about the strategic partnership with NCR and their dynamics and pioneering approach to developing technology will further accelerate innovation with fintech SMEs and large financial firms in the cluster. Our industry-driven, action-orientated R&I Roadmap will provide the ideal framework to advance new financial services innovations with NCR and we look forward to the collaboration with the NCR team in Dundee as well as the USA and across the globe”.
Colin Payne, corporate vice president, NCR Professional Services said
“In my experience the value of regional fintech powerhouses is undeniable, bringing raw talent and passion into the space and guiding the development of next-generation financial businesses. In Scotland, this is particularly true given the rich engineering heritage, innovative mindset and history of outstanding customer-focused financial services ”“ this unique combination brings us a new generation of powerful fintechs. We are delighted to partner with Fintech Scotland to support the scaling of these amazing new solutions.“
Discover Zing, the fintech reinventing insurance
Zing is a fast-scaling, advanced insurtech backed by leading global insurers. At our core is what matters most to our customers and partners by offering embedded insurance cover at the e-commerce checkout of leading retail brands.
Whilst the majority of consumer insurance cover is purchased online, the online insurance market is confusing, dominated by generic products, confusing applications, mystifying policy documents and an overwhelming reliance on margin eroding price comparison.
We put relevant insurance cover at the e-commerce checkout of the brands that our customers already know, use and trust. Our cover is embedded alongside or prior to finance or BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) providers which not only increases buyer commitment but the frequency and value of the purchase. Our intuitive modular product design means our customers receive insurance that truly resonates with their purchase or hire. Our simple API enables customers to get peace of mind insurance cover with as little as one click’ at the checkout without ever leaving or disrupting the e-commerce checkout flow. Our customer portal empowers our customers to manage, grow and customise their cover and most importantly, make claims all in one place.
There’s additional revenue for our partners as well, as a subscription-based platform, Zing also provides our partner retailers with year-on-year cumulative revenue for as long as our partners customer remains a customer of Zing’s.
Zing is looking to partner with consumer facing retailers that want better customer outcomes from their e-commerce platforms, insurance brokers that have commercial customers but want a value add to further enrich the relationship and create new revenue sources, e-commerce agencies / advisors and e-commerce payment services providers.
We are delighted to be working with FinTech Scotland and please do get in touch should you wish to find out more.