Auticon launches Autism Advisory Service
Many organisations are now familiar with the advantages they can gain from diversity in their workforce and most consider diversity in social backgrounds, gender, culture, and other individual qualities of their employees. Benefits from neurodiversity are similar but more direct. Because neurodivergent people are wired differently from “neurotypical” people, they may bring new perspectives to a company’s efforts to create or recognise value.
The case for neurodiverse hiring is especially compelling given the skills shortages that increasingly afflict technology and other industries. The biggest deficits are expected to be in strategically important and rapidly expanding areas such as IT security, data analytics and IT services implementation, whose tasks are a good match with the abilities of some neurodivergent people.
A growing number of companies, including SAP, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Microsoft, have reformed their HR processes to access neurodiverse talent. They have reported seeing productivity gains, quality improvement, boosts in innovative capabilities, and increased employee engagement as a result.
To create a neurodiverse workforce, there are three key things that your organisation can do today to attract and retain highly skilled workers on the autism spectrum: Start by having an awareness of your current organisation and its needs; adapt your hiring practices that could be unintentionally eliminating people on the autism spectrum; and review how you communicate both within and out with your organisation.
auticon, an International IT Consultancy and Advisory business, exclusively employing autistic consultants, can help you plan and implement these changes, enabling you to tap into the traits and talents of neurodivergent people which are beneficial to business: the ability to look at a problem differently, see trends in large amounts of data, apply problem-solving methodologies, and persist and follow through on repetitive tasks. These abilities lend themselves to high performance in technology roles.
auticon Scotland have obtained funding from the Scottish Government as part of their Increasing the Understanding of Autism’ campaign and are using this funding to launch their Autism Advisory Service in Scotland. This service can work with you and your organisation and make recommendations as to how you can attract, recruit and retain your own neurodiverse talent. The bonus is that while auticon have this Scottish Government funding, they are able to offer this service for free.
To find out more, please contact auticon directly: emma.walker@auticon.co.uk
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
GLEIF and Open Future World Directory to enter partnership
The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) and Open Future World have announced a new collaboration to help open finance organisations to work together.
This comes after the launch of the Open Future World Directory , the open finance organisation directory. Thank soo the addition of the Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) within the directory, it will be easier to identify who to connect to and do business with.
“The Legal Entity Identifier is a global standard for transparent and unique identification of legal entities. Users of the Open Future World Directory now benefit from quick and easy identification of the listed organization by linking to its validated and verified profile in the Global LEI Repository,”
Clare Rowley, GLEIF Head of Business Operations
“Whether you are talking about customers choosing to share their financial data, or financial institutions and fintechs working together, trust is a key theme in open banking and open finance. LEIs help enhance transparency by making it easier to know who you are dealing with.”
Nick Cabrera, Open Future World co-founder
Leadership Team Developments for FinTech Scotland
FinTech Scotland is today announcing a number of leadership team developments as it looks to build on the progress made over the last couple of years in developing the fintech community and cluster in Scotland
From November, Stephen Ingledew will become executive chair of FinTech Scotland after leading the body as chief executive from its initial formation in January 2018.
Stephen will remain very much involved with the strategic leadership of FinTech Scotland and the move to executive chair will enable the body to develop further the leadership team as it looks to build on the impact to date as a cluster management body.
David Ferguson, the current non-executive chair of FinTech Scotland, will step down from the role which he has held for over two years. David will continue to actively support FinTech Scotland move into its next phase.
Over the coming months, FinTech Scotland will commence the process of appointing a new chief executive to take over from Stephen and it anticipates being in a position to complete the process by the end of the year.
In the interim , from early November Nicola Anderson, the current strategic development director of FinTech Scotland, will take on the role of acting chief executive.
Nicola has been on full time secondment with FinTech Scotland from the Financial Conduct Authority for two years and has played a significant role with Stephen, Mickael Paris and Shery Johnston in supporting the fintech SME community and the rapid progress of fintech initiatives.
In addition, to his role of executive chairman for FinTech Scotland, Stephen will take on a part time secondment to Scottish Enterprise as an interim director for six months from November.
Stephen will report to Linda Hanna, Managing Director of Scottish Enterprise, and will contribute to the development of future strategic opportunities to support economic recovery.
In addition, Stephen has recently been appointed to the newly formed UK Government Innovation Expert Group set up to advise on driving productivity through innovation. https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/innovation-expert-group
Commenting on the leadership announcements, Stephen Ingledew said
“It has been a privilege to lead FinTech Scotland and deliver significant milestones across the fintech cluster. This is the right time to further strengthen further the leadership team.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank David for his valuable leadership as chair as well as the fintech community and strategic partners whose ongoing collaboration to date has made the progress possible.
I look forward to working with the Scottish Enterprise team to accelerate and shape strategic programmes, sharing my experience of developing clusters to drive inclusive innovation and economic opportunities”.
David Ferguson, the chief executive of Nucleus Financial said,
“It’s been hugely interesting seeing FinTech Scotland come into being and to see Stephen do such a great job of generating momentum over the last couple of years. I’m grateful to everyone who has joined in and helped carry us to the point where things are so well set up for the next phase”
Calling all Internal Auditors working in the Fintech environment
Calling all Internal Auditors working in the Fintech environment”¦”¦.
For those that don’t know me, please allow me the opportunity to introduce myself. I have worked in and around Internal Audit for more years than I care to admit and have recently started a new adventure as Head of Internal Audit for Modulr Finance based in Edinburgh.
Having moved into a fintech organisation I find myself wondering: “how can I adapt, evolve and innovate the approach to fintech Audit to best meet (perhaps exceed?) the needs of a relatively new and growing fintech industry”?
Over my years of experience, I have (too often) been faced with the negative stigma which can come with our profession. On hearing the words Internal Audit, stakeholders can automatically jump to the old stereotyped assumptions assuming that we prevent innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and struggle to respond to the changes required in such a dynamic and fast evolving industry. Like many of my colleagues and peers, I am committed to banishing this perception and ensuring that the profession continues to build on and evolve approaches which remain robust and sustainable, but can keep pace with and best add value in such a newly evolving, fast paced, dynamic and exciting sector.
How can we make sure we (as a profession) move with the times displaying the agility, flexibility and creativeness required to satisfy the appetite of such a new industry and its many stakeholders? It can be a daunting thought, and one I am sure I’m not alone with!
My belief is that Internal Auditors in fintech have a unique opportunity to help shape the future of fintech, but to do so require a tailored combination of business audit, IT Audit, project management skills blended, a good dose of commercial judgement together with refined and tailored approaches to realise this. Part of the key to our success is collaboration, and with this in mind, I take much pleasure in announcing a collaboration between FinTech Scotland, and the IIA: The FinTech Audit Forum – intended to allow those working within Internal Audit in the Fintech industry to network, share ideas, discus hot topic and tailor their approach.
If you work in fintech, either in Internal Audit, or have a vested interest in this initiative and would benefit from:
- knowledge sharing and asking questions with peers
- hearing shared experiences, views, and responses
- industry insight
- Audit Committee perspectives
- A network of Internal Auditors working within fintech
- Discussion and debate of current/ emerging issues, hot topics, obstacles, changes, regulation etc
- Hearing of proposed/bespoke approaches aimed at the FinTech Internal Audit community and stakeholders
then please let me know and I would be delighted to include you in the FinTech Audit Forum. Our first meeting is on Wednesday 28th of October between 2pm and 3pm. This will be a vitual meeting and we’ll be delighted to see you there.
Photo by bongkarn thanyakij from Pexels
Fintechs Worldline and BRIDGE announce partnership
Worldline and Scottish fintech Bridge announced today a technology partnership. BRIDGE will integrate its eCommerce payment consolidation and control features into Worldline’s UK rail eCommerce platform.
Worldline’s eCommerce platform is a very innovative customer-facing service adopted by major transport providers. It helps people along the full booking process from journey planning to payment.
Thanks to this partnership, Worldline’s customers will be able to take control of the end-to-end payments experience whilst connecting transactions with other business processes.
James Bain, CEO, Worldline UK & Ireland, said,
“We believe in collaboration for innovation, ensuring that, through our partnerships, we always have the most inventive technologies built into our solutions. Working with BRIDGE’s specialist strength in payments integration and control means that we will be quicker in bringing a more agile and resilient payment ecosystem offering to our customers. It aligns with the Worldline vision of payments for a trusted world.”
Mobility-as-a-service’ is a growing trend and with it appears the need for a on one-stop platforms to deliver convenience, comfort and flexibility. This partnership ensures that Worldline is equipped to deliver such a platform.
Brian Coburn, CEO at BRIDGE, said,
“For transport companies and their customers, the ticketing system is so much more than a permit to travel ”“ it’s a key part of the customer journey. Given its influence on trust and satisfaction, we see payments as an engine for opportunity and differentiation today and into the future. Through our partnership with Worldline, we look forward to seeing our innovation at work within a world-class transport eCommerce system and showcasing its impact on a frictionless customer experience.”
BRIDGE is a new payment orchestration service, offering a single horizontal integration layer across the retailer’s payment system that manages, consolidates and controls multiple payment offerings, as well as providing data reporting and analytics, and the ability to deploy and test new innovations at speed.
Global open banking and open finance directory launched
“When I’m talking with people in the open finance community, the most common question I’m asked is whether I can recommend a company offering a certain service in a particular region. This directory is our answer to that need, helping companies connect and building awareness of what they have to offer.”
“When I heard about the new directory, I was very keen to be involved, and we’re delighted to be on the list for the launch. Open banking has come a fantastic distance in the last two years and this will be of huge benefit to anyone seeking to understand the players in the open banking and open finance world,”
“We want to encourage everyone in the sector to share their information and to make use of this free resource. As the directory evolves, we’ll be able to map the ecosystem, add more advanced search functionality and highlight some of the great case studies that are emerging,”
“With the open banking industry now fully emerging worldwide, it is invaluable to have all of the global entities together in a resource such as the Open Future World Directory. This platform will be extremely useful to experts, partners, investors alike and will provide a forward thinking space in which to share ideas and stay up to date.”
Scottish fintech Exizent secures £3.6 million funding
Exizent, just announced it had raised £3.6m investment to completely reinvent how the legal and financial services sector deals with bereavement making it less stressful for families.
The Scottish fintech is working on the first ever platform that will connect data, services and the network of people involved when someone passes away. Exizent’s objective is to make the process less uncertain and significantly faster and simpler.
Co-founders Nick Cousins and Aleks Tomczyk both have an impressive track records of building successful products and businesses. Aleks founded the very successful fintech Arum before selling the business at the end of 2017. Nick was previously Chief Product Owner of Barclays Wealth and Investments division.
The investment announced today involved several investors including FNZ, the global platform-as-a-service firm which reached unicorn status in 2018.
Nick Cousins, Founder and CEO of Exizent, said:
“Our personal experiences are what led to us to establish Exizent. We believe the administrative tasks facing families after the death of a loved one should be far easier, and that modern technology solutions and services can make this a reality. We have spent the last 18 months carefully designing, developing, and testing our product with innovative partners, and look forward to launching the platform to legal services professionals later this year.”
Adrian Durham, Group CEO of FNZ said:
“The Exizent team has already achieved an enormous amount and we are proud to support their vision of leveraging technology to make the bereavement process far easier for everyone involved. Exizent will also be joining the fast growing FNZ OpenPlatform App Store.”
In the next few months the company will focus on helping legal services firms, working for executors, efficiently manage the process of completing and submitting probate applications (confirmation in Scotland). It will also make the process of gathering information about an estate easier by connecting third parties to automatically discover assets the person may have had, reducing the reliance on an executor to find and send physical documents.
The company also plans to build digital connections with the various institutions that hold data and information about the person who has passed away to help them deal with queries from executors and legal services firms more efficiently.
PwC Scale | FinTech ”“ now open for applications
PwC are excited to announce that our 4th Scale | FinTech programme is now open for applications!
Scale | FinTech is a 10 week programme that supports PwC’s mission to unite fintechs with Financial Services leaders to drive innovation across the industry. The programme brings together a cohort of fast growth fintechs that are solving some of the Financial Services industry’s most pressing challenges, and provides a programme of support focused on accelerating growth.
Why should you apply?
The programme has 3 core components which are founded on PwC’s experience of running over 40 different Scale Programmes across all industries and working with over 400 scale-ups across the UK. The 3 core components are:
- training masterclasses that provide the insights and tools you need to grow, delivered by a group of experts from inside and outside the firm;
- 1:1 support including bespoke sales coaching, engagement with senior PwC stakeholders who have experience relevant to your proposition, and opportunities to explore collaboration with PwC; and
- access to industry decision makers and budget holders at curated events that give founders the opportunity to pitch to PwC’s extended network of corporate clients.
The programme is designed to be both time and cost effective, and to give the maximum return for those that fully engage.
Who should apply?
The programme is suitable for product ready, revenue generating B2B scale-ups that are targeting the Financial Services sector and looking to scale. They welcome applications from fintechs across the globe, and although not critical they are particularly interested in fintechs in the payments, compliance and data spaces.
The application process involves a simple online form, followed by an interview for those fintechs that are shortlisted. Note that due to the bespoke nature of the Programme, PwC can only take a maximum of 12 fintechs into the programme. The programme will then commence in October 2020. There is a fixed fee of £7.5k to take part in the programme, which alumni testify is great value.
What have our alumni said?
“Scale in particular has been of immense value for InvestSuite via coaching, guiding and mentoring; providing top notch tailored courses like Funding, Scaling, etc. geared towards scale-ups; legal assistance; and most crucially, access to PwC’s immense network. The key highlight for InvestSuite has been its first implementation in the emerging markets, where PwC UK and PwC ME conceptualised the partnership with a Middle East banking partner and is now program managing the implementation. Once live later in 2020, the digital robo-advisory solution will be the first of its kind in the Middle East region.” Investsuite CEO – Scale FinTech 2019 Alumni
If you have any questions or would like a conversation, please contact Rory Martyn-Smith
Scottish fintech selected for fintech growth programme
Vistalworks just announced it has been selected for the UK’s fintech growth programme.
The company will be part of the Tech Nation’s Fintech 3.0 cohort, delivered as part of the UK Treasury’s fintech strategy.
The growth programme aim to provide coaching and networking to some of the best fintech firms in the UK so they can develop new solutions to support the UK economy.
Vistalworks’ solution allows financial institution to fight fraudulent transactions and reduce consumers detriment thanks to a state of the art software that creates risk profiles for sellers and products. The new technology also sends alerts to governments, police, specialist agencies, consumer protection bodies, and corporations such as banks.
Thanks to a browser add-on, consumers can also check products are licit before buying them.
Vicky Brock, chief executive and co-founder of Vistalworks, said:
“Our technology protects consumers and businesses from harmful online criminal sellers at every stage of the transaction, and we want to expand our reach.
“Our goal is to enable banks and payments providers to be more proactive in preventing high risk illicit transactions that lead to consumer harm and costly claims and refunds.
“Illicit trade is the biggest funding source of organised crime and directly harms economies, the environment, businesses, citizens and their communities.
“We want Scotland and the UK to be at the forefront of the fintech innovation that will help tackle this problem.”
Stephen Ingledew, chief executive of FinTech Scotland, said:
“The inclusion of Vistalworks on the Tech Nation programme is terrific recognition of Vicky Brock and the team’s exciting and innovative proposition in addressing consumer and business challenges of financial crime.
“The development of proactive tools to deal with high risks transactions handled by banks and payment providers has never been more important in the emerging digital economy and I am inspired by how the Vistalworks team are pioneering innovative approaches which will benefit consumers and businesses.”
Lynne Cadenhead, chair of Women’s Enterprise Scotland, said:
“We are delighted that Vistalworks has secured a place on the Tech Nation Fintech programme.
“Founder Vicky Brock is both a vocal supporter of women in STEM and an active Women’s Enterprise Scotland Ambassador.
“As a visible role model, she inspires other women and girls to pursue careers in STEM industries and we know that diversity is a key driver of innovation.
“This in turn fuels economic growth, making gender diversity a key component in rebuilding our economy after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
New online life and legacy planning platform Legado launches following an additional £600,000 investment
Scottish fintech Legado, launched today after receiving a substantial investment of more than £600,000 from savings and investments business, Prudential and one of Scotland’s fintech Unicorns, FNZ.
Legado, is available directly for consumers or for enterprises and professional advisers looking to provide their customers with a GDPR compliant and customer-focussed service.
Thanks to this new platform, people can securely and easily store and then share their most important documents and information such as wills and policies to pin codes and treasured family recipes. Legado is unique in that it looks at people’s entire life. Users can nominate specific individuals to have access to their vault be it a spouse, financial adviser or executor ”“ with the user having complete control over what these parties can see and when. At the point of life events, customers can quickly and easily share key documentation with organisations and other related parties to speed up processing time and help with operational efficiency.
Enterprises can white label this solution should they want to provide Legado’s innovative solution to their own customers. The added benefit is that Legado can help companies move towards paperless communications.
The launch of the direct-to-consumer service follows a £50,000 grant from Innovate UK, the UK Government’s innovation agency. The grant has allowed Legado to offer this version of the service for free for an extended period. Thereafter, users will be able to subscribe to the platform for a nominal monthly or annual fee.
All information stored within Legado is protected by bank-grade’ security ”“ one of the highest levels of encryption, with users required to follow a two-factor authentication process to gain entry to their digital vault.
Josif Grace, CEO and Founder of Legado said:
“Life organisation and Legacy planning is something that can fill many with dread. While it is understandably a sensitive subject and strenuous task, it’s important that services like ours make it as easy as possible to prepare for life’s unexpected events. It’s important to highlight how it is never too early to think about the future and to keep plans updated throughout your life.
“We live in a digital world, however when it comes to forward planning, the industry still relies on paper, physical documents, unsecure emails and other file hosting services. Legado removes that aspect and provides one simple, highly secure platform which a consumer has access to and can manage throughout their lives. Not only does this provide the user with a central and secure space where they can store an abundance of documents, but they also have complete control over who is able to access specific information. Enterprises will also be able to benefit as they are granted unique access to their client’s affairs which can better shape the counsel and advice they provide.”
Adrian Durham, FNZ Group CEO commented:
“As an organisation with the mission of helping people achieve their financial goals, FNZ is committed to the development of solutions that solve the problems faced by consumers of long-term savings and insurance products ”“ whether that is through our own capabilities or supporting independent innovations in the sector.
“Consumers are increasingly concerned about the security of their data and who can access it. The secure document storage Legado offers will provide much-needed reassurance and increased efficiency in a market that is still far too dependent on physical documents and scanned attachments.
“Legado will be available on the FNZ App Store we have developed for platform customers, which enables approved third-party providers to seamlessly connect with platforms and provide services to users ”“ promoting choice within the wealth management market.”
Mark Simpson, Director of Digital, Prudential commented:
“We have been able to pilot the Legado platform with our customers, providing them the ability to manage their wealth management and estate planning documents in one place. The platform is a smart digital solution that allows our customers to easily interact with the adviser community and beyond. Being able to do securely is key for us, and Legado has provided us the mechanism to do so.”
More information on Legado and how to sign up for a free consumer account can be found here joinlegado.com/