Advice Direct Scotland call for data and tech experts
Advice Direct Scotland is starting the New Year with a continued sense of purpose and ambition and the team are keen to engage with data experts and technology experts to help. This is a call for input and help that we’re pleased to support.
We don’t know what we don’t know, but we do know technology could help!
Advice Direct Scotland is a citizen centric organisation that serves Scotland’s population by offering practical help and advice across a huge range of issues.
We have over 700,000 contacts with citizens and consumers across the UK every year and the majority of these are with people in Scotland.
We are interested in using technology both to interpret the data we have, and to gain an understanding of the data we hold that is currently not used to measure impact and outcomes.
Our data resides in our Salesforce orgs. This data contains information from traditional telephone calls, web chat, social media, email, and online engagements. Data Lab is currently assisting us in interpreting the data, and to highlight areas where we may want to focus resources.
Areas of specific interest include:
- Creating an app linking debt/money with wellness. For example sharing improvements in income and expenditure on a regular basis to motivate individuals, but also linking people with local opportunities to improve, perhaps, their fitness, or access to activities for their children. This could also include local offers to save money, and top tips for improving financial management. We believe such an app could improve mental well-being and allow individuals and families to effectively plan their finances over time.
- Use technology to highlight those customers in particular financial stress before issues become unmanageable or adversely affect family life.
- Look at our engagement with personal data stores and see if they can either be improved or replaced.
- Further automate our debt/money journeys to encourage engagement and reduce our costs.
- Look at all of our data (including our general service, our consumer service, our debt service, and our energy services) and create a map highlighting where our services are in demand and where our impact is limited. This will allow us to focus resources on engaging with those audiences who have to date not sought advice and information from us.
We don’t know what we don’t know. We’re always looking to increase our effectiveness and are keen to connect with technology companies and universities that can assist us in our role of connecting advice and information with the people who need it, and then utilising this data to drive policy and effect of outcomes both for the customer and for other stakeholders such as the Scottish government.
If you’re interested and happy to work with us to try and progress positive change for citizens we’d really like to hear from you. Please use Fintech Scotland contact us page if you’re interested.
The number of fintech enterprises continues to grow as FinTech Scotland reaches its second birthday
FinTech Scotland has confirmed that the number of innovative fintech SMEs based in Scotland has grown by over 60% from 72 to 119 over the last twelve months.
The announcement comes on the second anniversary since the formation of FinTech Scotland, a joint initiative by a number of financial services firms, University of Edinburgh, Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise.
The growth in the new fintech enterprises focused on reinventing financial services has been driven by new start-ups such as Visible Capital, SecureTheFile, Open Banking Research, Contract2Pay, Digital Future Capital, Guiide amongst many others over the year.
In addition, the growth in numbers has been fuelled by fintech firms moving to Scotland from other parts of the world such Gobbill (Australia), Polydigi (Hong Kong), EedenBull (Norway), QWallets (USA) who are now part of the Scottish fintech community along with other global fintech firms, bringing their expertise and energy with them. Furthermore, there have been a number of innovative fintech enterprises from the UK who have now set up operations in Scotland such as Xpand, Mudano, Infinity Works, BePayd and become part of the vibrant fintech community.
Since its inception in early 2018, FinTech Scotland has facilitated the growing fintech innovation by fostering the connection between entrepreneurs, large financial services firms, the universities, Government and public sector as well as a range of strategic partners and stakeholders.
Examples of FinTech Scotland’s strategic enabling leadership role over the last twelve months have included:
- The formation of the FinTech Scotland Consumer and Citizen Panel, a first for UK and Europe, launched to encourage the development of new solutions to tackle societal and inclusion challenges
- International trade missions of fintech firms to meet the Scottish community including from Canada, Hong Kong, France, Switzerland, Singapore and USA to name a few
- Scotland’s Fintech Festival over three weeks in September with 60+ events across the country with international fintech guests attending from over twenty nations
- Collaboration with UK fintech organisations to form the Fintech National Network to support investment, innovation and inclusion initiatives
- Founding member of the European Fintech Discovery Programme with eight leading fintech hubs across the continent to offer greater access to innovation across nations
- Ongoing close collaboration with the financial regulator, the FCA, including the extention of the of the secondment of a senior regulators to FinTech Scotland
- Developed financial inclusion and diversity initiatives working with consumer groups, social enterprises and charities such as Money Advice Scotland
- Facilitated cross sector fintech innovation, for example, with ScotlandIS, Law Society of Scotland and as well as Scottish Government Digital Team
- Partnership agreement with University of Strathclyde in developing the Glasgow fintech cluster as part of the City’s Innovation District
“It is a privilege to lead the FinTech Scotland team and galvanise the broad range of support from across Scotland to support the growth of innovative fintech enterprises in this last year.
Our progressive, collaborative and inclusive agenda is certainly establishing Scotland as a major global fintech centre which can contribute to Scotland’s economic and social ambitions.
There is still much to do but with the support of a range of stakeholders from private sector, Government and academia actively participating we can achieve the top ranking global fintech status. I am excited about a number of new initiatives planned for early 2020 which will enable us to build on the momentum throughout Scotland.“
Stephen Ingledew, Chief Executive of Fintech Scotland
“Congratulations to FinTech Scotland for an another immensely successful year. Under Stephen Ingledew’s leadership at FinTech Scotland has galvanised collaboration between Scotland’s innovative SMEs, universities, financial industry and public sector. Together, we are building Scotland’s reputation as a major global FinTech centre and commend FinTech Scotland team for their collaborative leadership over the last year and their vision for the future.”
Digital Economy Minister, Kate Forbes
“Scotland’s rich heritage in financial services coupled with its reputation as a country of innovators means it’s ideally placed to become one of the world’s leading fintech ecosystems. This is evident in both the number of new Scottish fintech companies and those international businesses that are relocating their operations to take advantage of Scotland’s experience and expertise in the sector.
“The fintech movement in Scotland has been determinedly driven forward by FinTech Scotland over the past two years. Stephen and his team deserve great credit for keeping the momentum going ”“ here’s to another successful year.”
Linda Hanna, Managing Director, Scottish Enterprise
The second anniversary was recognised on Tuesday the 8th of January at the joint quarterly Government and financial industry meeting, the Financial Services Advisory Board (FiSAB), chaired by Scottish Government ministers and the Chairman of Scottish Financial Enterprise who is Philip Grant of Lloyds Banking Group, one of the founding partners of FinTech Scotland, and attended by executives from across the financial sector.
New Edinburgh Office for Autorek
Scottish fintech AutoRek recently announced the opening of their new office in Edinburgh at Apex One in Haymarket.
Following a very important recruitment push in 2019, a new office was deemed a priority for the 25 year old successful company which provides financial controls, regulatory reporting and data management software solutions.
The new office is just over 5,000 square foot and equipped with the latest technology. It’s ideally built to accommodate for training courses, helping their customers make the most of of their solution.
This follows another move to a new office in Glasgow and 2020 should see their London team being relocated to a bigger office to prepare for growth as the demands from the industry is also rapidly growing.
“After years of sustained growth we are excited to be able to move into a much-needed bigger office space. Apex one in Haymarket is a great location with amazing views. The space is best in class, and we look forward to welcoming our clients to the along for meetings and training days”.
Gordon McHarg, Managing Director
Scottish fintech GiftRound is Fundraising
The Scottish Fintech startup GiftRound is seeking to raise £75,000 (SEIS Pre approved) investment through Crowdcube.
www.crowdcube.com/giftround
Organising a group gift by passing the traditional card and brown envelope around the office is not efficient or effective in an increasingly cashless society. What’s more teams are frequently spread over different locations, home working or overseas.
GiftRound is a new online service that is changing the way people collect money for gifts. GiftRound provides a quick, hassle-free and secure way to collect money for gifts in the workplace and with friends & family. GiftRound customers can easily create a collection, invite people to contribute
and purchase a gift.
Since its launch GiftRound has received nearly 4000 contribution into 350 successful group collections.
“I found using GiftRound so much easier than collecting money for gifts before, particularly as my colleagues are based across the country. I love the transparency and it not going through my own bank account. I’ll be using it again and recommending it to others.”
RBS Office Manager
“GiftRound made the collection for Xmas gifts for our class teachers super smooth this year. Thank you! Have recommended the service to other classes at the school and I’ll be looking into using this at work too.”
Parent collecting for Primary School Teacher’s Christmas gift.
The initial focus for GiftRound was workplace teams in the UK that wanted to celebrate together and show that they care. However, GiftRound has also proven very popular with parents buying a gift for primary school teachers and friends getting together to buy a special wedding gift.
GiftRound is 100% free to use and generates its revenue when customers purchase gifts, gift vouchers or experiences from quality retailers that GiftRound has a relationship with via the GiftRound Store.
GiftRound is seeking to raise £75,000 through Crowdcube to improve the user experience of the platform and integrate a GiftRound Store to provide customers a seamless experience.
www.crowdcube.com/giftround
Edinburgh based fintech crowdfunding for new app
Financial education Scottish fintech MoneyMatiX is launching a fundraising campaign to raise £12,000.
This campaign will support the launch of its KUZAKASH APP using the RBS Back Her Business scheme which pledges to match fund up to 50% of their crowdfunding target. MoneyMatiX was launch by two highly motivated and driven mums passionate about making money management accessible to all.
Financial habits are becoming ever more complex with young people turning to adults for financial guidance but finding them ill-equipped at money management. This led MoneyMatix to develop KUZAKASH, a family finance management APP promoting meaningful financial interactions between children, parents & teachers.
Kuzakash uses visualisation tools to make financial goal setting fun and achievable. Both adults and children can set, track and contribute towards their goals which are used as the educational touch-points to illustrate healthy money habits.
This raise will be used to carry out beta testing of the KUZAKASH APP and a consumer education campaign.
“Financial management skills are one of the most important factors that determine our lifestyle choices. Money is a continuous touchpoint throughout our lives and technology can help make this touchpoint meaningful by enabling people to create healthy interactions with money.”
Tynah Matembe, CEO of MoneyMatiX
“There is an African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child, but I want to add to it that it takes a family and community to foster good financial habits. In this day and age of influencers, young people should not only be influenced by fashion or talent, but they should also be influenced by skills that will last for a lifetime like financial education. We are building a generation of financially savvy youngsters who will not only impact their communities but the economy at large. We can’t do this on our own! We need your help to build financially capable communities.”
Helene Rodger Co-Founder and COO of MoneyMatiX
To get the matched funding from RBS they need to get at least 100 unique backers for their APP. The campaign will run for 30 days and you can get involved to back KuzaKash here.
New fintech set to transform consumer investment experience
Scottish fintech company Visible Capital announced today it had secured £500,000 seed funding from TechStart Ventures and a group of eight private investors.
They also announced the appointment of Preston Rabl (WPP founder) on their board.
The 3 founders, Richard Braidwood, Ross Laurie and Christian Burgin will launch Visible Capital in early 2020. The solution will use Open Banking to assist clients of intermediaries provide their advisors with controlled access to their financial data in order to receive quicker, more informed advice on financial matters.
“Financial advisers and wealth managers still take information from their clients in paper form ”“ which means the advice they give and the strategies they suggest can only be as good as the immediate information they receive. Visible Capital’s technology allows the intermediary agreed and controlled access to real data about spending needs, wants, savings and borrowing, giving an instantly accurate picture of their clients’ ongoing finances ”“ making the onboarding process quicker and easier, and a lot more precise.”
Richard Braidwood, Co-Founder of Visible Capital
Earlier this year Visible Capital received approval from the Financial Conduct Authority.
Eika Makes Major Investment in EedenBull
Norwegian banking group Eika announced a large investment into Scotland based fintech EedenBull. Eika’s member banks will have access to EedenBull’s existing and future solutions and thereby increased competitiveness in the payments market..
EedenBull was founded in 2018 by a team of payments experts from around the world and expanded into Scotland with. the opening of their new office on September 2019. EedenBull already has a large number of customers in Europe and is now launching its new and innovative payments and spend management programme through more than 65 banks in the Nordic region for more than 9,000 businesses. The company is said to onboard a new customer every 4 minutes.
EedenBull’s solution gives companies simplicity and control for managing employees’ purchases made on their behalf. The solution includes payment cards, a web-based and mobile app management module.
“To us, it is important to create partnerships with players who possess specialist expertise in their areas, as the collaboration with EedenBull is an example of. This investment is strategically important to the Eika Group and our member banks for us to strengthen and secure our ability to compete effectively in the complex world of payments going forward.”
CEO Terje Gromholt of Eika Kredittbank
“The investment made by Eika and the partnership that follows is a testament to our ability to provide significant value to banks and their customers through combining our expertise and experience with payments with access to and utilization of new technologies. We are excited about the opportunity we have to not only embrace change in the way consumers and businesses think about payments, but continue to take a leading role in setting the agenda and driving change”
EedenBull CEO Nicki Bisgaard
Soar and Acquired enter partnership
Another great example of partnership between fintech firms has been announced today. This is partnership with a purpose as the main objective is to enable ethical finance companies to compete more effectively with mainstream providers.
Scottish fintech Soar and London Payments Technology Platform Acquired.com collaborating to help credit unions and other ethical organisations provide better and transparent services.
Award winning fintech, Soar, has developed a cutting edge banking technology platform which is already being used by 10 credit unions around the UK. With the partnership with Acquired they will be able to provide more services including automated reconciliation and for the first time – complete transparency over the entire payment life cycle.
“This is an important partnership for us and a statement about how we intend to improve business processes for our ethical clients. It will also allow their customers to view, manage and pay for a variety of services through one mobile and desktop application.
Our clients will not be playing catch up with mainstream players as they are now enjoying the latest cutting edge tech, which is a match for any organisation in the financial services sector.”
Soar’s founder and CEO, Andrew Duncan
“Acquired.com was born in the highly regulated Consumer Finance sector and has always been committed to helping businesses serve their customer better. We believe that credit unions play a key role in offering fair and transparent banking and credit products to communities all around the country, which we are delighted to play a part in.
Using our award-winning payment technology, Soar’s clients will be able to gain a much better insight into their customers using our rich payment data.”
Rob Clark, Managing Director of Acquired.com
In the last quarter Soar has been awarded over half a million pounds of research and development grants and this new partnership is seen as a further boost as the company looks to expand throughout the UK and into overseas markets.
Master students to undertake Financial Services projects
University of Strathclyde students on the MScs Actuarial Sciences and Quantitative Finance undertake a summer project as part of their MSc. Some projects are co-supervised by industry partners and are based on their business interests.
We are currently seeking ideas from industry for projects taking place in summer 2020.
Companies participating in the scheme in previous years benefited not only from the direct project outputs but also from accessing talented students. This can be a route to recruitment and developing a closer relationship with the university.
The Students benefit from the exposure to business. They see the problems that industry are interested in and get experience working with business. This improves their employability upon completing their MSc.
Project subject matter is flexible. It needs to be quantitative in nature and relevant to the financial sector. Projects last 12 weeks from late May to late August and the actual work can take place at the company or at the University, or a mixture of both. Industry supervision can be light touch or more intense, to suit the project and supervisor; it can also be at a distance using phone and internet communication if, for example, the industry supervisor is based overseas. No fees to students or to the University are involved.
Companies submit project ideas to the University and students select and apply for them. Industry Supervisors interview students and select the best match. Students are also assigned an academic supervisor. The student’s project plan, final report and oral presentation are judged by both the academic and industrial supervisors.
For summer 2020 projects, ideas from industry are invited by 14 February 2020 using a short pro-forma.
For further information, or if you have any questions, please contact Ian Dwyer by email at ian.dwyer@strath.ac.uk
KPMG is searching for Scotland’s top tech pioneers
Scotland’s start-up community is flourishing. Amid a climate of political and economic uncertainty, it’s sometimes a challenge to find glimmers of light and optimism, but our country’s tech-focused entrepreneurs are exactly that.
Last year, research from KPMG revealed that more than £100m of Venture Capital (VC) had been injected into start-ups. As we head towards December, we’re on-course to smash that figure. As of Q3, the figure was over £95m. For some time now, the world’s investors have been paying attention to Scotland’s tech hub cities, and there’s no sign of that enthusiasm draining anytime soon.
But, despite the outstanding achievements of the innovations and disruptors, speak to many start-up founders and they’ll tell you getting in front of the right people at the right time can be their biggest obstacle to growth.
That’s part of the motivation behind KPMG’s Best British Tech Pioneer competition. Now in its sixth year, it was set up to spot talent and facilitate those golden opportunities. This year, our search is even bigger. Throughout January, we’ll be inviting entrepreneurs to pitch to a panel of experts at informal events in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The lucky ones will then be invited to our semi-final pitches in London in February where they’ll have the chance to pitch for a place at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona later that month.
Previous competition finalists have included Babylon Health, What3Words Echo and SafeToNet, and more than £100 million has been raised to date.
The application process is open now and companies can apply via our website. To qualify, you’ll need to own a registered UK company that’s been operating for less than five years, with revenue generated of between £1m and £10m, or you should have raised at least £500k in equity.
Does that sound like you? If so, apply now. The deadline is December 1st. Our Best British Tech Pioneer competition is about finding talent and providing the opportunity to immediately access a global audience. Get involved and let us help you unlock your international growth potential.