Appointment of FinTech Scotland’s CEO
At FinTech Scotland we’re proud about the fact that we’ve been created and managed by members of the eco-system through the Scottish Financial Enterprise Fintech Steering Committee. Being built from the ground up means that we’ve gained a great understanding about the needs of fintechs, established brands, academia and the public sector. We’ve now reached a stage to use that insight to take FinTech Scotland to the next stage and develop a strategy for the fintech sector in Scotland.
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of Stephen Ingledew as CEO of FinTech Scotland.
Stephen bring with him years of experience in the financial sector where he focussed amongst other things on implementing customer focused and technology enabled initiatives.
Stephen previously worked as senior executive for companies such as Standard Life and Barclays as well as small innovative financial enterprises He’s always been an influential advocate of making financial services more open, creative and inclusive to all through new innovative technologies, encouraging diversity and progressive ways of working as well as improved collaboration across stakeholders and participants.
Throughout his career Stephen has also occupied a number of non-executive director roles including with Scottish Financial Enterprise; The Institute of Financial Services; The Chartered Insurance Institute and The Financial Services Authority.
He is a frequent author of articles and regular contributor at major global conferences on subjects ranging from customer strategy and execution, fintech and insurtech innovation as well as business change leadership. He is currently a non-executive director of Marketing Edinburgh, the body responsible for promoting the region.
Our new `CEO will work closely with a broad range of stakeholders including members the fintech community through the FinTech Practitioners Forum, SFE’s Fintech Steering Committee, and our 2 HM Treasury envoys. Stephen has already indicated that he would focus his efforts on creating an integrated and thriving ecosystem through the provision of funding, support, infrastructure and talent that recognises and responds to the needs of all stakeholders and connect Scotland to other global Fintech centres.
You will be hearing a lot more from Stephen in the coming weeks so stay tuned and subscribed to our newsletter.
University of Stirling Launches new Fintech Masters Course
Seed Haus ”“ open for second cohort
Seed Haus, the Scottish pre-seed tech accelerator, are now accepting applications for their second cohort. If you’re interested you have until 30th December to apply for £30,000 of equity investment from Scotland’s top-tier tech investors.
Who are Seed Haus?
Calum Forsyth, CEO, and Robin Knox, Chairman founded Seed Haus after identifying a gap in the startup support system. They decided to create the only incubator in Scotland which provides entrepreneurs with start-up capital as part of the package. On top of office space and the capital the pair also designed a solution that provides mentoring, peer meet-ups and investor sessions.
The first cohort launch early 2017 with 5 of the most exciting start-ups in Scotland: Drinkly, Kindaba, Sansible Wearables, Security CTRL, and Taka.
The selection process
Out of all the applications, 5 startups will be selected and offered a place in the programme. Seed Haus is working with renown partners: Alistair Forbes, James Watt of BrewDog, Gavin Dutch, Paul Walton, Judy Wilson, Rob Dobson, Paddy Burns, Chris van der Kuyl, Paul Davidson, and Sir Tom Hunter.
Calum Forsyth declared: “Our deal terms are incredibly founder friendly. The founders backed in cohort 1 were originally looking to raise around £100,000 with very little traction. Based on the current investment climate in Scotland, that would have meant selling a big part of their business, at a formative stage, hampering future growth and fundraising. Pleasingly, they saw the value in aligning with Seed Haus which allows them to hold on to a greater portion of equity and lay the foundations for a truly scalable business”.
Who can apply?
Most entrepreneurs can apply but Seed Haus is most interested in people with domain expertise. Seed Haus provide investments which allow entrepreneurs to cover their living costs. It therefore removes some of the risks that could have stopped some entrepreneurs making the leap. Transitioning from full-time work to entrepreneurship can be hard, Seed Haus take some of the fear away.
Bitcoin vs. Scotcoin – the Scottish cryptocurrency alternative
It’s becoming very hard to ignore cryptocurrencies. Whether you’re a cryptocoin enthusiast or a confirmed sceptic, it’s clear that they are here to stay. They might never replace traditional currencies but will have their part to play in the world of finance.
However, Caroline Wylie, at Scotcoin tells us that the rise in Bitcoin has had a profound effect on the very nature of Bitcoin. Increased transaction charges are pushing up the cost of working in cryptocurrencies – as she says: “Your cup of coffee at £3 looks rather different when it becomes £7 by the time you pay for it. Why would you pay such a high premium just to use Bitcoin as a currency? It makes smaller transactions completely uneconomic.”
Bitcoin Transaction charges
Why are the charges so high? It’s down to the success of Bitcoin. This has led to a steep increase in the number of transactions. The way Bitcoin verifies those transactions requires rewards for the miners who do the work – they get paid in Bitcoin, so the more transactions there are, the more miners are needed and transaction fees go up.
The standard charge for a transaction is 0.0005 BTC or 0.50 cents at $1,000 per BTC. This number can fluctuate depending on how fast you want the transaction to happen.
However, today, with Bitcoin over $11,000, even if the standard charge is around $3.50 it will require 99 blocks to process and confirm the transaction. 99 blocks is the equivalent of up to 17 hours. If you want the transaction to be faster you’re looking at:
0.0006 BTC or $4.20 for 15 blocks
0.0007 BTC or $4.90 for 2 to 5 blocks
The alternative – Scotcoin
Scotcoin intends to move from the Bitcoin blockchain to its own permissioned blockchain to remove the those high transaction charges and speed up how fast those transactions are confirmed. The new blockchain can deal with transactions in seconds with a cost that’s only a very small fraction of the charge one would pay with the Bitcoin blockchain. So not only is it cheaper, it’s faster making retail use of cryptocurrencies a reality.
Scotcoin has already done a small trial of using digital currencies to buy beer in the Arlington Bar in Glasgow. And initial tests on the new blockchain are producing exciting speeds. More updates soon.
About the author:
Scotcoin is a cryptocurrency established in 2014 by Derek Nisbet, a Scottish fintech entrepreneur. It currently operates on the Bitcoin blockchain using the Counterparty protocol and has a market value of $25 million USD placing it in the top 200 of global crypto currencies as measured by the USD value.
In 2016 all intellectual property associated with Scotcoin was acquired from Nisbet by Scottish fintech investors, David Low and Temple Melville.
The investors’ desire is for the Scottish Government to adopt Scotcoin as the country’s unofficial crypto currency. It is acknowledged that currency is not a devolved responsibility whilst Scotland remains part of the UK. Scotcoin could only become an official currency if Scotland was independent of the UK or current legislation was changed.
Why a London based fintech chose to grow in Scotland
David Brown, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer at Previse, spoke to us about the reasons behind the company’s expansion in Scotland.
It was first and foremost a very early meeting with the Datalabs that triggered the interest of the senior management team.
With a highly skilled workforce and a huge amount of new talents fresh out of world class universities, Scotland appeared to be the ideal place for Previse to locate, develop and recruit talent in data science with an ambition to use artificial intelligence technology to fix global trade finance.
Previse are still growing their presence in Scotland helped by Scottish Enterprise who awarded them a significant grant in order to support the company’s hiring strategy.
Clockwise, the co-working space in Glasgow, currently hosts the first Scottish recruits. Datalabs are still heavily involved as their R&D partner.
Previse is also working with the leading Scottish universities to disrupt trade finance by bringing data together with artificial intelligence.
David added that the required skills were “in short supply, but, by investing in developing these talents, Scotland can become a destination of choice and lead the way in providing high quality and high paying jobs in this sector.”
LendingCrowd toasts Scottish Enterprise anniversary
LendingCrowd, the only peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform headquartered in Scotland, has completed 33 loan deals ”“ worth some £3 million ”“ to companies based north of the Border since forming its groundbreaking partnership with Scottish Enterprise a year ago.
Loans have been secured by a range of fast-growing companies, including restaurant chain Tony Macaroni, property lettings agency Umega Lettings and Summerhall Distillery, the producer of award-winning spirits brand Pickering’s Gin.
The Scottish Enterprise tie-up, announced in October last year, will see the economic development agency provide LendingCrowd with £2.75m to lend to Scottish SMEs across its platform.
Stuart Lunn, co-founder and CEO of Edinburgh-based LendingCrowd, is now targeting total lending of £15m to Scottish SMEs in 2018, more than a third of forecast overall lending of £40m across the UK next year, and said growth in the platform’s investor funds has been driven by the launch in February of its Innovative Finance ISA product.
He said: “The flexibility of our funding packages combined with our ability to offer a highly personalised service and much quicker turnarounds on loan decisions than are available on the high street are starting to make an impression in the Scottish market.
“LendingCrowd has seen significant growth in 2017 and is anticipating doing £18m of deals this year, versus £4.5m in 2016. Much of the growth in investor funds on the platform results from LendingCrowd launching its ISA in February this year.”
LendingCrowd, which was established in October 2014, is fully authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. To help drive growth and scale the business, former RBS and Clydesdale Bank director Adrian Innes joined as Head of Origination in September and now leads business development activity.
FCA Innovate to visit Scottish fintechs
Launch of AG Elevate 2018 for Scottish fintechs
3 Scottish universities collaborate on fintech
In a first for Scotland and the United Kingdom, Tatja Karkkainen, is to undertake a PhD in Fintech. Her research is lead supervised by Glasgow University’s Adam Smith Business School and co-mentored by Strathclyde and Stirling Universities.
Ms Karkkainen will research distributed ledger technologies as well as smart contract solutions for the efficiency of financial markets. This will source from the fields of pure finance as well as IT. She regards the university cluster an ideal base for Fintech research for its accessible skills and resources.
The three universities provide a formidable fintech combination, providing a multi disciplinary environment for Ms Karkkainen’s Research. Glasgow University was named Scottish University of the Year in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018. The Department of Accounting and Finance at Strathclyde Business School was ranked first in Accounting and Finance in the United Kingdom and Stirling University Computing Department is part of the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance.
Blockchain breakthrough for Strathclyde Business School
Another breakthrough from the Strathclyde Business School in collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TMX), and consultancy firm Z/Yen. They managed to timestamp financial stock trades with an atomic clock.
Over 20 million transactions were timestamped by The Atomic Ledger’ project during three hours of trading.
Director of the Strathclyde’s Centre for Financial Regulation and Innovation, Daniel Broby and his team will now analyse the results.
Mr Broby said: “The role of distributed ledgers and precision timing is becoming ever more relevant as Fintech companies adopt blockchain for financial transactions.
This is an exciting trial that will have real world policy impact.
It is at the cutting edge of both finance and technology, helping make money payments over the internet cheaper, faster and more efficient.”
Different processing speeds, server capabilities and execution code are today leading to orders arriving at a market place at different times.
However, current regulatory guidance implies that trades need to be recorded in microseconds (a millionth of a second).
The Atomic Ledger’ project test went beyond microseconds. The Project was able to provide nanosecond resolution.
It is believed the results will provide a benchmark to incorporate the concept of timing into financial asset price discovery.