FinTech Scotland

Lending money is a process that has long been around and for many years it was left undisrupted. People are very familiar now with credit scores and the idea that to get credit you need credit.

New solutions and technologies are coming to disrupt this market to make financial products more accessible to a greater number of people.

In this episode we’ll look at how Open Finance is changing the status quo and look at some fantastic examples of fintech innovation.

We’ll also look at how credit bureaus are adapting and partnering with fintechs to evolve their own models.

Guests: 

Robert McKechnie – Head of Products at Equifax

Crawford Taylor – CEO and Founder at Nude

By Now Pay Later is not something new. Offline, it’s a process that goes back several decades. Online we’ve started to see offers develop in the last 10 years with a real acceleration powered by fintech innovation in the last 5 years.

In the UK this market represents $27Bn and is expected to reach $55Bn by 2028 according to Payments Cards and Mobile.

Recently we’ve started to witness the appearance of what’s called BNPL 2.0.

According to CU today 61% of BNPL users would rather use a BNPL service offered directly from the merchant they’re buying from than go through a third party.

In this episode we’ll be speaking about BNPL2.0 and wonder if this is in fact the future, its advantages and pitfalls

Guests: 

Geordie Laing – Head of Partnerships at Zing Cover

Thomas Bull – Partner at EY and Head of Fintech Growth

On November 10th, 2022, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) was approved by the EU.

It is designed to standardise IT risk requirements in the financial sector to ensure that all participants of the financial system are subject to a common set of. 

Amongst other things it introduces an oversight framework for critical third-party providers.

In this podcast we will discuss how this new EU regulation can impact fintech firms that are very often providing 3rd party services to established financial firms.

Guests:

Yvonne Dunn, Partner at Pinsent Masons

Wayne Scott, Regulatory Compliance Solutions Lead at NCC

Jamie Graves, technical advisor on the TrueDeploy project

In this special episode with speak with David Tracy, Head of Data Science, at Smart Data Foundry on the week they presented their new Aisle proposition at Innovate Finance Global Summit.

What is synthetic data is? How is it different from real-world data?

We'll explore how it will speed up innovation and collaboration in the fintech world, what the risks and benefits are and much more.

David will also speak to us about the work they've done with the FCA and the PSR to tackle APP fraud using Agent Based Simulation.

Scaling up a fintech business is a crucial part of a company’s life, moving from launching and validating a proposition to growing, onboarding clients and driving revenue. At that stage companies will focus on marketing, sales, recruitment which are all important considerations. It is however paramount to also look at resilience to protect customers/clients, adhere to new regulation, be investor ready and navigate procurement better and faster.

In this podcast we will explore what being resilient mean. We’ll cover cyber resilience of course but will go much wider and look at how to build a solid and future proof business. 

Guests: 

Wayne Scott – Regulatory Compliance Solutions Lead

David Lanc – Founder and CEO at Ionburst

In July 2022, the FCA published its Consumer Duty. Regulated firms need to implement the new rules by the end of July 2023 for open products and July 2024 for closed books of business.

Firms will need to review their products, communications and customer journey.

It will impact most areas in those organisations such as governance, reporting, product design, pricing, distribution, servicing and staff training.

In this podcast we will review the key principles, ask ourselves what the impact on both established firms and fintechs is as well as exploring innovative technologies that can help adhere to those new rules.

Guests:

Venetia Jackson – Senior Associate at Pinsent Masons

Joseph Twigg – Founder and CEO at Aveni

Chris Ansara – Founder and CEO at docStribute

When thinking about payroll generally most people would assume that it is something that works well. You work, you get paid. However, payroll is being disrupted like never before.

According to software company Intuit, one in four workers say they have had paycheque errors. And cloud company Kronos found almost half of workers who have had two or more paycheque errors will look for a new job.

Society is changing fast (even more so after COVID). In this podcast we’ll explore how those changes are impacting the way people work, get paid, pay taxes and how new fintech solutions are developing to make this possible.

Guests:

Ian Hogg – Chairman of The Work Tech Group that owns fastPAYE

Hayley Strachan - Director - Global Employer Services at Deloitte

Richard Tooth - Tax & Legal consultant at Deloitte LLP

Eira Hammond - Executive Director Global Payroll at Hi55 Ventures

The FinTech Scotland Research and Innovation Roadmap highlighted the growing focus on climate considerations for the financial services sector.

Whilst this is in part driven by consumers, demanding better transparency for the products they invest in, this is the launch of new regulations that is accelerating the move to a more sustainable financial sector.

Financial services providers are facing growing challenges around ESG reporting due to the difficulties around the availability of trustworthy data. This has led to mounting concerns around greenwashing.

In a bid to clamp down on greenwashing, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is proposing a package of new measures including investment product sustainability labels and restrictions on how terms like ‘ESG’, ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ can be used.

In this podcast we discuss how to best avoid greenwashing moving forward.

Guests:

Colin Carmichael – Sustainability Director at PwC

Jules Salmond – Founder at Ciendos

Matthew Brander - Senior Lecturer in Carbon Accounting at The University of Edinburgh Business School

As we transition to a more sustainable future, data, technology and innovation will help to drive and accelerate the insights, products and services to enable the changes needed.

Earth Observation Data can enable new innovations that can help to advance financial inclusion, incentivise better climate related behaviours, and support the net zero agenda.

Scotland has built significant experience in Space Tech and Space Data. Combined with the strength in FinTech innovation, this offers a substantial opportunity for future FinTech innovation and research.

We can accelerate change through greater collaboration across Space and FinTech. This starts with building an understanding of current capabilities, in both space and fintech innovation.

FinTech Scotland and Space Scotland are working closely together to bring our ecosystems together to share learnings & explore the challenges in the financial services sector that innovation could address, shaping more sustainable finance, and building confidence in future investments

Participants

Host: Mickael Paris – Marketing Director at FinTech Scotland

Guests:

Peter Young - CEO at Global Surface Intelligence & co-founder of the Scottish Space Leadership Council

Kirsty McKenna – Innovation programme Manager at FinTech Scotland

Fintech firms around the world are becoming more and more vocal about how difficult they find it to hire new colleagues. Whether it is the skills gap or the increase in salary levels, start-ups and scales-ups are not always best equipped to compete in a global and highly competitive market.

At the same time, many fintechs from around the world have and are still choosing Scotland to expand, finding it easier and sometime cheaper to recruit. So, is Scotland still attractive from a job market perspective?

In this podcast episode we’ll discuss how Scotland is positioned now the job market is really global in a post-pandemic world. We’ll also try to understand how Scotland is getting ready to face the growing tech talent demand. Finally, we’ll discuss strategies fintech companies can put in place to become attractive and retain talent.

Guests:

Pardeep Cassells – Head of Securities and Claims Products at Access Fintech

Justin Black – Business Director at Hays Technology Scotland

Killian McAlesse - Marketing Director at CodeClan

Marina Brizar - UK & Europe Director at Talent Beyond Boundaries

Financial Regulation Innovation (RegTech) was highlighted in the FinTech Scotland Research and Innovation roadmap published in March 2022 as an essential area of focus for the financial sector.

Understanding and managing regulatory requirements costs financial institutions millions of pounds every year. As regulation evolves all the time to protect consumers, so do new tools and technologies. In recent years new solutions have emerged to help companies reduce cost, better understand requirements, and meet their reporting obligations. Open Banking, AI, Machine Learning and many more technologies have led to increased innovation.

In this podcast we will discuss what RegTech means, adoption within the financial sector and why now is the time for financial firms to consider and explore innovation around financial regulation. This podcast will also be an opportunity to promote the upcoming fintech table event during Scotland FinTech festival.

Guests:

Yvonne Dunn – Partner at Pinsent masons

Callum Murray – Founder and CEO at Amiqus

Whilst the fintech movement often makes headlines with those firms that are trying to replace traditional financial institutions, there are many more fintech firms out there trying to work, collaborate or sell to those incumbents to help them deliver better outcomes to their customers.

In this podcast we discuss the opportunities for increased collaboration and some of the challenges? Has the pandemic changed the state of play and what are the solutions to accelerate fintech adoption by historical brands?

This podcast will also be an opportunity to announce the launch of the fintech innovation forum at Phoenix.

Guests:

Josif Grace – CEO at Legado

Kevin Spence – Director Financial Services, Scotland & Client Partner

Andy Young – Group Head of Digital & UX at Phoenix Group

In March 2022, FinTech Scotland released its 10-year Fintech Research & Innovation Roadmap for the UK.

In collaboration with leading universities, large financial institutions, fintech businesses, citizens, industry experts and senior officials this report explores the opportunities that will help the UK maintain its fintech leadership globally.

In this episode we explore what this roadmap means for Scotland and what the next steps are to deliver on the roadmap recommendations.

The fintech movement hasn’t just disrupted the way customers and citizen deal with money and access financial products or large financial institutions digitise themselves. Fintech is transforming how SMEs work and organise themselves.

In this episode we’ll explore how fintech is transforming SMEs. We’ll discuss adoption rates, opportunities and challenges faced by fintechs trying to sell their solutions to SMEs. Can collaboration with trusted financial institution be the solution to mass adoption. We’ll also look at ahead and explore future trends.

Anthony Persse – CEO at Optimum Finance

Lynne Darcey Quigley – CEO and Founder of Know-it

Derek Smith – Head of Digital Solutions at Virgin Money

The Digital Banking Report Research by The Financial Brand shows that Customer Experience is the number 2 priority (just after digital transformation) for financial institution around the globe.

New entrants and changing customer expectations have fuelled this need for a greater focus on customer led design. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend by requiring companies to adapt to a fully digital world with no branches for customers to go to and the need to make customer support more efficient for staff working from home.

In this new episode we’ll explore why the focus on CX is so important; if new innovative firms still have the edge on their incumbent counterparts and what future trends we need to watch out for.

Andrew Duncan – CEO of fintech SOAR

Chris Speed – Professor of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh

Lotta Lindstrand - Senior CRO Analyst at Merkle EMEA

Saying that women are under-represented in fintech is an understatement. According to a 2018 LendIt survey, only 37 per cent of fintech employees are female, with representation dropping to just 19 per cent at C-suite level.

There are however some great success stories. Anne Boden, CEO at Starling Bank or closer to home Jude Cook, CEO and co-founder at ShareIn, Loral and Eishel Quinn at Sustainably and with us today Ana Galitsyna co-founder at fintech Baby Ready.

Whilst not being the majority, they are role models of leadership and real examples of what the “women difference” means in terms of entrepreneurship.

If fintech had a gender it would probably be female (in French it is “une fintech”), a movement destined to change the financial sector as we know it. Fintech is about democratisation, it is about better outcome for citizens and companies, empathy for customer problems and about inclusion; qualities that females have in abondance and are using to develop new innovative businesses.

In this episode we are joined by:

Ana Galitsyna - Co-founder at fintech Baby Ready

Yvonne Dunn – Partner at Pinsent Masons

Sarah Ronald – Founder at Nile HQ and investor at ParEquity

With COP26 taking place in Glasgow later this year, there is a real focus on the climate change issue. As all participating countries are asked to submit their new long-term goals to address the global climate emergency, we are asking ourselves today how fintech can participate in this global movement.

The United Nations, in their Principles for Responsible Banking, have recognised Financial Services as one of the components that will help tackle climate change.

Fintech, as a movement, is already trying to tackle economic and societal issues such as financial inclusion, better financial outcomes, better money management tools, etc. Can it also provide new innovative solution to combat climate change?

With our distinguished guests we’ll explore the role fintech can and ought to play in the race to save the planet. Will touch on some themes such as ESG, digital currencies and much more

Guests:

Daniel Broby – Director at the Centre for Financial Regulation and Innovation at Strathclyde Business School

Zee West – Co-founder at Picnic Bank

Natalie Jackson - Consultant at the Global Ethical Finance Initiative

The world of payment is being disrupted like never before, accelerated, in part, by the recent economic and societal changed imposed by COVID19.

Contactless payments, rise in online transactions coupled with increased concerns around fraud and cybersecurity mean that the sector is undergoing some unprecedented changes.

In this episode we explore what those changes mean in terms of innovation and from a regulation perspective with 3 fantastic guests: 

Genevieve Marjoribanks, Head of Policy and ExCo member at Payment Systems Regulator

Myles Stephenson, Chief Executive at Modulr

Brian Coburn, CEO at Br-dge

Cryptocurrencies are regularly featured in the press. Sometimes it’s about Bitcoin reaching a new high, sometimes about a new ICO launching. More recently we learnt that tech giant Elon Musk had bought into the digital currency movement.

There have been many debates since Bitcoin launched in 2008. There are those who believe crypto is just a temporary craze and those who believe it’s the future of money.

With global tech giants launching their own coins and new crypto reaching new highs, we discussed whether now was the start of global crypto adoption.

For our fourth podcast we’re bringing industry experts together to discuss the topic and listen to their views on the future of cryptocurrency.

Guests:

Temple Melvillle, Director at The Scotcoin Project

Nick Jones, CEO and co-founder at Zumo

Zion Schum, Founder and CEO at Leutheria

In this episode we welcomed: 

-Chris Turnbull, CEO at Airfunders

-Ross Laurie, CEO at Visible Capital

-Iain Niblock the newly appointed CEO at Money Dashboard. 

We spoke about new innovations impacting the world of Wealthtech from Open Banking to AI.

The conversation also took us to Open Finance as a natural and needed evolution of Open Banking and what it means for the future of digital financial advice and guidance. 

Finally we asked ourselves whether people would ever move to full robots advice solutions or if they'd always value the human interaction.

An introduction to the fintech sector in Scotland with:

-Nicola Anderson, CEO at FinTech Scotland

-Kent MacKenzie, Partner and Global Head of Fintech & Regtech, Advisory Services at Deloitte

-Alberto Macciani, CMO at fintech Paysend

Together our guests covered what makes Scotland a great place for innovation generally and for fintech more specifically. The recent UK Fintech Sector Review commissioned by the UK Treasure highlights Scotland as the second UK fintech hub in number of firms. We explore the strength of a nation whilst discussing areas of improvement and what's in train for FinTech Scotland in the coming years.

FinTech Scotland's CEO, Nicola Anderson, welcomes you to our new podcast and tell you about all the great things we'll be discussing.