Using the blockchain to improve access to financial advice

This article was written by Suhail Ahmad, Founder and CEO of AdviserDirect.co.uk, a digital platform connecting small-medium enterprise with qualified business and financial advisers 24/7 to help solve money, management and growth challenges.

There is no shortage of business “experts” offering advice and services to small-medium enterprises (SME) across the UK. So why is it that in a recent survey of over one million SME’S, 49% said they avoid hiring advisers or consultants due to the costs. With 40% of all businesses stating they find fixed fees to be inefficient and the main reason for their dissatisfaction with the service they received. They don’t feel their getting value for money despite spending over £60 billion annually on external advisory and consultancy services.

When making a big financial decision is to seek expert advice from various sources in order to make the most informed decision. A good business or financial adviser can be an invaluable resource helping business owners avoid pitfalls and overcome roadblocks. Being an adviser myself for over a decade, I could sympathise with the pain and frustration faced by entrepreneurs and small-medium business owners. Many of whom simply can’t afford the time and cost of evaluating adviser or getting the most important second opinion. Often resulting in them making poor financial or as we would say “less optimal” decisions that have real consequences on the success of their businesses.

In addition to cost, trust and confidence in the ability of the advisers is key determining factor in choosing an an adviser. Connecting businesses with trusted and suitable advisers in a digital marketplace enables lower costs and improved speed of service. But how do you accelerate the speed of trust when advisers won’t necessarily meet in person and could be across the country or the world?
This is where blockchain technology has the potential for solving the trust issue by helping develop a secure trusted mechanism. Blockchain, originally developed as the accounting method for the virtual currency Bitcoin, uses distributed ledger technology (DLT) to verify transactions and is now being used in a variety of commercial applications worldwide. It’s ability to provide authentication and security could be a fast adoption and use of digital platforms for the delivery of advice.

AdviserDirect is launching a feasibility study to help evaluate the transitioning of its existing advisory platform on to the blockchain. Incorporating it’s existing AI research on to help businesses more seamlessly search, compare and access advisers most suitable for their requirements. Using smart contracts and smart identity can help build a more transparent reputation system providing businesses unparalleled confidence in the advisers, their experience and credentials. The blockchain will also enable peer-to-peer transactions and low cost micropayments so businesses can pay for advice by the minute and advisers can access their funds instantaneously.

To learn more about the blockchain and AdviserDirect initiative, please contact Suhail Ahmad at +44 (0)131 208 2786 or email suhail@adviserdirect.co.uk

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Amazing FinTech Atmosphere

I’ve been very much energized this by the hugely positive atmosphere around the broad range of fintech initiatives and activities across Scotland in this last couple of weeks.

An innovative and ambitious atmosphere fueled by collaborative and inclusive actions that is propelling the fintech activity across the country and globally every day of the week.This terrific atmosphere was very much apparent at the magnificent RBS Future of FinTech’ event and competition on Monday which had everything to make it very special evening.

An inspiring host, Lou Smith, an engaging and insightful leadership panel, Ana Stewart, David Fergusson, Gerry McCusker, Daniel Glazer and Government Minister Kate Forbes, all contributing adding to a real feel good atmosphere.

Then there were the fantastic pitches by Cyborn, Money Matix, Scoop Markets, Trade in Space, Aveni, Soar and Broker Insights, all of whom brought a real innovative edge to the atmosphere

Congratulations to Fraser Edmond with the Broker Insights team and Rob Sampson with the Trade in Space team for being the terrific winners amongst the winners.

A big thank you to the RBS and FWB Park Brown team for a fabulous event bringing alive Scotland’s great fintech examples in a super collaborative atmosphere.

Collaborative Atmosphere

This collaborative atmosphere was in also abundance at the Scottish Financial Services annual dinner event last Thursday in Glasgow with over six hundred in attendance.
A terrific buzz throughout the evening and many congratulations to the Award finalists, Origo, Previse, CYBG plc CopyLab and Barclays, the overall winners for 2018
It was an inspiring evening and wonderful to experience the hugely positive vibe emanating from Jim Pettigrew and Sue Dawe in their speeches which recognized the fintech progress Scotland is making.
A massive thank you to the legendary Graeme Jones the brilliant teams at SFE and EY for a genuinely uplifting occasion.

The collaborative atmosphere was also very much apparent the previous evening at the Fintech Practitioners Group meet up in Edinburgh.
I always come away from these gatherings enthused by the conversations with the brilliant innovators and entrepreneurs from across Scotland’s fintech community.
A collaborative atmosphere fueled by great conversations with a very broad cross section of innovative people such as Stuart Lunn from LendingCrowd, Anthony Rafferty of Origo, Joe Sluys from Square Book and Catherine Bell of Lightbox Reward as well as Hannah and Peter from wallet Services, amongst many others.

I have often referenced the fact that the collaborative atmosphere and opportunities extend beyond the financial world and this last fortnight has given further evidence of this.
For example, on Tuesday it was the latest LawScotTech Board meeting expertly chaired by Paul Mosson.
I very much value the opportunity to contribute to this valuable initiative and the far reaching impact it will have in Scotland and how I can share the collaborative learnings from the fintech sector.

Similarly but in a different field, it was very exciting to discuss the progression of potential Scottish Government and fintech collaboration opportunities with Trish Quinn, Hugh Wallace and team on Thursday this week.

On a broader vein, I was delighted last week to hear the official announcement that I have been invited to be a member of the Regional Enterprise Council to help shape the significant Edinburgh and Regions City Deal investment.
I’m looking forward to joining the highly respected leaders on the Council and share how fintech and financial services sector can continue to play a major cross sector innovation role in driving inclusive growth.

Innovative Atmosphere

There are many exciting initiatives across the country that are further enhancing the innovative atmosphere.
Earlier this week it was valuable to have time with Morgan Gillies from the European Institute of Innovation Technology (EIT) about setting up a Scotland digital satellite office with a focus on fintech.
This will join the other existing ten satellite offices spread across the European Union but will be the very first with a fintech focus reflecting the exciting innovative atmosphere being created in Scotland’s financial services.

It was good to catch up with Colin Tate at Sainsbury’s Bank to share the initial plans which will have a major impact on growing talent and investing in fintech innovations.
University of Edinburgh will work with us on this and it will be an opportunity to connect into some of the ground breaking technology developments taking place on the campus.

For example, it was very productive to meet up with Professor Aggelos Kiayias and team on Tuesday evening to consider the application of their blockchain developments in fintech.

The atmosphere for innovation was very captivating when listening to the new exciting fintech entrepreneur Nick Panteli of Attollo and very much looking forward to see the team develop in the coming months.
Nick is based at the RBS accelerator as with a number of exciting fintechs in the community such as Nexves and Money Matix.

Separately in the previous week it was great to catch up with Adam Pollock and Robert Walker on connecting into the fintech ecosystem to develop mutual innovation opportunities.

A key element of building on this innovative atmosphere is to help improve the connectivity between investors and innovators in fintech.
On this, Nicola and I had a very constructive meeting with Kerry Sharp of the Scottish Investment Bank.
We are working on an action plan with our colleagues at Scottish Enterprise and Vivolution to make a step to ensure funding is not a constraint to fintech innovation in Scotland

The innovative atmosphere was very palpable at the fantastic official launch of the latest CivTech accelerator programme and listen to the truly inspiring innovative firms who are part of the latest cohort, many of whom will shape future fintech developments.
Such as Douglas Trainer from Diddo and David Alexander from Mydex amongst several others, all of whom value the inspirational leadership from Alexander Holt in making CivTech such a massively important programme in Scotland and on the global stage.
CivTech is going from strength to strength and with Alexander and brilliant colleagues such as Vicky Brock there are some exciting opportunities to combine with fintech to drive inclusive growth.

Inclusive Atmosphere

Developing an inclusive atmosphere through investment was the focus of the Ethical Finance Forum conference last week.
It was a pleasure to share the conference stage with global leaders Gail Hurley from United Nations, Modupe Ladipo from Prosperar and Farrukh Khan of Acumen.
Thank you to Chris Tait, Hugh Wheelan and colleagues for bringing such an important event to Scotland and giving further recognition to the fact that Scotland is very much international in its outlook on all things fintech, finance and wider economy.

Later in the week Marloes Nicholls and the Financial Innovation Lab team joined us in Edinburgh for a productive workshop with key stakeholders on the subject of fintech and social inclusion opportunities. Great examples from Georgia Stewart of Tumelo and Jenni Inglis of Mydex.

On Monday I was able to talk more on this theme of customer inclusion and the role of fintech with the University of Edinburgh business school students.
Many thanks to the fabulous Professor Tina Harrison for inviting me to share the examples over the two hours on how fintech can reinvent how consumers engage in financial services.

Thursday evening, Mickael I made our way up to Dundee to present to over a hundred students on how fintech is helping financial services become a more inclusive sector for careers.
We were joined by the brilliant Derek Smith of Lloyds Bank, Gareth Stubbs of Insureapps and Douggie from RBS who all did a fantastic job in sharing how fintech is creating new opportunities for all.
Big thanks to Deji Alonge the President of the Social Science students at Dundee for organising and leading the event with the Business Society and the investment society. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and look forward to returning, next time with the award winning Broker Insights as well.
It was a super journey home on the train with Derek and Mickael and we treated ourselves to a small gin and tonic to savour the atmosphere of Scotrail jounrey back south to Edinburgh!

The growing talent base from the range of universities is a significant strength for Scotland especially with the encouragement for more people to come to Scotland to study and work.
This was a key theme of my conversation with Keith Robson last week in discussing how we work with M&G Prudential to develop the people skills and inclusion for a fintech future. Looking forward to taking this forward with the exciting plans the team have.

Of course our role extends beyond universities to work collaboratively with other key stakeholders to drive the diversity agenda.
For example, great to have the coffee interview with Aileen O’Hagan of Equate Scotland on the practical steps we can take to drive inclusion

On a broader level, it was really wonderful to catch up this week with the inspiring Kelly McIntyre of PetroStars and share our passion for making things happen through inclusion in the wider economy with fintech playing a key role.

Running Atmosphere

One of special things about participating in running races around Scotland is the terrific atmosphere at every event, whatever the weather.
This was certainly the case last Sunday for the Jedburgh half marathon where we started with bright sunshine for ten minutes and then a hail storm for the remaining eighty minutes!
However, this did not dampen the uplifting spirit amongst the runners and motivational marshals who were just fantastic.
I finished with a gallop and that means I feel ready for a marathon in two weeks time!! Until then..

The importance of technology for Scottish growth

• How to deal with data protection issues as an SME – Alastair McKendrick, TC Young Solicitors.

• How Healthy Nibbles gained competitive advantage through innovation in a traditionally non tech sector – Sara Roberts, founder Healthy Nibbles.

• The practical applications of emerging tech in business – David Sime, Oncor

• Making tax digital – hate it or embrace it – Mandy Bogot, Gillespie’s Chartered Accountants

• Accessing support and expertise for your business at The University of Edinburgh – Sara Robertson, Entrepreneurship Development Manager, The University of Edinburgh

• Outsourcing IT services – how to do it right? – Michal Sztanga, Future Processing

• After the sale; a quick guide to getting paid and staying legal – Matt Perkins, Freeagent

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ Really Serious About Building Fintech at Scale

This last fortnight I’ve seen further examples of a serious intent to make sure fintech is a success at scale in so many ways across Scotland.

The biggest example will be FNZ, the international wealth platform firm based in Edinburgh, and their £1.6bn deal announced this week. An amazing achievement by Adrian Durham and the team at FNZ.

Building fintech scale is certainly not easy nor straightforward, with many bumps along the journey but inspiring conversations during recent days give me great encouragement.

Inspiring FinTech Scale

Meeting the inspiring Andrew Duncan and Simon Mone of CU Soar in Glasgow this week to hear about their ambitious proposition and plans to build a significant fintech business was hugely motivational.

Nicola and I came away from the meeting very excited on how we could support the team with their plans to build scale and reinvent an important part of the financial services sector and reach more customers.

This meeting was immediately followed up with seeing Eleanor Mackay from University of Strathclyde who is leading their very exciting Enterprise Pathway programme which will have a fintech theme this year.

The Programme will play a major role in inspiring new innovations in the fintech space from very early idea formation and I’m delighted we will be supporting the initiative.
On a broader scale, it was wonderful to meet up with Claudia Cavalluzzo of Converge Challenge to talk about developing a partnership to bring alive the opportunities for fintech company creation working with Scotland’s universities.

It was a privilege to also have Sandy Finlayson of MBM Commercial join us for the meeting and hear about his vast experience of helping new start up enterprises achieve scale. I’m hoping we can sprinkle more of this valuable know how across the fintech community.

Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to catch up with Susan Brown of Zortrex who themselves are at a very early stage of growing but I can see significant potential for their tokenisation’ innovation across many aspects of financial services at scale.

Of course, achieving scale with any business requires investment and addressing the funding challenge faced by many emerging fintech enterprises remains a key priority.

It was really helpful to meet with Ian Mitchelmore of Scottish Investment Bank this week to agree on the practical steps we can implement to support firms looking to build their fintech propositions.

Alongside this, the productive conversations with the Vivolution team Mark Roger, Andrew McGee, Kevin Lonergan plus Graeme Rennison and the team at Scottish Enterprise will mean this remains a key focus in the coming weeks.
Fintech funding was also a key topic in my catch up with Charlotte, Victoria and Peter at Innovate Finance on Monday in London and I am looking forward to combining our efforts in this areas

We also talked about collaboration initiatives on diversity and inclusion which we are all share a passion, especially in addressing the traditional barriers and mindsets.

Fintech Collaboration to Scale

My meetings this last two weeks have reinforced to me once again that innovative collaboration between large and small enterprises can provide a successful route to scale fintech.

This was very much part of the discussion when Mickael and I met up with long standing fintech supporter Derek Smith of Lloyds Bank to hear how their collaboration approach is enabling fintech growth.

Really impressed by Derek and seeing how the genuine collaboration is driving innovation in a large organization such as Lloyds Bank from their Edinburgh office and we very much value how they are productively engaging with the fintech community.

Prudential is another significant financial services player who are collaborating at scale and I am looking forward to developing the innovation opportunities in the wealth management space with Michael Winney and Richard

I’m hoping the collaboration at scale opportunities between large financial services firms and the fintech community can be developed on a wider scale to support the need to reinvent financial services with the common purpose of improving consumer outcomes.

I focused on this example of purpose driven innovation and collaboration during my leadership talk with the diverse range of leaders on the Common Purpose programme.
Thank you, John Heraghty, for the opportunity to share insights on the fintech movement and social purpose with a great group of people making a difference in their own organisations.

Collaboration was also the focus of recent meetings with Elaine Maddison and Jenny Thorpe of Aegon as well as Ali Law at Royal London as well as developing the broad range of fintech skills required for the future.

Fintech Skills to Scale

On the subject of fintech skills, it was so brilliant to catch up with the truly inspiring Elisabetta Trasatti, vice president of the University of Glasgow FinTech Society, one of the largest student led fintech societies in the world.

We are hugely impressed by the way Elisabetta and the FinTech Society team have galvanized students and the broader fintech ecosystem, very much brought alive by their Applied FinTech Project.

Wonderful also to see the collaboration with the Orca Money team and Chris Brown at Deloitte, such a great way to develop fintech skills for the future.

The focus on skills in order to build scale was a key theme of our discussion with David Skinn and the Aviva team when we visited the Scotland HQ in Perth last Friday.

It was terrific to hear about the insurance innovations focused on customer needs being developed by the Aviva and how they are building a centre of excellence around data analytic skills to further fuel this development at scale.

We are looking forward to progressing with the MBN Solutions and Dundee University teams going forward to ensure there are the fintech skills developed for future scale opportunities.
The visit to Aviva was a super way to finish off last week even if my walking directions led to Nicola, Mickael and myself getting to see more of Perth than we had expected!!

The long walk gave us time to discuss the theme of people skills which Nicola has rightly pulled out as a key topic which comes through almost every meeting we have had in this last fortnight

Nicola, who joined FinTech Scotland last week on a twelve month secondment form the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has already in the first few days made a huge impact with insights and expert guidance.
Once again, many thanks to Maggie Craig and Karina McTeague from the FCA for this valuable initiative in Nicola joining us on secondment.

On Monday it was the opportunity to take the fintech skills agenda to London and host the Scotland’s Got Talent’ Event at Scotland House.
I was joined on the stage by inspiring leaders Alex Ford of Encompass and Colin Halpin of HSBC.

The fact that you had three people, originally from other parts of the world (Sydney, Dublin and Reading!) talking about what a wonderful place was for a careers and living reflected the genuine international culture of Scotland.
Many thanks to a very diverse engaged audience and to the fabulous Scottish Development International team for a terrific event , Karen, Andrew, Ashleigh, Martin and the Scotland House team.

On Wednesday it was back to Edinburgh and a chance to catch up with Mark Hunter and Colin Tate of Sainsbury Bank.
Some of our conversation centred around skills development, especially in Mark’s capacity as the chair of DataLab, who are very much a shining jewel in Scotland’s economy led by one of my role models’ Gillian Docherty.
However, most of our conversation was about delivering fintech change at a strategic scale and, in this respect, the very impressive transformational delivery by the very humble Sainsbury bank team is in my view a template to build scale.

I’m looking forward to supporting Mark, Colin and the team connect further into the fintech ecosystem in the future and share their example of what strategic fintech scale could look like.

Strategic Fintech at Scale

This strategic focus on innovative collaboration was central to my catch up with Craig Wilson of Sopra Steria and the opportunity for fintech to have a major impact beyond financial services and into the public sector

Thank you to Colin Carmichael for the impromptu meet up presentation with the Sopra Steria team on Tuesday, I appreciated the opportunity to share how their strategic involvement in Scotland was making a difference.

The broader strategic themes in retail banking of open banking, payments and community banking were the main discussion points with Eric Leenders at UK Finance earlier in the day. Thanks Eric for the valuable insights.

In two separate meetings with Martin Rames of Yodlee and then with Charlie Woods and Billy Weatherall of HPE, I was hugely encouraged about the interest to support the development of the strategic infrastructure and capabilities that would enable small fintech enterprises to grow.

Similarly, in the previous week, Mickael and I had a really useful meeting with Simon Pink of IBM on how we develop the strategic tram lines’ to support fintech development at scale.

Scotland’s fantastic universities have a big role to play in bringing strategic fintech at scale to market and this opportunity was even more highlighted to Nicola and myself when we visited the University of Edinburgh Blockchain Lab.

Wow, what a way to finish the week before going on a weeks’ holiday, my head was spinning with ideas and potential connecting collaborations.

Hugely impressed by what Aggelos Kiayias and his team shared and very much looking forward to working with Aggelos, Emilios Avgouleas and Chris Magennis of Rooney Nimmo to take forward.

Then when I think of how the Blockchain Lab links our work with the brilliant Paul Mosson and the team at the Law Society of Scotland and their launch this week of LawscotTech, I just end up having a sleepless night with excitement!

The ideas, capabilities, skills and people all coming together to genuinely collaborate and provide the opportunity to reinvent financial services and more!! This is why fintech is so exciting.

Running at Scale

With all this buzzing around in my head I am going to start my week’s holiday with a run at scale, an early morning start while the streets are quiet to clear the head with a twenty miles or so run.

I’ve been plagued by a bit of a bug this last month so it was great to get out racing again last Sunday with the Kirkintilloch half marathon.
A very undulating course but one of my all time favourites and I was delighted to finish with a spring in my step and fourth in my super veteran category! I do find it odd be referred to as a super veteran!!

The next race in a couple of weeks time is the Jedburgh half marathon, another lovely part of Scotland’s landscape.
However, before then there is lots of fintech activity to flow! Until next time.

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ We Have a FinTech Movement

Wow, what an incredible couple of weeks we have had with FinTech Fortnight’, clear evidence that Scotland has a fintech movement on the march!

My head is spinning and adrenalin still pumping as I reflect on the amazing engagement from so many wonderful people at over thirty plus events in the last sixteen days.

The range of events and conferences from Falkirk to Fife, from early mornings to evenings, from Parliament to a pub, from grand places such as Surgeons Hall to Strathclyde University TIC and with guests from Africa to America, and much more, brought alive the fintech movement.

A Community Movement

During recent days many people mentioned how Fintech Fortnight’ was very much a community driven initiative which made it all the more special.

This was evident from the very start two weeks ago with the launch by the local community of the ground breaking Fintech Skills Academy and then carried on everyday thereafter.

For example, the MBN Solutions team delivering three absolutely fantastic events in Edinburgh and Glasgow on topics ranging from Dirty Money, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies and the world of data science.

A massive thank you to the brilliant Michael Young, Rob Huggins and the MBN team for your ongoing fabulous community leadership with these meet ups and for organsing such great talks from Susan Ramonat of Spiritus, David from Castlight Financial, Richard of Previse and Ashrith of H2O.ai.

It was great to talk about the fintech community at the Modulr launch event along with the panel of Myles Stephenson, Jude Cook, Jennifer Houston and Rob Devey, all superbly hosted by Lisa Thomson from Purpose HR. What a terrific atmosphere.

The fabulous atmosphere was also in evident at the Innovate FinTech event held in Codebase, Stirling last Monday evening.

This was expertly organized by the magnificent Rory Archibald and team at Visit Scotland and I must add that Rory has played a broader instrumental role in bringing the whole Fintech Fortnight’ alive.

In Stirling we had three inspiring presenter, Alex Ford of

In Scotland , delighted to see Pinsent Masons launch the first of their regular monthly fintech meet ups this week and it was very appropriate that the theme was global opportunities with so many international friends visiting Scotland in the fortnight.

A Global Movement

FinTech Fortnight neatly coincided with Scottish International Week, a brilliant series of initiatives highlighting Scotland’s global outlook led by the entrepreneurial Russell Dalgleish and the team at Scottish Business Network

This enabled us to demonstrate that fintech in Scotland was also very much a global movement.

Brought alive with the Global Fintech Opportunities event at the start of the fortnight with terrific examples of exporting fintech by Bill Tennent of Payment Centric, Jason Forsyth of Agenor Iceflo and James Varga.

Complemented by hearing from international guests Stefan Pryor, Secretary of State for Commerce from Rhode Island, USA and Joel Ko from Marvelstone, the world leading fintech incubator in Singapore.

Then added to by really great expertise from Lorraine Mallon of SDI, Mark Roger of Vivolution, our Fintech Scotland commercial partner and Nick Sherard from strategic partner Deloitte.

Wow what a session that was for a Monday afternoon!

The worldwide opportunities for Scottish fintech are numerous and so it was great to have specific sessions with our fintech friends from Ireland on Thursday organized with David Clarke of the Scottish Irish Finance Initiative. Thank you to Pinsent Masons for being such fabulous hosts.

Many thanks also to Frazer Lang of Scottish African Business Exchange for inviting Money Matix, Payment Centric and Caseblocks to join me in presenting to the African Heads of Trade from fifteen different countries. A terrific opportunity to develop fintech global collaboration.

On Monday it was great to meet up with Natalia Lyarskaya from Zest Money to share more on why global fintech firms are looking to grow further in Scotland.

Thank you again to the MBN team, Susan Ramonat and the DataLab for meeting with Natalia on Tuesday to share more about Scotland as well as to Cherise Mascarenhas of SDI in India for setting up.

Tuesday evening, I managed to squeeze in time for the Scotland Germany Group meeting at Parliament to consider joint technology opportunities. Good to meet you Stephen Taylor of Technology Scotland.

On Wednesday morning it was good to have an early morning coffee with Brian Brodie to chat through the benefits of building fintech enterprises in Scotland, hope to see you back home’ again soon Brian.

The Deloitte fintech home and away’ event on Thursday was a great way to consider how Scotland can accelerate its move to being a top five global fintech centre.

Many thanks to Kent Mackenzie and Chris Brown for their valuable insights and ongoing strategic support for Fintech Scotland.

Last Thursday evening I was invited to share with the Edinburgh Ambassadors group our ambition to make Scotland a major global fintech centre and how our focus on inclusion and collaboration was key to the success of the fintech movement.

It was a super evening to meet wonderful people from very diverse backgrounds and I very much appreciated the opportunity, thank you the Marketing Edinburgh team and the inspiring Amanda Fergusson.

Talking of taking the message to a wider global audience, it was fabulous to hear about Graeme Jones, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise take the Fintech Fortnight’ messages across to Brussels and the important European Union audiences.

Very important as we enhance Scotland’s collaboration with Europe and demonstrate how the Scottish fintech movement is global, innovative and dynamic.

A Dynamic Movement

The two day Digit FinTech Summit at Dynamic Earth was very much the mega cornerstone event of the Fintech Fortnight’.

Storms and gales could not stop there being a full house of four hundred plus people on each day to hear from a range of thought provoking and innovative fintech leaders.

Ray Bugg, Pete Swift and the Digit team did an amazing job in putting on such a superb summit which brought alive the very best of the dynamic fintech movement in Scotland.

It was great to share the platform with Stuart Lunn from LendingCrowd, Sofie Blakstad of Hive Online and the Government Cabinet Secretary Derek MacKay MSP.

Congratulations Team’ Digit for a mega magnificent couple of days. Thank you also to Callum Sinclair and David Goodbrand for hosting the speakers dinner the night before.

The FinTech Summit was followed on Friday by the excellent Future of FinTech’ conference at Strathclyde University Technology and Innovation Centre led by fintech pioneer Daniel Broby.

It was a privilege to be on the platform with such esteemed speakers including the fintech leaders Martin Leonard of Castlight Financial, Amy Roberts of Spotcap and David Brown plus team from Previse.

The Fintech Fortnight’ has also shown we have much to look forward to with new talent and innovations coming through to grow the fintech movement in Scotland.

The University of Glasgow FinTech Society is a leading example of this and the student engagement at the event last Tuesday was absolutely fantastic.

I am very much looking forward to working with the President of the Society Elisabetta Trasatti and Society team, especially on the Applied FinTech Project.

On the same evening Strathclyde University held their inspiring S100 event for emerging entrepreneurs who are leading fintech initiatives. Congratulations to John McHugh from Gigly, Chris Herd from Nexves and Fraser Edmond from Broker Insights for dynamically leading the way on this.

The conversation at the fintech pub quiz in Glasgow was also very dynamic on Wednesday although a slight hiccup meant it was happening in two places at once! A replay is definitely called for and many thanks to Sergei Pomphrey, Bobby King and Kim Ndungu.

The deep technical know how and leadership of Scottish fintech movement was further in evidence at the Scotland IS Scotsoft Conference on Thursday.

I was delighted to chair the fintech stream and host such brilliant sessions from Ulrich Meyer of KAL ATM, one of our longest established fintechs, Nicola Marham from our strategic partner Sopra Steria, Colin Hewitt, CEO of brilliant Float and Thomas Leritz of the ground breaking Blockpass.

Many thanks to Polly Purvis and the team for such a terrific dynamic conference and the opportunity to show the fintech movement is deep and diverse.

A Diverse Movement

Being a diverse fintech movement is a key Scottish strength and FinTech Fortnight’ has enabled me to share the fintech opportunity to a wider audience

For example, it was great to do a double act with Yvonne Dunn, from our strategic partner Pinsent Masons, at the Financial Services Law Conference on Wednesday chaired by Miller McLean.

Many thanks Anna Bennet for the opportunity to share how the development of fintech and lawtech are very much aligned.

This is a conversation I’ve been having in recent weeks with Paul Mosson from the Law Society of Scotland as there a major areas we can collaborate on.

The importance of being a diverse movement was also a key focus in the presentation to the SFE Professional Services Group with Graeme Jones this week.

Thanks, Ruari Urquart for arranging to discuss how mutli disciplinary collaboration is key to fintech future success.

In addition, being a diverse movement enables us to explore how fintech can be a key enabler in other sectors, including the public sector. I am enjoying the opportunity to work with Trish Quinn and Hugh Wallace on this.

It was a real privilege to meet and listen to Ricky Nicol last week, reinforcing to me the opportunity of fintech enterprises building scale by collaborating with larger institutions.

What a truly amazing story Commsworld is for anyone building a sustainable successful business. One day the story could be a best selling book and even a film!

Developing a business from its early stages was the theme of the Conference on Wednesday for SME’s organized by the engaging David Hood of Edinburgh Institute.

Thank you, David, for inviting me to share the relevance of fintech and our diverse movement with the business leaders during Fintech Fortnight.

I was also given the opportunity to talk about the importance of the fintech movement with other sectors at the Scotland CanDo Forum this week sharing innovation snapshots along with Claire Mack from Renewables Scotland and Henk Berits from the tourism sector.

We very much appreciated the support of Joanna McKenzie from DataLab along with June Love and Karen McAvenue in presenting to the Government Ministers and Forum members.

The breadth of the opportunities for fintech is enormous and in the coming months we will need to prioritise on key areas

This was a key discussion point at the quarterly FiSAB meeting chaired by the First Minister last Wednesday as it was at the FinTech Scotland board meeting a few days before.

It is certainly encouraging to have the broad set of Government and industry executives engaged in the progress of the fintech movement.

Marathon Movement

Fintech Fortnight’ has at times felt like a very demanding albeit enjoyable marathon and I must give a shout out to Shery and Mickael for their continuing unstinting valuable support. Fantastic

Especially as I was suffering from a bug for the early part of the fortnight which had meant I could not do the planned marathon race in Lancaster two weeks ago.

However, I recovered in time to do the Scottish Half marathon in East Lothian last Sunday and surprised myself with a personal best time for the year of 1 min 33 sec !!

This Sunday coming, I hope to follow up with another race, the Great Scottish half marathon in Glasgow.

What a very appropriate place to finish off the FinTech Fortnight. The City’s slogan is People Make Glasgow’ and this also rings true for FinTech Fortnight. People Make Fintech’.

The people across the fintech community and wider have been very much behind bringing the fortnight of activities alive across Scotland, demonstrating we very much have a fintech movement.

Thank you again to everyone involved who participated and joined in, until next time!

Fortnightly FinTech Fuse ”“ FinTech Momentum and More

This fortnight has further reinforced the massive momentum behind the plethora of fintech initiatives across Scotland and wearing my running shoes has been essential to keep up with the pace!

What is especially exciting about this momentum is the diversity of participants engaging in the fintech opportunity, all embracing our mission of making a better world for all through financial innovation, collaboration and inclusion.

For example, I was very much energised on meeting David Duffy, chief executive of Clydesdale Yorkshire Bank Group last week, hearing how a major financial institution was very much pioneering to embrace the fintech momentum.

Key to this is the open and progressive way in which the CYBG leadership engage with smaller entrepreneurial enterprises to ensure effective collaboration, fueling new innovation for the Bank.

Collaborative Momentum

This collaborative momentum was also very much in evidence at the Baillie Gifford Fintech Event on Wednesday, held at the impressive new Tynecastle Park.

Anurag Agrawal, Adrian Fern and the team put together an excellent programme bringing together the expertise of Baillie Gifford with a range of entrepreneurs from the Scottish fintech community to share insights and mutual opportunities.

Importantly this collaboration extended to involving other key partners on the day such as DataLab, University of Edinburgh, Scottish Business Network and Scotland IS.

It was super to share the stage with Keith Phillips from the Investment Association and hear about their exciting fintech accelerator initiative, Velocity, which we will be collaborating with the team on to link in the Scottish fintech community.

On a broader level, it was great to demonstrate the collaborative momentum with the announcement of Prudential as a strategic partner to Fintech Scotland.

David Macmillan, the managing director for the wealth solutions division, has significant international experience in fintech innovation in the investment and pensions sector and we are looking forward to engaging his innovative team with the fintech community.

Building on the collaborative momentum was very much key to the meetings with the HSBC team led by Colin Halpin who is brilliantly leading inspiring collaboration initiatives in respect of future skills and education, all are imperative to fintech longer term success.

People Momentum

On the subject of skills, it was very poignant to have an advance start to FinTech Fortnight on Thursday in the Kingdom of Fife with the launch of the FinTech Skills Academy.

The community led momentum behind setting up the Fife FinTech Skills Consortium to develop the skills base is really impressive and it was a massive privilege to be at the event hosted by Paywizard in Kirkaldy.

Very much inspired by the people leadership by Jim Tomaney and Jamie of Renovite Technologies as well as Iain Shirlaw and Krystyna Marett to making this happen. Very much an initiative we hope to build upon.

It was great to share thoughts with the Fife fintech community on how we can build on this momentum and further reinforce the region as a leading driving force of innovation working with Fife College and Fife Council.

I must admit it was a bit of a rush over the bridge to Kirkaldy on Thursday as I was speaking at the Inspiring Futures annual Scottish conference beforehand in Edinburgh. This tough was no dress rehearsal!

Thank you to Anna Halliday and the team for inviting me to share with their professional education audience of teachers and career advisers on how the world of fintech was relevant to everybody and the importance diversity of skills the sector needed to thrive in the future.

Hopefully, one day, maybe some of the young people they are guiding on their career journeys will join a fintech skills academy or firm so we can maintain the momentum of innovation across Scotland

Importantly, the focus of the people momentum is also on diversity, for example in progressing a much better gender balance in the skills such as technology that are key to the future of fintech.

So it was fantastic to attend the Women in STEM event last week at Codebase, expertly organized by Lisa Thomson and the PurposeHR team. Terrific to hear from Marcus Corner on how the practical steps the fintech firm Modulr are putting this at the forefront of their people development.

This is also a key strategic theme I very much look forward to further working with Aileen O’Hagan and the Equate Scotland team on to ensure there is continuing momentum behind the question of gender diversity in fintech and broader financial services.

Strategic Momentum

At a strategic level there are a number of initiatives which are gaining momentum across the fintech community.
For example, it was terrific to catch up on Monday with Anthony Rafferty, Ken May, Michael Roe and Iain Muir at Origo on their brilliant leadership in respect of the high profile pensions dashboard initiative.

A challenging but hugely valuable strategic project which will have a direct impact on millions of people in the future as well as importantly playing a key linkage to the open banking developments.

Open banking continues to be a strategic priority and great to be working with Andy Maciver and Gavin Littlejohn in crafting the market positioning for this hugely significant development.

It was also invaluable as always to get the insightful strategic feedback and thoughts from Ian Mckenna of FTRC last week in London on this whole area and share our mutual enthusiasm on how open banking presents a massive opportunity to reinvent financial services.

Infact, it goes beyond financial services and meeting with Lucinda Rivers and Daniel from UNICEF reinforced to me the broader opportunities of strategic collaboration for fintech.

Executing strategic opportunities with Scotland’s fintech community was top of the agenda in meeting Myron Hrycyk and Colin Carmichael of Sopra Steria in London and I am excited about how we can accelerate the strategic momentum working with the University of Edinburgh.

This will be further complemented by of our recently announced academic and industry fintech initiative with the University of Edinburgh being planned for November which will play a key role in driving forward the strategic fintech momentum.

The strategic momentum also extends to working across sectors to develop broader innovation opportunities in Scotland and it was great to continue this conversation with Trish Quinn, Hugh Wallace, Sarah Thomson, Ian Spencer and Promilla Caughey from their respective Scottish Government teams

The strategic opportunities on a global scale are also very important to our ambitions and in this respect I have very much valued the engagement of the Deloitte team of Kent Mackenzie, Chris Brown, Daniel Cheddie and Noornet Singh. Excited about we further build Scotland’s fintech visibility on the world fintech stage.

Visible Momentum

The momentum behind Scotland’s fintech visibility is certainly growing and it was fabulous to see a number of people from fintech community profiled on BBC Scotland News this week with its special news item on the fintech momentum in Scotland.

Terrific TV interview pieces with Steve Tigar of Money Dashboard, John McHugh of Gigly and Tynah Matembe of Money Matix, huge pride in how their fintech innovation was shared across the national audience.

The Money Matix also had the opportunity to showcase on the big stage at the Social Enterprise World Forum in Edinburgh where their fintech innovation received a wonderful response.

Also massively proud of Loral Quinn of Sustainably and Colin Hewitt of Float for creating their fintech visibility by being selected by Tech Nation for their innovation programme,

Congratulation also to Loral and the team for moving into your new home in Leith, it has been wonderful have you all live with us this last month inside our FinTech Scotland home. We miss you already.

On an academic level this visible momentum is going to continue with the launch of the very first Journal on Financial Technology and it was great to catch up this week with Jamie Gabbay from Heriot-Watt who is leading on this, more to come on this soon.

Marathon Momentum

I am planning to take all this momentum into my running this weekend with a marathon race in Lancaster although as I write this blog I am not sure if that is now going to be realistic!

I’ve been hit with a bug this last week and I am wondering whether I can do the 26.2 miles justice or whether I should defer to another race in a few weeks time!!

Some family time on Friday night will allow me to make a decision. What I do know is that I will need to be ready to join the fantastic fintech community and friends across Scotland on Monday for the start of FinTech Fortnight.

Absolutely amazing the programme of events and activities out together by everyone plus so pleased we are able to welcome so many international guests from all parts of the globe during the two weeks.

I hope to see as many of you as possible over this next fortnight and thank you again for making this all happen.