Scotland's growing fintech sector supported by new event series

The first in a new series of events designed to support Scotland's fast-growing financial technology (fintech) sector will take place later this month with a focus on compliance and risk management.

The FinTech Research and Innovation Roadmap event series (2022-23) is the brainchild of new organisation Fintech-Tables, supported by the likes of the sector's representative group FinTech Scotland and global law firm Pinsent Masons.

The series of events will focus on collaboration and stakeholder engagement and is designed to play an important role in supporting the development and delivery of the recently published roadmap. Fintech is seen as driving change in the financial services industry which contributes £132 billion to the UK economy each year. In Scotland, there are more than 200 fintech businesses, with many creating high-value jobs. The main aims of the new roadmap are the creation of over 20,000 new fintech related jobs and an increase in economic value (GVA) from £598 million to more than £2bn in the next 10 years.

The inaugural event on the evening of 29 Septembers at Pinsent Masons' Edinburgh office will take a deep dive into the the theme of financial regulation. A panel of experts will convene to discuss this topic of: “Addressing compliance and supporting risk management with technology and data”.

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The event will examine how operating in financial services means that businesses need to address a large volume of regulation and keep up with its pace of change. It will cover why robust regulatory technology (RegTech) solutions are needed to manage compliance and risk. And it will address challenges faced by firms in the fintech sector, including costs. Experts say effective compliance for financial services companies can be expensive and difficult to achieve. Across the UK, it is estimated that the cost of demonstrating regulatory compliance is as much as £6.6 billion for the financial services industry. This figure, included in the roadmap, is based on industry research suggesting that some of the largest global financial insitutions are spending up to 5% of revenue on regulatory compliance.

Confirmed speakers for the first event are: Nicola Anderson, CEO, FinTech Scotland; Yvonne Dunn, partner who leads the financial services technology practice at Pinsent Masons; Devraj Basu, senior lecturer in financial services at Strathclyde Business School and interim director at the University of Strathclyde Centre for Financial Regulation & Innovation; Gordon McHarg, chief executive officer at Autorek, a provider of enterprise financial controls and reconciliation solutions; and Mick O'Connor, founder and director at HAELO Consulting, a company specialising in developing and implementing technology in the finance sector.

Panelists will be joined by an audience of industry leaders and subject experts, with guests from across the financial services and fintech industry already confirmed, including representatives from banking, insurance, payments, lending and personal finance.

Nicola Anderson said: “This Roadmap event series continues to show the demand and ambition across Scotland to play a leading role in shaping the future of fintech innovation, and enable the future of finance that will serve the needs of citizens and businesses as we continue to see the digital economy grow and emerge.”

Ian Davey, founder of Fintech-Tables, added: “FinTech in Scotland is a movement and what makes this sector unique is the willingness and desire of the entire ecosystem to come together and work for the greater good of the cluster and people in Scotland as a whole.

“This first of its kind event series will provide a platform for engagement around the FinTech Scotland Research & Innovation Roadmap and an opportunity for the industry to take action as a group to help shape the future of Fintech in Scotland through collaboration, innovation and inclusion.”

Registration to the event on 29 September is available here.