FinTech West Annual Conference 2024
On Wednesday 9th October FinTech West’s sell out annual conference took place at TLT’s offices in Bristol. The event, which was free to attend, was oversubscribed several weeks in advance and saw record attendance.
Opening the event, Julian Wells, Director of FinTech West & Whitecap Consulting, welcomed everyone to TLT’s 15th floor offices with amazing views over the city, reflecting that through the course of the day attendees would hear from speakers drawn from the public and private sectors, as well as academia. The agenda featured nearly 30 speakers, including FinTech entrepreneurs, policy experts, investors, advisers and more.
Dan Read, Partner at TLT, gave a short welcome address and highlighted the firm’s extensive experience in tech and FinTech across its national offices. The firm has over 1700 employees and more than 600 clients in the financial sector. We were very grateful to Dan and all the team for hosting us.
Ben Howlett, former MP for Bath, gave a highly informative opening keynote. Amongst the many things Ben is involved in is the recently launched UKAI, which is the UK's first AI trade association. Ben gave an overview of key recent political and economic activity and reflected on the early days of the new Labour government, highlighting the importance of the upcoming budget. He highlighted that 83% of people are concerned about the cost of living crisis, and 41% are using FinTech to better manage their spending. Ben also noted that while FinTech is a thriving sector, UK firms are struggling to compete globally. FinTech West will be partnering on some upcoming events - more information coming soon.
Stuart Harrison, Director of FinTech West gave an update on the four key strategies the organisation is focusing on: Education, Sustainable Finance, InsurTech, and South Coast. Stuart stressed to the audience that FinTech West is an open and collaborative community, and is increasingly involved in working collectively with stakeholders across the ecosystem on key challenges, including partnering with universities. He called for further support from the community and interested parties, in terms of participation and sponsorship, as FinTech West is not centrally funded and relies on support and involvement to deliver on the strategies in a timely and efficient manner. Contact Stuart here.
Seth Bullock of University of Bristol gave an overview of the new AI for Collective Intelligence (AI4CI) research community. Operating across multiple sectors including FinTech, AI4CI has £1m of funding to deploy across projects and opportunities. The AI4CI consortium brings together leading research groups from the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Glasgow, Ulster and UCL. John Cartlidge, also of University of Bristol, provided a specific overview of the Financial Stability theme within the work of AI4CI, and will focus on financial markets, payments and lending. John talked through a fascinating early example of some work underway with Propellant in the fixed income markets.
Marissa Ellis of Diversily gave a data and insight rich keynote about the importance of creating inclusive fintech products, which is a hot topic in the sector. Marissa highlighted the importance of catering for key factors such as your team, cultural diversity, and the role of markets. One standout stat was that diverse teams are 70% more likely to create new markets than non-diverse teams. Throughout the day we went on to hear other presenters reinforce the key message that Marissa had covered.
We heard pitches from six FinTech firms with a regional presence in the South West:
Posterity - Founder Elliott Perry described their AI driven tool for highly productive note taking for financial advisers. It was as close to having an enlightening demo via Powerpoint you could ever wish to have!
Propflo - Well known entrepreneur & founder Luke Loveridge explained how Propflo is providing a “Retrofit as a Service” solution and the high praise they are finding from those in the industry and customers alike.
Capsule - Max Willis, their Head of FinTech, explained how they are becoming an established provider of insurance to high-tech firms with an impressive customer list including the likes of Curve, Moneyhub, Comply Advantage and Moneybox.
PlannerPal - Experienced financial services investor and founder Mark Whitcroft described the challenges financial advisors face with productivity which they are solving providing them with more time, profit and perhaps markets to go for.
Shape Technologies - Payments expert and founder, Jack Mangnall described their ‘PayFac’ payments platform-as-a-service solution that is helping payments businesses get to market quicker.
Payji - Founder Christian Shanahan described how Payji is the FinTech platform behind Bristol Pay, a payments solution that re-invests transaction costs into the local economy and is a win-win for all involved from consumers to businesses.
In the afternoon session, the opening session was from the “Crypto Assets” project team providing an early view of their findings from the pilot research project looking at “Enhancing Consumer Knowledge of Crypto Assets”. The project is a collaboration between Coventry University, Imperial College and Keele University supported by FinTech West and funded by UKFin+ Network. Dimitrios Kafteranis (Coventry) and Yllka Hysaj (Imperial) detailed several areas including a low level of consumer awareness, misconceptions of get rich quick schemes, and a lack of regulatory protection. The full report will be available shortly and FinTech West will make it available via the website.
Peter Cunnane of Innovate Finance gave a wide ranging and highly informative update on the state of the UK’s fintech ecosystem, noting that despite investment levels dropping off over the last year we remain the seismic largest country globally for investment (behind USA). Peter highlighted the importance of regional hubs and the engagement Innovate Finance has with FinTech West and other key regions via the FinTech National Network. In advance of the recent election, Innovate Finance published a FinTech plan for the first 100 days, a plan against which Peter reflected there has been some good progress.
In a slot titled ‘FinTech in the Community’, Anita Kimber and LaToya McAllister-Hughes spoke about the famous St Paul’s Carnival which is one of the cultural highlights of the year in Bristol, with over 120,000 people attending every year and generating over £9m for the city. The carnival is seeking support and innovation from the FinTech community, both in terms of sponsorship and also the opportunity to enhance the its activities via FinTech solutions. Contact Anita or Latoya to discuss getting involved.
After this presentation, Stuart Harrison made a major announcement that Anita, until recently a partner at EY, will be joining the team at FinTech West. A formal announcement will follow very soon but we are absolutely delighted to welcome Anita on board. Exciting times!
Roisin Perry from the Department for Business & Trade’s FinTech team provided a global perspective, highlighting that the UK is the world’s largest net exporter of Financial Services and that UK Fintech represents 11% of the global market share. DBT provides a year round service to FinTech firms seeking to expand internationally, including trade missions to global FinTech events such as Money20/20 and organising activity around the upcoming Singapore FinTech Festival. There is a significant amount of support available to FinTechs with global expansion aspirations.
Ed Rowberry, CEO of regionally based investor Bristol & Bath Regional Capital (BBRC), brought an investor perspective to the event. He spoke about BBRC’s investment into the South West, a region which they have invested over £71m into over the last five years. The focus of Ed’s slot was on their planned new Regional Net Zero Fund, helping address global investment gap estimated at $1-3 trillion, and £10 billion in Bristol alone.
Matthew Stammers and Wil Suthers provided an update on FinTech West’s work to build its presence on the South Coast. Wil explained that the “South Coast Hub’s” aim is to make FinTech a larger contributor to the South West economy than tourism in 3 years. The South West Steering Group has delivered a range of events and support initiatives for FinTech founders, including the creation of a dedicated regional angel investor group, the FinTech Investor Collective. Over the coming months the activity of the group will continue to develop its activities, to engage with the region’s financial services sector, and to help promote the region as a FinTech hub. A huge amount of progress has been made already and momentum is clearly building - congratulations to all involved!
We then heard pitches from four more regional FinTech firms:
Bizumi - Co-founder Irena Holdsworth explained how they have created Cero3, an ‘all in one’ travel planning tool for business travel, which aims to make the process more efficient and with a reduced carbon footprint.
Kinherit - CEO Ben Mason provided clear reasons why the Kinvault platform is finding such success having been developed to redfine end of life planning and life administration, to enhance the process and protect the value of assets left in estates.
Glad - Glad is demonstrating the opportunites gained from combining FinTech and sustainaility with Co-founder Ben Wynn clearly outlining how they are providing businesses the means to help through their “planet reward card“.
Stratiphy - David Henderson, Head of Risk & Compliance, unveiled their investment app that revolutionizes the way users engage with personalized, systematic investing. David explained how the team are making investing more accessible and empowering individuals to take control of their financial futures.
David Henderson delivered the Stratiphy update, and was also invited to mention his work at UWE, where he runs a programme of guest lectures for FinTech Masters students. Speakers are drawn from a wide range of industry experts, and anyone interested in getting involved in future guest lectures should contact David.
The event closed with some networking at TLT, and all attendees were kindly invited to join Oliver Lane and the Behind Login team at a nearby drinks reception.
We were delighted with the strong turnout for the event, and it was fantastic to have a full room to hear from such a high quality speaker line up.
There is plenty more to come from FinTech West over the coming weeks and months – follow our Eventbrite page to make sure you’re in the loop for future events and keep an eye on our website and LinkedIn page for other opportunities!
