Event Review: FinTech West’s Talent Showcase
On Wednesday 12th October, FinTech West hosted our inaugural FinTech Talent Showcase event, hosted in partnership with the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England.
This event was a chance for the FinTech and Financial Services industry to meet emerging university FinTech talent from the region's universities, and attracted a mixture of regional financial services and FinTech businesses, as well as students from the two universities.
Martin Palmer, Marketing Director at Clarke Willmott, opened the event and welcomed the audience, reflecting on how Clarke Willmott had been involved in the creation of FinTech West, which was originally known as Bristol FinTech.
“When we first conceived the idea of FinTech West, the idea of being able to deliver an event like today was something we would have been incredibly excited about, so we’re delighted to be hosting you all today.”
Stuart Harrison, Director of FinTech West, provided an overview of FinTech West and its role as the representative body for FinTech in the South West, and also how it fits into the UK’s wider ecosystem via the FinTech National Network.
“Without Clarke Willmott there would be no FinTech West, and it’s fantastic to be back here today to host this event.”
Dr John Cartlidge, Associate Professor, Computer Science, at University of Bristol, highlighted some of the industry research and reports that had helped crystalise the University’s interest in FinTech, including the Kalifa Review and the Whitecap report on the Bristol & Bath FinTech ecosystem, which had called for more engagement in the sector by the region’s universities. Today, the university’s MSc programme includes a blend of technology, data, blockchain AI and ML,, students can become AWS certified cloud practitioners at the end of the course if they wish to.
“We want to help create more FinTech jobs in the region, which in turn will enable more of our graduates to go into high quality jobs, which will keep them in the region.”
Dr Yanhui Zhu (Cathy), Senior Lecturer in Economics, at the University of the West of England explained that technology, demographics, and globalisation are three major impacts on the financial services sector. The result is that there is a clear need for more digital jobs, but also a strong requirement for deep sector expertise too. The UWE Masters in Financial Technology combines data science with financial knowledge, as well as covering personal and business skills to equip students for future jobs. The course can be completed in one year full time, or over two years part time.
FinTech student presentations
We had a selection of highly impressive presentations from some of the FinTech students:
Customer Experience (CX) Strategy as a differentiator for fintech firms – How CX can help Fintechs Compete with BigTech and Traditional Banks
Motunrayo Okpaleke, MSc FinTech, UWE
“We all agree that FinTech has disrupted traditional banking, but the question is whether FinTech is going to be sustainable in the long term. My research found FinTechs need to prioritise CX and customer support.”
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection on European Bonds
Bikramjit Chowdhury and Xinyu Du, MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, University of Bristol
“Our main objective was to find anomalies in bond data. Using deep learning we were able to identify a large number of errors, and our work has since been of interest to international regulators.”
BNPL - a RegTech perspective (hyperledger fabric)
Paul Anomoh, MSc FinTech, UWE
“I believe we should rename BNPL as unsecured credit. Regulation takes time to evolve, but technology moves faster than regulation, which creates high risk in this space. Following my research, I am proposing to assign consumers a unique cryptographic ID, which enables centralised management and control of unsecured credit in the UK.”
Decentralised Index Funds
Luke Kirwan, Alexander Straw, Cameron McEwan, Yingtong Qi, and Prajwal Kulkarni, MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, University of Bristol
“We were looking for a way to apply traditional investment techniques to cryptocurrencies. We have created a solution called PortFolio which enables decentralised index funds via the creation of custom NFT tokens, including a social and community element.”
How is BNPL changing the future of payments for GEN Z and Millennials in the UK?
Zoha Shahid, MSc FinTech, UWE
“BNPL use grew by 52% during the Covid pandemic, and it continues to grow but remains unregulated and often uses unethical marketing. Most of the people I researched felt they would not or would ‘maybe’ use BNPL in future, which I believe reflects the entry into the market of established banking brands, including credit cards.”
Learning the Trading Algorithm in Simulated Markets with Non-stationary Continuum Bandits
Bingde Liu, MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, University of Bristol
“Our analysis concluded the use of a new PRB algorithm would outperform the conventional PRSH algorithm. We used as many types of trader agents as possible to stimulate market dynamics, highlighting the impact of using artificial intelligence in the financial markets.”
Industry speakers
Alan Furley is Co-Founder and CEO of ISL, a specialist recruitment firm in the tech sector which worked with more than 80 startups in the last year alone. Alan provided an overview of the FinTech sector, and the global scale of FinTech, noting that New York and London, Tokyo and Hong Kong are the four largest FinTech hubs globally in terms of number of FinTech roles. Research last year from Robert Walters showed a 136% year on year increase in the number of FinTech jobs, with an average tenure of just 1.4 years. Only 22% of jobs are held by females.
These roles are not just in technology focused fields such as programming, AI and ML, data science and cybersecurity. They also include disciplines such as project management, compliance, UI/UX design, and marketing.
Alan explained that soft skills such as communication skills, the ability to collaborate with others, and continuous self learning can be deciding factors when applying for jobs.
Paul Barker, CTO of Claritum was due to attend but was unable to make it. John Cartlidge of University of Bristol stepped in and covered case studies of the university’s work with Claritum and Lloyds Banking Group.
The university engaged with Claritum to help create an application to enable organisations to make significant savings on their procurement from their suppliers. With Lloyds, the bank provided problems and also associated synthetic data sets for the MSc project groups to tackle. John emphasised how keen the university is to engage with regional employers, and encouraged the audience to get in contact.
Chris Skinner of Barclays Business Banking explained how the bank works with universities and academics, and how this not only helps place students into jobs, but also supports aspiring young entrepreneurs. Chris also shared how the bank had created Barclays Eagle Labs, which is a national network of hubs based around the UK
Eagle Labs runs dedicated programmes focused on important areas such as female founders, growth programmes, investor connectivity, business mentoring, and a regular flow of events and networking opportunities. Barclays Eagle Labs operates a fast growing national network of incubators across the UK. Barclays focuses its FinTech activity on its world famous Rise brand, and applications for the Rise Academy for FinTech founders closes on 20th October.
After the event there was a drinks and networking session, kindly hosted by Clarke Willmott, which provided an additional opportunity for the FinTech students and other attendees to reflect on the event and discuss things further. Overall the event was a resounding success and the initial feedback from all involved strongly suggests that this should at the very least be an annual event, and probably something more frequent.
We look forward to continuing to welcome many of the FinTech students to our events over coming months, where it is always great to see them.
