FinTech West Annual Conference 2023
On Thursday 12th October we hosted our annual conference, which this year took place at Osborne Clarke’s new offices in Bristol, and was supported by EY.
The event was broken down into key themes of funding, ecosystem, and community, with a line up of expert speakers and panelists drawn from the local and national FinTech ecosystem. Julian Wells, Director of Whitecap Consulting and FinTech West, chaired proceedings.
Anita Kimber is a Partner at EY who is well known in FinTech and financial services both nationally and internationally, and has also led the firm’s work that supported the creation of the Centre for Finance, Innovation & Technology (CFIT). A proud Bristolian, Anita set the scene for the day weaving together a combination of personal stories and FinTech insight, and encouraging the attendees to make the most of the day and the opportunity to network and play a part in growing the ecosystem.
Funding
Adrian Shedden is co-founder of Lumio, a Bristol-based FinTech in the money management space. Adrian shared the highs, lows and learnings of his personal journey, focusing particularly on the experience of various funding rounds from friends and family, early stage SEIS investment, and subsequently through later rounds amounting to several £ million. Funding was raised via a combination of angel investors, crowdfunding, and also a £200k Innovate UK grant. Adrian is currently exiting Lumio and looking for his next challenge.
We were delighted to welcome Lauren Crawley-Moore from London Stock Exchange, whose role is focused on the South West. The FinTech sector is a significant part of the UK’s tech sector, and after seeing only 26 IPOs so far this year, a busier market is expected in 2024 with FinTech likely to play a significant role. Lauren highlighted that tech companies can list on AIM earlier than they might think, and encouraged FinTech founders to consider this option.
Next up we heard a perspective from the PE world, thanks to Nick Mettyear of Foresight, a PE firm that has offices across the UK. Foresight funds businesses looking to raise £500k to £10m. Nick shared his thoughts on what PE/VC firms are looking for in potential investments, including the interactions with the founders (and their passion for the business), the clarity and strength of the business plan, track record / sector expertise, and the perceived ability of the business to take positive action to grow. His advice was to firstly make it really easy for an investor to know quickly whether you fit within their investment appetite or not, and secondly to give them the rationale of why they should invest.
FinTech Growth Fund (FGF) is a new national fund that was launched this year as a result of the recommendations of the Kalifa Review. We were delighted to have Joe Parkin, Managing Director, with us to explain how the new fund works. FGF is focused on ‘growth stage FinTechs’ and provides funding from £10m to £100m, aiming to make 4-8 investments per year. The FGF has been a high profile addition to the national FinTech landscape and Joe acknowledged the growth of regional FinTech ecosystems over recent years and encouraged FinTech firms in the South West to keep the fund front of mind as they seek to grow.
Following the presentations, we had a panel discussion on funding, which was hosted by David Henderson, Head of Pensions at Penny and Strategic Advisor to FinTech West. Four of the previous speakers - Adrian, Lauren, Nick and Joe - joined the panel. Discussion topics included the positive and negative impact of regulation on the growth and development of the FinTech sector, and the need to continue to address the issue of improving diversity in the sector and supporting female FinTech founders.
Ecosystem
Barbara Gottardi is CEO of Finbridge and formerly a CTO in a large financial services corporate. Enhancing the links between the financial services sector and FinTech startups and scaleups is a consistently referenced challenge in the UK, and with the sector being predominantly B2B focused it is a significant issue to address. Finbridge aims to help connect these two groups, by developing a FinTech-specific RFI-related assessment and collaboration mechanism via which to identify potential partnerships, and formalise and develop these relationships, resulting in a considerably accelerated process that generates meaningful results faster.
Before lunch, FinTech West’s Stuart Harrison hosted a fireside chat with Leon Ifayemi, Director of Coalitions & Research at CFIT. Leon has previously been a FinTech founder, having built a marketplace proposition in the PropTech space. Today, he is working at CFIT, which was created and launched following a recommendation of the Kalifa Review, and seeks to drive FinTech innovation across the UK via a coalitions model. The first coalition is focused on Open Finance, and several organisations in the South West are actively involved, including FinTech West, particularly in the ‘consumer design’ workstream. Leon indicated that CFIT will be continuing to seek support and engagement from the FinTech ecosystem for its future coalitions, and that he hopes the South West will continue to be centrally involved.
Ecosystem
Paul Harris, Partner, Osborne Clarke, shared some fascinating insight around how the firm is working with FinTechs across regulated financial services. Paul talked through some of the key considerations for firms operating in the FinTech sector, including decided whether or not they need to be authorised, and how to navigate the evolving landscape which most recently has included developments such as Consumer Duty, ESG, regulatory transactions, diversity and inclusion, and the regulation of cryptoassets. Paul highlighted how important regulatory compliance is to raising investment, and giving potential investors comfort that the business is appropriately set up and governed. Interestingly, only approximately 1 in 5 crypto firms that applied from regulatory authorisation were approved by the FCA to date, but the regime is still evolving.
The next session shone the light on the South West’s FinTech landscape. Over recent months, Whitecap Consulting has led a project to analyse the FinTech ecosystem across the region. This is the first time an analysis of the full South West has been conducted, and the findings highlight an impressive and established ecosystem of nearly 200 FinTech firms, as part of a sector that is adding more than £1 billion to the regional economy each year. The research has found core strengths in payments, WealthTech and lending, with ‘FinTech for good’ being a strong theme across the region. The new report is the result of a collaborative research project which was funded through sponsorship and support from Osborne Clarke, Amdaris, Cardstream, Integration Works, Invest Bristol & Bath, RSM UK, and University of the West of England (UWE), and FinTech West. It will be formally published on Thursday 19th October.
The presentation was followed by a panel discussion featuring Gavin Phillips from RSM, James Taylor from Osborne Clarke, and Adam Sharpe, who is founder and CEO of Cardstream, a highly successful FinTech scaleup based in Taunton which has successfully grown as a national and international business, organically from its South West base, with no external funding.
After the panel, we briefly took time out to celebrate Penny’s recent ‘Pensions Tech of the Year’ award from the Europe FinTech Awards 2023. The Penny team weren’t able to be at the awards ceremony in London, but we presented it to David Henderson and took the opportunity to get a photo with some of the FinTech West community!
Community
Next up, Stuart Harrison delivered an overview of FinTech West’s current and future activities. As the representative body for FinTech in the South West and is part of the FinTech National Network. FinTech West is an open ’non-membership’ body, and current and upcoming activities include: working with CFIT on the Open Finance coalition; being centrally involved in the new Future Finance accelerator; supporting equality, diversity and inclusion; enabling student jobs, placements and projects; helping FinTechs connect with financial institutions; and other initiatives such as reskilling. All of this activity is done with no central funding, so if you would like to get involved in FinTech West as a speaker, sponsor, or partner, please email info@fintechwest.co.uk
A fireside chat followed, which focused on equality, diversity and inclusion, titled ‘BBC senior management to ED&I’, with Kalpna Woolf, CEO, Be On Board being interviewed by Natasha McKenzie, Co-Founder & CEO of Talisman Sparro. Natasha outlined that diversity brings creativity which drives productivity which leads to growth. Natasha introduced Kalpa, who she has worked with for many years. Be On Board was created to help address the issue of the business and economic opportunities that are missed due to a lack of diversity on boards. Having now worked with 65 organisations, the next phase of work for Be On Board will to try to accelerate its mission by creating a digital platform that can enable more people to benefit from the training and services it offers.
Over the last 18 months FinTech West has benefited from the support of a number of FinTech MSc students from UWE, including Gerald Lee who graduated this year. Gerald shared his experiences of his course and his work with FinTech West, as well as telling the audience about the new FinTech business he is involved in launching. Gerald’s experience as a student involved a significant amount of industry engagement, including working on an industry podcast, attending the Innovate Finance Global Summit, and being part of the FinTech Awards South West. Gerald has now co-founded Mach D Trading, an automated trading platform for cryptotrading, which he proudly pitched to the audience. Fantastic stuff Gerald - well done, thanks for all your help, and good luck!
The penultimate session of the day was titled ‘Stats to amaze and amuse’, and was delivered by Amanda Bennett, CFO at Moneyhub, a Bristol-based data and payments FinTech and one of the best known names in the UK FinTech sector. Moneyhub provides open banking, open finance, and open data solutions. It now employs nearly 140 staff, a number which has more than doubled in the last year. The firm has a board that is split 50:50 in terms of gender diversity. Amanda shared a number of amusing stats, including sharing that twice as many of its customers had visited McDonalds in the last month than had bought something at Greggs. The average spend on lottery tickets was £29, with an average winnings of just £2. Meanwhile, £383 was spent on gambling, returning just £222. Moneyhub’s data capabilities are being deployed across many areas of financial services, with a notable focus on ‘data for good.’
Last but by no means least, we heard from Professor Jon Beaverstock of University of Bristol, who talked through the new ‘Future Finance’ accelerator that will soon be launching on the back of a highly competitive national bid process that was won by a consortium including South West representation from University of Bristol (who will be the overall lead), FinTech West, and SETsquared, as well as other universities and partners across the UK. Funded by a £1.8m grant from Innovate UK/ESRC, the innovation adoption accelerator will work closely with smaller financial services firms to understand the challenges they face and explore how technology and innovation can help over those issues and make a tangible difference to their businesses. Over the coming weeks and months Jon and the team will be engaging with the FinTech community on a regional and national level.
We are grateful to everyone who attended or spoke at the conference, and we look forward to continuing to collaborate with you all regionally and nationally as we continue to grow the South West FinTech sector, and help support and enhance the UK’s position as a leading global FinTech hub.
