FinTech West @ Bristol Tech Festival 12/11
FinTech West @ Bristol Tech Festival
On Thursday 12th November FinTech West hosted a webinar as part of Bristol Tech Festival. for the second year running. Last year this was a ‘sell out’ (but free to attend) seminar hosted by TLT, but this year it took place as a Zoom webinar.
Watch the recording
Julian Wells, Director at Whitecap Consulting & FinTech West, opened the webinar and explained that FinTech West exists to bring together the FinTech community in the South West, acting as a platform for people to share concepts, FinTech developments and news that is relevant to the community.
Peter Cunnane, National & International Strategy Lead, Innovate Finance
Peter gave an overview of Innovate Finance’s work across the UK FinTech sector, which over recent months has included focusing on capital and investment, engagements with government and regulators, and the wider UK FinTech sector. This includes the UK FinTech Review that is currently underway, led by Ron Kalifa, which FinTech West and a number of other stakeholders in the region have been able to contribute to. Peter also announced that Innovate Finance’s FinTech for Schools initiative launches next week, including virtual work experience and a virtual app.
Sam Williams, Chief Data Officer, ClearBank
ClearBank was founded in 2015, gained its banking licence in 2016, and provides the underlying banking platform that enables FinTechs / emoney institutions to offer banking services to their customers. Clients include Tide, Incuto (a tech provider to credit unions), as well as Gemini (a crypto platform). ClearBank is enabling FinTechs to come to market by providing capital intensive banking capability on a subscription basis.
Prof. Jon Beaverstock, Professor of International Mgt, University of Bristol
Jon’s work has focused on the clustering and competitiveness of banking in London and globally. Most recently he has focused on technological innovation. Jon is leading a new project called ‘Learning from London’s FinTech Cluster’, identifying how the Bristol & Bath ecosystem can enhance its proposition, competitive positioning, and sustainability. The university is looking to develop relationships with stakeholders across the regional FinTech ecosystem, and to work collaboratively with them. FinTech West is delighted to be collaborating with Jon on this work.
Glenn Smith, Founder & CEO, Roqqett
Glenn’s background is in running businesses and building technology in banking, which prepared him well for his current role in the FinTech sector. Banks have been focused on regulation, which has led to innovation opportunities being opened up by APIs. Roqqett focuses on the level above, around payment initiation. It is an app which enables consumers and businesses to make payments without fees being need to be paid to third parties.
Tatjana Humphries, Senior Inward Investment Executive, Invest Bristol & Bath
Invest Bristol & Bath works internationally to help businesses to relocate to the region, with benefits including lifestyle, a strong cluster of technology and innovation, universities, incubators and accelerators. Invest Bristol & Bath positions Bristol as a “A place to invent the future”. Tatjana also highlighted the Whitecap report on the Bristol & Bath FinTech ecosystem, published earlier this year, as a go-to resource for anyone wanting to understand the regional FinTech scene better.
Sam Seaton, CEO, Moneyhub
Moneyhub is a Bristol-based FinTech which is now one of the best known FinTechs in the UK. In addition to providing its own personal financial management product, Moneyhub has clients who white label its solution, ranging from large corporates through to startups. Sam told is that GDPR is driving change through data like never seen before, but fundamentally there has to be a value exchange if people are to share their data. Sam also talked about the power of data and personalisation, and the huge potential of Open Finance, whereby data is shared across multiple financial products not only from bank accounts.
Stuart Harrison – Whitecap Consulting & FinTech West
Stuart talked about how FinTech West will be seeking to evolve moving forward, to better support the ecosystem. A community ecosystem is being created to trial with the FinTech West community, which will enable people to connect directly. More information will be available on this new development shortly. A lot of hard work goes into running FinTech West and its events, and with limited resources this can make it challenging to share as much information as we could or to make relevant introductions. The new platform is intended to help open things up further.
To close the session the speakers took part in a panel discussion covering a range of topics and some questions from the audience. One of the main topics of conversation was the strength of the FinTech sector in Bristol and the way the region has benefited from people moving from London, which has supplemented the excellent local talent pool.
This was a well attended session with a broad mix of speakers representing different parts of the ecosystem. Marty Reid of Engine Shed summed it up perfectly in the chat at the end, saying: “Thanks everyone, a great session that has really shown off the strength of depth and potential in the cluster.”