The Third Annual FinTech Talent Showcase
Becoming an annual fixture, this event is an inspiring and uplifting way to engage with talent by hearing from our region’s future captains of industry, namely the MSc students across FinTech, Data Science and Insurance courses from the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England (UWE). Kindly hosted, and ethusiastically supported, by long term friends, RSM. This time we also streamed it live, with thanks to Theo Constantinides for his help in this.
Gavin Phillips of RSM welcomed everyone to the event and Stuart Harrison provided an overview of the work FinTech West does within education, how it is a key strategy and the universities are close partners across several areas of activity including research, industry liaison and, of course, working with the students to advance their expertise and careers.
Professor John Cartlidge of UoB and one of the originating team behind these series of events (along with Dr Yanhui “Cathy” Zhu from UWE), provided an overview of the work the universities do and “Bristol’s FinTech Talent Pipeline”. He described the evolution of the event, what has happened within the two universities course programmes and provided some examples of how the universities and their students are engaging with industry. There are many ways for that to happen, so whether you are interesed in projects, hiring, working with or any aspect of collaboration with students or universities - get in touch with us at FinTech West and we’ll connect you with the right contacts.
We moved on to hear from five MSc students from last year’s courses about their research and core projects. This is always so inspiring because until you’ve listened to the students themselves and the work they have done, it is hard to comprehend just how much talent we are blessed with locally who are ready to enter employment, start their own businesses or further their research.
Starting us off was Courage Okey who studied the Risk Management and Insurance MSc at UWE. Not only has he got brilliant insight into the car insurance industry in Nigeria, he has founded a business, Eclat Insage which has solutions for those problems identified. They are initially focused around onboarding Nigerian consumers to safe and valid insurance solutions before they turn their attention to claims. Fasinating to hear of both the journey so far and the challenges faced in the Nigerian car insurance industry.
Isabella Quennell, who took the UoB Financial Technology with Data Science MSc course, described her research project looking at “Unlocking Competitive Advantage - NLP-Powered Intelligence for Fintechs and Financial Services Providers“. What she has been able to do is to provide some specific solutions for BehindLogin as an industrial partner, addressing the use of Natural Language Processing to more accurately categorise information specifically related to competitive analysis. No suprise that Isabella has already been snapped up in an analyst role for award winning Now Pensions.
We then heard from Jeofrey Gobvu about "‘Invest in Production’ Platforms and Their Potential to Offer Sustainable Alternative Income Opportunities”. Jeofrey started with some thought provoking ideas discussing the impact of AI, how it might affect jobs and what we really are facing. Ultimately the message was really about adapting to new technology and taking advantage of it. He referred to specific examples in his native Zimbabwe.
Wenye “William” Pan from the UoB FinTech MSc course provided a very topical overview on his research on “ The Implications of Fintech on Financial Inclusion and Stability“ and the connections between them. He looked at areas such as the increase in mobile banking driving financial adoption and how FinTech based digital lending enhances financial stability. These are very relevant subject matters and his findings may well provide useful reading for many in the industry.
The final MSc student presentation was from Motunrayo Patrick-Bienwi from the UWE FinTech MSc course with an interesting review of “Data privacy and security considerations in the adoption of Digital Payments Services - A comparison study of Kenya and United Kingdom”. Always fascinating to hear about the different approaches and stages nations and consumers are at with FinTech adoption - key takeaway here is that both countries have areas for improvement with quite different needs, the UK can certainly learn from Kenya how financial inclusion is driving participation.
Motunrayo remained on stage and was joined by Charles Amenyah as they are President and Vice-President respectfully of the recently launched UWE FinTech Society. They provided an insight to the society and some of its plans - congratulations to them and the team for getting it formed and operational this year and we hope it has many years of success ahead!
Stuart Harrison then swapped hats as founder of Invest West, to explain how a large amount of the brilliant research and highly insightful findings that go into the MSc student projects remains unseen to most people. Not only is this a waste of great work, it doesn’t give the chance for those out in industry to understand more about the work of the students on these university courses. This is why Invest West has developed the Student Project Platform for use by the universities. Shortly to go live, already UoB and UWE students and staff are looking forward to using it.
Gavin Phillips of RSM then described more about the work of RSM in accounting, tax and business advice and in particular their activities with universities, students and placements. Gavin outlined that they actively seek to hire graduates in roles and he welcomed anyone interested in knowing more to get in touch - you can email Gavin here.
Finally, after hearing about BehindLogin from Isabella and her placement work with them, it was great to hear from Oliver Lane himself who, as founder of BehindLogin and formerly at Hargreaves Lansdown, has shown how effective engagement with the student talent at universities can be. The collective work clearly demonstrates the benefits that FinTech and student engagement can provide for all parties.