DBT International Delegation South West Showcase
Friday 2nd May at the SS Great Britain
We were delighted to be hosting this high profile visit from an international delegation of FinTechs and related businesses supported by the Department for Trade and Business and Invest Bristol & Bath. It was the final day of UK FinTech Week and after such a great week, what better than to showcase the South West community, in the sun, at Bristol Harbourside.
It was so popular that DBT organised two coaches to bring everyone down from London where they had been enjoying the rest of the week’s activities. Our community also came out in force and a jolly nice day was had by all!
Stuart Harrison welcomed the guests and opened the event with a look at a very busy agenda before handing over to Anita Kimber.
Anita provided an entertaining insight into the disruptive and rebellious, yet principled, mindset of the region. She highlighted the story of the Bristol Iron Works riots where many hammers were “borrowed” to break down prison doors yet were returned to their rightful place afterwards. After highlighting the Banksy just yards from the venue, Anita then called for the first panel.
The first panel of the day, moderated by Anita, looked at the question of “What makes the West wonderful”. We heard from Richard Ingle of Bath Building Society, Dan Read from TLT, Louis Spencer of NatWest and Nathan Long of Hargreaves Lansdown talk us through topics such as availability of talent, attracting businesses, the quality of life, digital transformation and innovation hubs amongst other topics.
We then moved on to two segments either side of lunch showcasing FinTech businesses. Jack Mangnall from Shape Technologies was first up providing an interesting insight into their journey as a payments-platform-as-a-service for new and existing payfacs, acquirers, ISOs and ISVs to scale their businesses worldwide. Jack also outlined the industry recognition they are getting and their postive experience of operating in the region.
Saara Benfield from Sage Earth then took to the stage to tell the story of the green credentials of Bristol, formation of Spherics and how she joined the small Bristol startup only for it to soon become part of the massive Sage brand through acquistion. Sage Earth have clout to bring their Carbon Accounting solution to market but still want to work with more partners to get it out to as many businesses as possible.
Finbridge Global has been a partner of FinTech West before it was even formed(!), which is why it was a pleasure to welcome Barbara Gottardi along to recount their significant progress over the recent months in bringing together financial services and FinTechs. They offer a beneficial collaboration platform to both parties as well as running many supplemental activities such as innovation boards and Dragons Den style pitching.
After lunch, Christian Shanahan of Payji, explained clearly (with some minimal maths!) how they are starting to help create a positive local economic impact by enabling money circulating in a local economy to stay in that economy and not be eroded through transaction fees to remote firms.
Local heros Loqbox in the form of Bea Gelder and Dani Palmer then took to the stage to highlight how many people Loqbox are helping worldwide now with their unique approach to improving credit rating. With around 150 employees and operations internationally, it’s great to hear they are going from strength to strength. Worth taking a look at how it works, it’s really quite clever.
For the last FinTech slot, we were left in no doubt how good Rohit from Assureful thinks the local ecosystem is! Apart from learning how well his “pay as you sell” commercial insurance business is doing in the States and Far East, we heard his personal journey of deciding to set up a business in the UK, researching many towns and cities before choosing Bristol. Suffice to say, Rohit has no regrets about that decision - and his team are also proving how you can build a successful international business from here.
The second panel, moderated by the one-off Ingrid Anusic of Moneyhub and NMI/Creditcall fame, then took to the stage to discuss “Working internationally”. We had the pleasure of hearing from Peter Cunnane from Innovate Finance, Dominic Gibbs of S&W (formerly Evelyn Partners), Lauren Crawley-Moore of the London Stock Exchange and Michael Legge representing Global Tech Advocates where he is the Latin American Group Lead. This group covered working in the US (curiously New York was the last place Peter and Dominic had met), incentives for operating in the UK, some asks of DBT, collaboration and driving regional FinTech growth.
The Future Finance project, already having been running for two years, had its progress and approach described by Jon Beaverstock who, as lead on the project, has overseen the success to date. Future Finance currently offers a number of training and other events including a demo day about to take place incorporating SME financial services businesses that have benefitted from the programme.
Rob Branch, of EY, and someone well known within the regional (and national) FinTech ecosystem explained how the Bristol operation has been involved in some national projects, such is the growth of the talent they have located here. This includes digital verfication with the City of London Corporation and the very recently announced ambitious new fintech accelerator programme to address the needs of underserved founders and communities through the power of network with JPMorganChase.
If you are in Bristol, you already know just how much AI activity is taking place in the region and how well regarded it is for that activity, We had this backed up by John Cartlidge from the University of Bristol who is working on the AI for Collective Intelligence project looking at national scale solutions in various critical sectors including finance. Abraham Mauleon from AI West followed the AI theme up with a description of how AI West is helping grow the AI community in the region working with a number of supportive organisations.
With such an enthusiastic community set of presentations before her, Valentina de Micheli from Invest Bristol and Bath, didn’t have much need to “sell” the benefits of the region but nonetheless, it was still good to hear some of the facts and stats and to be reminded that the local economy is made up of wide expertise across a diverse set of technologies from aerospace to robotics to life sciences. The Invest Bristol & Bath team provide tailored support to both national and international companies interested in relocating and growing here.
Finally we heard from Stuart Harrison of FinTech West how it is helping drive impact in the region from collaborative working across key areas such as education, insurance, sustainable finance, blockchain and with the wonderful team on the South Coast too!
Katie Ramsey from DBT wrapped up the event with a few words before everyone was able to explore the SS Great Britain at their leisure in the sun.