FinTech West Annual Conference 2025
FinTech West’s annual conference on Friday 10th October was our biggest yet, attracting over 250 people with an agenda that featured speakers drawn regionally, nationally and internationally. Kindly sponsored by partners, S&W and hosted at We The Curious.
Julian Wells, Director at Whitecap Consulting and FinTech West, welcomed the audience, outlining that whilst there are challenging times in the economy and for FinTech there is also significant cause for optimism due to the combination of regulatory change, the needs of the established FS sector, and the focus emerging from the Government’s Industrial Strategy.
Stuart Harrison, founder and Director of FinTech West, gave a short overview of the areas FinTech West is now focusing on, as part of its drive to create ‘Impact Through Collaboration’. He highlighted the 5 key priority areas as: Education; Sustainable Finance; InsurTech; New Technologies; and the South Coast. These in turn support projects such as the “Underserved business founder programme”, “Water scarcity resilience framework”, “Insurance Research & Innovation Hub” and “Closing the academic / industry gap”. He thanked everyone who has supported FinTech West to date and invited anyone who wants to collaborate on projects to get in touch.
Colin Payne, Head of Innovation at the FCA, delivered the opening keynote and referenced Bristol’s heritage in problem solving and said the city has an opportunity to put itself at the heart of the transformation of the financial services industry. The importance of AI to the future of financial services was central to his talk, and he highlighted the importance of trust and the role effective regulation can play. He spoke about the Smart Data Accelerator and the FCA’s groundbreaking partnership with Nvidia and others, and called out scaling through collaboration as a route to success, as opposed to silos. Colin also reflected on his past experiences as a music producer in Bristol, and his work with Massive Attack and others. It’s not often you hear a regulator talking about trip hop!
Our next speaker was Richard Newland, who has worked at large brands including Nationwide, HSBC and BNP Paribas, as well as being at the heart of the dot com boom. He explained that whilst AI can make a huge difference to an organisation’s customers, but that we must ensure we retain focus on factors including safety and ROI, and also bringing employees on the journey. It was a great talk which resonated widely in the room, particularly with the non-techies!
The first panel of the day was hosted by S&W, a key partner of FinTech West, and titled ‘Scaling your FinTech in the South West’. The panel was made up of Adam Sharpe, CEO of Taunton-based Cardstream, Nick Davenport, Finance Consultant at Bristol-based Loqbox, and Emily Berry, who leads the FinTech practice at S&W. The discussion was chaired by Jennifer Trager, partner at S&W, and focused in large part on the journeys of Cardstream and Loqbox, two of the many local FinTech success stories in the South West. The value of experience, support and having the right advice at the right stage were some of the messages that came through strongly on this panel. The potential value that a well designed accelerator programme can add was an interesting reflection on the session.
Next we focused on the thriving South Coast FinTech hub, hearing from Claire Main of BCP Council and Dan Ware, a FinTech entrepreneur who has helped build multiple FinTech businesses in the region over recent years. There are close to 40 FinTech firms in the BCP region, making it a standout hub in the UK, supported by major brands such as JP Morgan who have recently reaffirmed their commitment to the area. Claire and Dan’s passion for growing FinTech in the South Coast came through loud and clear, and they encouraged attendees to come to Bournemouth to experience it first hand.
Anita Kimber and Gillian Camm held a fireside chat on the subject of “making FinTech boards future-fit”. They spoke about the importance of effective boards for FinTech firms, and shared advice for people seeking to join the board of a FinTech firm. The session drew a lot of audience questions and is clearly a hot topic amongst the community. It felt like the audience questions would have kept coming for as long as we could let the session run for!
What has the Startup Coalition ever done for FinTech? That was the question posed by Charlie Mercer, who talked about the ways the Startup Coalition has helped the sector, talking through challenging times such as Covid and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and describing how they often find themselves “picking fights that nobody else can”. Startup Coalition has a high profile in the tech sector and has undoubtedly provided some valuable support for the FinTech sector, so it is remarkable that the service is free for the overwhelming majority of FinTech firms who need it. Charlie said he is “cautiously optimistic” about the future…fingers crossed.
Tom Eyre is Founder and CEO of Loqbox, and took to the stage to tell his story of a mission that has been a near 15 year journey to becoming ‘probably a scaleup’. Loqbox is a financial wellbeing business based in Bristol which aims is to give everyone access to a richer life, by building ‘better borrowers’ who have access to credit products that are appropriately priced, the skills and knowledge to understand them, and a credit score that accurately reflects their capabilities. Tom said they aim to allow anyone to build a credit history, learn about the financial system and build and demonstrate their capabilities. All while building savings, not debt.
Innovate Finance’s Pitch 360 competition has long been a standout feature of their annual Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS), and this year the team have taken it on the road with regional events across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Joshita Ganesan and Amelia Martinez from the Innovate Finance team joined us in Bristol for the day and in partnership with EY they ran a pitch competition where 6 FinTechs had a daunting 3 minute slot each, plus 2 minutes of questions from the judges (Rob Branch of EY, Matt Hyde of FinTech Awards, and Melanie Goward of Maven Capital Partners).
We heard from:
AdClear - an AI review tool for Financial Promotion, helping financial services firms streamline and enhance their approach to their promotions activity.
BehindLogin - a market research provider of a competitor analysis service that enables financial services firms to access the customer experience and journeys of competitor products.
InsurePulse - developed by Kainovation Technologies, provides AI powered operational reporting for insurance providers.
SenseRisk - uses technology to simplify the commercial insurance buying process, and focuses on removing the friction and issues caused by businesses entering their own data.
SideUp - a FinTech that has its origins in Brazil, provides a flexible employee benefits services whereby employees can allocate funds tax efficiently to suit their individual preferences, such as travel, subsistence and gym memberships.
Stratiphy - a wealth management app that provides an accessible fremium service for retail investors, and also has a business offering.
Stratiphy was later announced as the winner of Pitch 360, with CEO Daniel Gold returning to the stage to receive the awards from Rob Branch, Head of FinTech Labs Proposition at EY.
The first session after a vibrant networking lunch was the ‘under the radar’ panel, which featured high profile brands such as Monzo (Alex Gibbons), Monument (Fiona Pollard), and Octopus Money (Fred Moss), and was chaired by Katharine Finn, who until recently was the regional chair for TheCityUK. The panel focused on the regional workforce who are remote workers with organisations who do not necessarily have a base in the South West. We heard there are 40 people working in the region from Monzo, highlighting the strength of financial services and FinTech talent here and more broadly along the M4 corridor spanning from London to Wales. This was an interesting discussion that covered a lot of ground, including the importance of values, culture and trust.
Water scarcity is not a topic that is naturally associated with FinTech, but it was the focus of one of FinTech West’s most popular events this year. Richard Tidswell explained that England’s water supply is increasingly under stress, and there is a need for businesses and households to reduce usage. He also explained how a group of stakeholders, including FinTech West and UWE, are coming together to create a pioneering programme focused on water resilience at a regional level.
For the penultimate session of the day we returned to the theme of AI, with Graeme Burns from Nationwide, who drew on historical family and industrial examples to bring the importance of purpose to life for the audience. He explained that Nationwide’s AI work is driven by asking whether or not something aligns to the organisation’s core purpose. The importance of responsible AI is key, albeit Graeme also indicated that this can also mean some exciting opportunities cannot not be pursued. Graeme closed with some examples of how Nationwide is using AI to identify and support vulnerable customers.
The final speaker of the day was Rohit Nair, the Bristol-based Founder & CEO of Assureful, an InsurTech. Rohit spoke about the UK (and specifically the South West) having a huge untapped opportunity in InsurTech, highlighting how the insurance sector is being disrupted by factors such as technology and climate change. Rohit presented a blueprint for the future, delivered by an “Insurance research and innovation hub” project supported by UWE and FinTech West, underpinned by five key pillars of: digital risk modelling, behavioural insurance, regulation and innovation, data ethics and governance, and networking and talent. InsurTech is one of FinTech West’s five priority areas, and will be an area of focus over the coming months.
This year’s conference provided further evidence of the appetite for continued growth of FinTech in the South West. FinTech West aims to be at the heart of this growth, and we’d love to hear from anyone who wants to join with us on this mission!
Finally, we’d like to say a big thank you to Liz Richards and Ingrid Anusic, both of whom have gone above and beyond to help make the event such a success.
To find out more about getting involved with FinTech West or our work please get in touch. Two days earlier we held the Student Talent Showcase, visit the link to read more. And if you are not already part of the community, join by supplying your emai via the form at the bottom of the page to be kept informed of news, activity and events - it’s entirely free!