On Thursday 22nd April, FinTech Scotland CEO Nicola Anderson will deliver a keynote address at The Scotsman’s free to attend webinar exploring Scotland’s Fintech future
The event comes off the back of a FinTech Scotland webinar on 26th March featuring Ron Kalifa, OBE, former Worldpay CEO and author of the recently published Kalifa Review of UK Fintech commissioned by the UK Treasury.
Attended by over 120 people from the UK and internationally, the event discussed the findings and recommendations contained in the Review and what they meant for Scotland.
The place of the UK in the Global fintech sector was one of the very interesting aspects of the conversation. The country still occupies a leadership position which is envied around the world with a 10% global market share. It was discussed that there is still much room for growth.
More importantly Kalifa made it clear that this wasn’t at all a position the UK would keep without a real focus on a few priorities including policy and regulation, skills and talent, investment, international competitiveness and national connectivity.
Scotland was mentioned as one of the 10 high growth clusters outside of London. Thanks to its financial sector and technology expertise, its world class universities and numerous accelerators, Scotland is the second largest fintech hub in number of firms. The partnership of the public and the private sector through FinTech Scotland was also highlighted as one of the reasons behind Scotland’s success in the fintech arena.
This is why the Scottish fintech cluster management organisation was mentioned by Ron as a model for the establishment of CFIT (Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology), one of the tools described in the review to galvanise fintech actors from all around the country and drive growth for the sector.
The reaction from government was highlighted as being very positive and the industry will be very much looking forward to the government response to this review.
Click here to watch the event.
FinTech Scotland’s CEO, Nicola Anderson will be speaking at our upcoming webinar – Scotland’s Fintech Future. Sign up for free here.