From a Duolingo for student finance to saving lives on the road, fintech is about much more than your banking app.
The world famous Royal Liver Building yesterday hosted Fintech North, a showcase of technological innovation in the financial services sector in the North and across the 海角视频.
Liverpool is well known as t, hosting big names including Rathbones, Investec and Pershing. Its maritime heritage means it’s also long been a centre for insurance.
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And as Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram said in his introductory speech at Fintech North, the city region “is already a formidable force in the fintech arena.”
The mayor said the city region was home to more than 42 dedicated fintech firms, generating some £219m in Gross Value Added to the region’s economy every year. Some 79% of those firms, the mayor said, were scaleups and startups.
He said: “This entrepreneurial spirit is at the heart of our success and is a beacon for others who aspire to drive change within the financial services industry.”
And he added: “As we all know, talent is the lifeblood of any successful industry, and I am proud to say that our Fintech workforce now exceeds 4,363 skilled professionals.
“This diverse talent pool, supported by world-class academic programmes – like the Fintech MA at the University of Liverpool – ensures that we remain at the cutting edge of innovation.”
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The mayor mentioned the Liverpool City Region Fintech Growth Group, a partnership between private firms, the public sector and academia to develop the region’s strengths. And he talked about recent growth stories in the city, including Zempler Bank and Swoop, saying that fintech could help the city region in its ambitious goal to see foreign direct investment (FDI) grow 25% by the end of this decade.
'Innovation is challenging'
At a session focusing on Northern InsurTech Excellence, Liverpool-based Andrew Porter introduced his insurance management product iCede, saying: “The platform is like a community for insurers around the world”
He talked about his bootstrapped innovation journey, saying with a smile that “Innovation is challenging… You have to come up with a solution to a problem that is challenging the industry.”
Andrew said fintech was an increasingly mature sector in the highly regulated world of finance, and added: “I don’t think we’re in the disruption stage of fintech any more.”
Today his business employs 14 people, with a turnover of £1m and with 70% of its business coming from overseas.
Wirral’s Robyn Roberts introduced Safe By Choice, which aims to create AI-driven road safety solutions. She explained that her mission was to help protect vulnerable road users, including horse riders and cyclists, with technology that shifts insurance to focusing on prevention rather than reaction. That could mean, for example, rewarding safe driving behaviour – she said: “What if being a safe driver could actually save you money?”
No 'robo-advisers' just yet
Wealth management was a focus of some of the afternoon’s discussions. In a debate on the future of wealthtech sector, Iain Craig , investment director at Liverpool’s Rathbones, said fintech had been an agent of democratisation in the sector.
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He said AI would be vital to wealthtech, but that it would be about process and efficient improvements rather than advisory work with clients. He joked that “robo-advisers” would not be coming any time soon, but that AI tech would allow advisers to spend more time with clients.
The day ended with a showcase of “Northern WealthTech Excellence”.
Ashish Sandhu and Vipashyana Srivastava, from Liverpool, said they wanted their student finance business Scholar Saver to become “The Duolingo of student finance”. They explained that financial stress forced millions of students worldwide to drop out of their courses, and said they wanted to “keep millions of students on the path to their degrees”.
Meanwhile Yorkshire’s Suz Ferreira, founder of Proper Financial Coaching, talked about her platform that aims to support women investors and help close the “gender equality wealth gap”.
And Elliot Riley-Walsh explained how his platform ValArt aimed to help people track and manage their collections of anything from art to Transformers, helping them to insure their collections.
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