On Thursday, our Head of Data, Katy Guthrie, and Head of Cyber, Ciara Mitchell, hosted a “Financial Services Marketplace” as part of the Scotland Fintech festival. This event brought together individuals from Financial Services companies, Fintechs and data and cyber companies, and was supported by Nicola Anderson of Fintech Scotland.
We were delighted to hear insight from Nicola Cooper Information Security Manager in Consultancy Services at Virgin Money, on the steps involved in Virgin Money’s production selection and onboarding process. A couple of key takeaways from that are:
- Although there are some due diligence boxes that need to be ticked regardless, it’s not a one-size fits all process for all suppliers. If you have an exciting offering but are an SME, that should not be a blocker.
- Due diligence on “4th party suppliers”. To supply Financial Services, your own procurement processes need to be robust and stand up to audit.
Stuart Robertson, Co-founder and Director of iDelta Ltd then shared insights from his long history of supplying Financial Services. A few points which resonated were:
- The value of relationships; as people working in customers’ companies move jobs from one Financial Services company to another, that can open the door to new opportunities.
- Different types of supplier agreements are worth thinking about. Partnerships can be a great way to get in the door; direct supplier agreements probably provide better prospects for maintaining a longer-term supplier relationship. Both should be considered.
After hearing from Nicola and Stuart, we then had a short networking session in virtual breakout rooms.
Following the networking session we held a lightning showcase to highlight some of our data and cyber member companies, and the work they have been doing to develop innovative products and services, which have the potential to help solve problems for FS firms, or which could be applied to gain competitive advantage. We heard from:
- David Eccles, Founder, and Rui Cardoso from Wallscope
- Peter Ferry, Founder of Wallet Services
- Duncan Hart, Co-founder of Deep Miner
- Dr Elias Ekonomou, Architect at Condatis
It was great to see such a range of exciting, home grown solutions!
We very much hope this is the start of dialogue and collaboration between these sectors, as financial services become ever more reliant on highly technical solutions. We welcome feedback from those who attended, or anyone interested in the topics – please get in touch with nicole.johnston@scotlandis.com