Massive changes in Fintech in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 - who knew?!

Yesterday and today, I was lucky enough to be at a few events in NY organized by FinTech Scotland, Scottish Financial Enterprise, with assistance from the Department for Business and Trade, Scottish Development International and others. 

I know I have been talking about Space 🛰 , Life Sciences 🐑 , and Climate 🌦 sectors as interesting opportunities for investors in Scotland, but we need to talk about Fintech 💰. Some facts:

➡ FS Sector in Scotland contributes over GBP 14bn to economy, and is largest exporter (50% more than whisky!)

➡ Scotland is 2nd largest financial hub outside of London in UK

➡ In past few years, the number of fintech companies have gone from 26 in 2018 to over 200 now.

➡ Scotland's FS sector employs over 150,000 people

➡ There has been over GBP1.6bn investment into sector in part 4 years.

➡ Scotland FS is only cluster in UK to obtain "European Silver" status.

The sector is supported by Scottish Financial Enterprise and FinTech Scotland to develop the sector and entire ecosystems. Their innovation strategy has a number of key streams that bring industry, academia, regulators, and others together to work on solving broader FS / fintech use cases. They include:

👉 Leveraging Open Finance data to help drive collaboration across industry players.

👉 Payment & Transactions

👉 Climate and sustainable finance

👉 Financial regulation: creating an independent environment for regulators and industry players to innovate.

During our roundtable this morning, kindly hosted by, Alex Ford from Encompass Corporation, we discussed some of the opportunities for Scotland's finest fintech to enter global markets, and in particular, North America.

🏁 Net Out: We have an established market and experience across buy- and sell-side of markets. We have the talent and expertise to solve global challenges. We have the innovation, research & development. 

NOW -- We just need to put ourselves out there into these global markets, build the relationships, and show everyone what we have!

Reach out to myself or anyone below to discuss how we do that: positioning, pitching clients & investors, relationship building, and understanding hashtag#culture in global markets.

Sustainable Alpha, Nicola Anderson, Sandy Begbie CBE FRSE, Clare Carswell, Scottish Enterprise, GlobalScot, Stephanie M. Shorter, PhD, Scottish Enterprise