Money 20/20 USA: fintech’s annual Vegas pilgrimage is upon us

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Hot off the heels of last week’s Sibos conference in Amsterdam, the fintech industry’s attention swiftly shifts to the other side of the pond this week for Money 20/20 USA. Against the backdrop of a particularly challenging and eventful year in finance, what are we likely to see dominating the agenda at this year’s show?

Money 20/20 – why is it important?

While Sibos largely represents the old world infrastructure and the goliaths of payments, Money 20/20 has become the fulcrum for innovation and new fintech.

Billed as the annual event where the industry’s leading financial services innovators “come together to connect and create the future of money,” Money 20/20 USA also somewhat ironically takes place each year in Las Vegas, a town perhaps best known for helping people part with their money…

But for those that can tear themselves away from the slot machines, Money 20/20 always turns out to be one of the most important conferences on the fintech calendar. The agenda is jam-packed with top tier speakers and panelists (see: Serena Williams, Amrapali Gan, Takis Georgakopoulos and Bill Harris to name just a few), and most companies worth their salt use the conference as a platform to make major product or business announcements every year.

What are we likely to see at this year’s show?

This year has seen a sea change in the investment climate for fintech. Investors are looking at B2B fintech subsectors where revenue is a safer guarantee as consumers struggle with the soaring cost of living, and this is reflected in the Money 20/20 agenda. Expect to see topics like regtech, data infrastructure, financial rails and risk analytics get a lot of airtime across the full four days.

In particular, throughout 2022 there has been a continued move towards efficiency services and ones which offer regulatory compliance. ‘Safety’ tech seen as “mission critical” is typically more resilient in a downturn than other emerging technologies that can often be seen as a ‘nice-to-have’, particularly by some of the more conservative financial institutions. Many of the innovative start-ups at the show will no doubt have this in the back of their minds given the attendance by banks and other TradFi players who could be potential customers.

While in other years the agenda has sometimes been dominated by certain themes (blockchain was arguably THE central theme for a number of years), the challenge in a constrained funding environment is differentiation – and this is reflected in the variety on display in this year’s line-up. The fintech market is oversupplied with vendors and now, more than ever, you really have to set yourself apart from competitors’ offerings to make your mark in the industry.

An increasing number of fintechs have started to run out of runway this year – and to use a suitably apt gambling reference – when the chips are down, expect to see the ones with a clear, unique business model to win the sought after investor dollars, while others fall by the wayside. Given the coverage it receives in the global financial media, Money 20/20 is as good a platform as any to make your business case.

 

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Four ways fintech is driving a greener economy

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Just over a year after the UN dubbed climate change a “code red” emergency for humanity, the effects of global warming are being felt acutely across the globe.

Temperatures in the UK recently surpassed 40 Degrees Celsius for the first time in history, whilst a staggering 188 all-time heat records have been broken around the world since the start of the year. Scenes of droughts, wildfires and destroyed buildings have provided a sobering reality to climate warnings, heightening the impetus for finding more environmentally friendly ways of living and doing business.

As an industry with a significant carbon footprint, the financial sector is under increasing pressure to move the needle on the green transition. According to EY, financial services companies send on average 5.2 billion paper documents to their customers every year – the equivalent to 2.4 million trees. The retail banking sector is by far the largest contributor, sending an estimated 4.2 billion documents.

The indirect impact that financial institutions have on the environment is also considerable. According to the 2019 Fossil Fuel Finance report, 33 global banks financed fossil fuels with $1.9 trillion in the three years following the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, with $600 billion of this going to companies aggressively expanding fossil fuel usage. Against a backdrop of rapid climate change and the rising importance of ESG criteria, how is fintech enabling the industry to become greener?

  1. Digitisation and paper reduction – the digitisation of customer services is eliminating the need for paper entirely. Online banking usage in Britain has rocketed over the past decade, increasing from 52% in 2012 to 95% in 2022. Beyond the immediate environmental benefits that cutting paper production brings, digitisation also removes the need for couriers and document transportation, in turn reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
  2. Sustainability planning – technology is also helping organisations eliminate needless energy consumption that could otherwise be avoided. Take supply chains, for example, where a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions come from freight transportation. Artificial Intelligence and data analytics can help reduce these impacts by enabling companies to calibrate production according to fluctuations in variables such as the weather or unexpected rises and falls in demand. This enables logistics teams to optimise transportation more efficiently and avoid unnecessary fuel usage that would increase carbon emissions.
  3. Impact measurement – as well as planning ahead, fintech applications such as distributed ledger technology (DLT) enable companies to measure their environmental impact in real time. Initiatives such as G17Eco, for example, leverages blockchain to provide organisations and stakeholders with real time data around energy usage and carbon emissions. This helps companies map and manage their sustainability efforts more closely and accurately.
  4. Climate fintech – According to Deloitte, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people adopting a more sustainable lifestyle over the past twelve months, and a growing number of fintechs aimed at facilitating climate action are playing a role in this transition. LA-based green banking start-up Aspiration, for example, pledges to plant a tree every time a customer swipes their credit card. There are also a variety of mobile applications, such as the sustainable investing app Clim8, which enable users to invest into climate-related causes such as clean energy and sustainable food.

The transition to greater sustainability is undoubtedly a gradual process, but many parts of the financial sector are making this transition in the dark, using infrastructure that was not designed with the environment in mind.

Fintech is uniquely poised to accelerate the journey to a greener economy, providing financial institutions and consumers with the knowledge and tools they need to adopt more sustainable practices. Carbon emissions won’t be eradicated in one big bang moment. However, the adoption of new technology could go a long way in ensuring that the financial services industry is able to meet the demands of today – and tomorrow’s – environmental challenges.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

London Fintech Week opens with fresh funding review

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Backed by the London Stock Exchange, industry group Fintech Week London (FTWL) has announced a new review of the fintech funding landscape. Here we discuss what this means for the sector moving forwards and how fintech is adapting to inflationary pressures.

As leaders in the UK’s fintech industry gather in the capital for London Fintech Week, we are reminded of the city’s important role in the global fintech industry.

London is one of the top three global fintech hubs and has been a central driving force behind the UK’s emergence as a fintech leader, with roughly two-thirds of all fintech companies in the UK headquartered here. It has also helped establish a ‘halo’ of fintech activity around Greater London in cities such as Milton Keynes, Oxford, Brighton and Southampton, with a number of these areas developing specialisms in banking, payments and WealthTech.

Inflation tightens its grip

London Fintech Week arrives at a difficult moment for fintech companies. Investment into fintech hit record levels in 2021, but like most other industries, fintech is not immune to the grip of inflation. Against the backdrop of increasingly volatile markets, financial institutions have become more risk averse, meanings funds are more difficult to access.

Over the past few weeks, big names such as Klarna and SumUp amongst others have seen valuations drop amidst a sharp decline in venture capital investment into the sector. This is having a very real impact on real people, with an estimated 3,700 job cuts across the fintech industry in the second quarter of 2022 alone.

In reaction to this, FTWL has announced a new review into fintech funding which will bring together regulators, investors and finance firms to address declining investment and a plunge in valuations across the UK fintech landscape. Rafe de Kimpe, CEO of FTWL, said: “We’re going to look at what has happened to funding, how can we learn from this and how we can work together to make sure that industry gets better than before.”

Looking to the long run

There are signs of uncertainty ahead for fintech and this, aside from the war for talent, could be one of the industry’s biggest challenges to date.

The full maturation of any industry is a gradual process that comes with inevitable ups and downs – and fintech is no different.

The union between finance and technology is redefining the financial sector from top to bottom and despite the drying up of investment, fintechs continue to move forward, disrupting incumbents and driving adoption.

The Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), for example, revealed in June 2022 that the number of open banking users hit a record of 6 million, just four months after reaching the 5 million milestone. Similarly, recent data from PYMNTS.com found that nine out of ten financial institutions are in the midst of, or planning to, roll out embedded finance solutions.

And although there has been an increase in the number of fintech companies laying off staff, this trend is likely to reverse in the long-term. According to Statista, the number of employees in the UK’s fintech industry is estimated to increase by 15% between now and the end of the decade.

As London Fintech Week draws to a close, it’s clear the industry is making a real difference to the lives of real people. In the face of mounting obstacles, fintechs need to remain resilient and continue to lead the way in financial innovation.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Two years in the making: NI’s first Fintech Symposium

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After securing the opportunity to host it two years ago, on Wednesday 23rd March NI’s fintech community came together for the first ever NI Fintech Symposium in Belfast.

Hosted by Fintech NI, the symposium followed the launch of the NI FinTech Sector Strategy which revealed that fintech now contributes £392 million to the economy and has the potential to create thousands more jobs over the next few years.

This optimism was reflected in the room by the audience and speakers which included representatives from large organisations including Deloitte and A&L Goodbody, accelerators and investors such as Catalyst and Techstart Ventures and from other regional FinTech clusters including FinTech Scotland, FinTech North and SuperTech West Midlands.

One of the major talking points among the regional fintech cluster speakers was the Kalifa Review, which recently celebrated its first anniversary. Broadly, the views were that it has helped raise the profile of regional Fintech hubs globally and fintech investment is starting to spread around the UK. There is clearly work still to do, but most agreed it was a positive step in the right direction.

Andrew Jenkins, the Fintech Envoy for NI, discussed the opportunity and challenges for local fintechs. In his view, more needs to be done to connect startups with FDIs and incumbents, and funding networks need strengthened. He called for SMEs to collaborate, work with academia and engage with other fintech clusters to share knowledge and experience.

Karen Bradbury, Financial Services Sector Lead at Invest NI, spoke about why NI is an attractive place to set up a fintech. Nearly half the population is aged between 16-44 and while it has a smaller population than other regions, this can be to its advantage as it can be more agile. There is a deep talent pool too, with financial services employing 40,000 people, 7,000 of which are currently working in fintech.

On the investment side, Ryan McAnlis, Investment Director at Techstart Ventures, shared tips on how founders can navigate investment in fintech. He said there were no hard and fast rules when it comes to fundraising but emphasised the importance of testing any assumptions about customer base, the problem you’re trying to solve, your solution, how much money you need, and pivoting accordingly.

McAnlis was followed by Steve Orr, Chief Executive at Catalyst, who laid out why NI can be one of the top three hubs in the world for RegTech and how it could become a global Centre for Secure Intelligent Regulatory Technologies – GSIRT. With £160m, GSIRT could create up to 16,500 jobs and £931m in GVA in the next decade – definitely worth watching this space.

The closing panel on NI’s fintech opportunity featured Roisin Finnegan, Head of Ventures at Deloitte, Carol Rossborough, Co-Founder of ESTHER, Chris Jessup, Finance Partner at A&L Goodbody, Daniel Broby, Professor in Fintech at Ulster University and Bo Brustkern, Co-Founder and CEO of Fintech Nexus.

The panel covered a lot of different issues including how we grow and nurture talent, how improvements in remote working opened doors to new markets for entrepreneurs and how NI can overcome challenges to continue growing the local fintech sector.

From conversations we had at today’s event with firms such as AuditComply and Datactics, and from listening to insights from the speakers, it’s clear there is a lot of energy and support behind NI’s fintech sector. We now need to turn this energy into action in order to cement NI’s place as an attractive place to set up and run a fintech business.

Chatsworth Communications recently opened a Belfast office to tap into the city’s thriving fintech scene and deep pool of talent. Find out more here.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech.

We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. 

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? 

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story. 

The Kalifa Review: A year on, how far have we come?

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A lot can happen in a year, and 2021 was no exception.

Back in 2020, the Chancellor asked Ron Kalifa OBE to conduct an independent review to identify priority areas to support the UK’s fintech sector. Kalifa’s review contained four main recommendations that, if achieved, aimed to ‘support the growth and widespread adoption of UK fintech, and maintain the UK’s global fintech reputation.’.

  • Amendments to UK listing rules to make the UK a more attractive location for Initial Public Offerings.
  • Improvements to tech visas to attract global talent and boost the fintech workforce.
  • The creation of a regulatory Fintech ‘scalebox’ to provide additional support to growth stage fintechs.
  • And, a Centre for Finance, Innovation, and Technology (CFID), to strengthen national coordination across the fintech ecosystem to boost growth.

Now, one year on from those recommendations, let’s see how far we’ve come, and what work still needs to be done.

A surge in investment 

In 2021, investment in UK fintechs reached record highs of $37.3 bn, up sevenfold from the year before. Specifically for IPOs, the latest figures from Bank of England show Tech IPOs in the UK raised £6.6 billion, doubling 2020’s figures.

A total of 37 tech and consumer internet companies went public last year, including fintech, Wise, delivery company Deliveroo and online marketplace, Auction Technology Group. London also proved its international competitiveness by attracting companies from Europe (TrustPilot), Canada (AlphawaveIP) and the US (Devolver Digital).

So, clearly, the aim of turning the UK into an attractive place both to launch a company, and to work for one, seems to have been a resounding success.

The FCA has also managed to set up a scalebox to support fintechs as they grow and, with the City of London, has supported the development of Net Zero fintech solutions through its digital sandbox. Fintech has also been recognised in new trade agreements with Australia and Singapore.

Industry viewpoint

Despite all the successes, as always, there’s still much to be done. An open letter from Innovate Finance members states that ‘rather than resting on our laurels, it is imperative that we continue to build on this momentum and work together to establish an environment in the UK that is even more supportive of and conducive to innovation in financial services.’

Laurent Descout, Founder and CEO at Neo, said:

“A year ago, the question was – can London stay ahead in fintech despite Brexit? The Kalifa review sought to maintain the UK’s fintech edge but it looked possible Brexit could have a reverse effect. Thankfully, a year later, the UK has cemented its place as a fintech hub and is working to navigate the Brexit challenges.   

“Nowhere is this more evident than in payments. Businesses paying low bank fees for Euro transfers into London found costs soar almost overnight as banks switched to charging international cross-border tariffs. Fintechs stepped in, offering multicurrency accounts, virtual wallets and, most importantly, a viable alternative to the traditional bank-driven model.” 

Christoph Gugelmann, Co-Founder and CEO of Tradeteq, said:

“A year on from the Kalifa review and we’re seeing fintech’s potential to reshape global trade – whether that’s parcelling trade finance instruments into investible assets, managing supply chains or automating workflows. These approaches have arisen through banks, fintechs, investors and other players working together – and it is this formula of continual dialogue that will continue to revolutionise this industry.”

Eric Huttman, CEO of MilltechFX, said:

“Fintech is no longer a subsidiary of financial services, but rather an omnipresent and essential component of the way we trade and do business. 

 “We must focus our efforts on using fintech to help develop the real economy. That starts with the treasurers and asset managers who can face huge operational inefficiencies with their FX setups which directly affect their bottom line.”

Martin Wilson, CEO of Digital Identity Net, said:  

“Fintech is strategically important for the UK, but while the billions are flowing into fintechs in London, we also need to see the government, businesses and banks adopt and implement these new technologies to improve the way we do business as a country.

“The UK itself needs to digitise further. We are ahead in areas such as trading technology and payment processing but way behind on digital identity. Other countries are leading the way. Belgium, Norway and Sweden all have digital identity systems connected to their banks to protect consumers data and dramatically reduce fraud, which is a major and growing problem in the UK currently. The Bank-ID service in Sweden is accessed by its adult citizens on average twice a day and the Norwegian service has reportedly reduced payment fraud from 1% of daily value to a staggeringly low 0.00054%.

“The government and banks should consider how we can implement digital identity innovation in order to continue to deliver digital services which positively impact its citizens’ lives.”

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Chatsworth opens Belfast office

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We’re pleased to announce that Chatsworth Communications is set to open a new office in Belfast.

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Payments industry fights back against the cyber threat

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The uncertainty and disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has presented cyber criminals with a wealth of opportunities to attack.

Since March 2020, cyber crime has rocketed with 74% of banks experiencing a rise in cyber attacks and three out of four financial institutions worrying about the historic rise in criminal activity and what will happen going forward.

Payments 20 (P20), the leading voice of the global payments industry, with the support of Chatsworth Communications, has taken a proactive, educational approach by developing reports and frameworks to enable financial institutions of all sizes across the world defend themselves against this growing global threat.

It has collaborated with organisations including American Express, Elavon, Hogan Lovells, J.P. Morgan Chase, the UK National Cyber Security Centre and New York State Department of Financial Services, to create a new report entitled ‘20 Best Practice Recommendations for Improved Cyber Security Protection’. Aimed at non-cyber professionals, the report emphasizes the urgency of implementing more efficient and comprehensive cyber security frameworks.  P20 also produced a report on the ‘Best Practice Approaches for Combating Payee Scams’, calling on the industry to work together to combat payee scams.

Chatsworth worked closely with P20 to build awareness of the cyber recommendations within the reports and to promote P20’s Global Payments Conference. Our strategy was to build awareness through media coverage in relevant finance and payments trade, and engage directly with our audience via eye-catching posts on both sponsored and organic posts on LinkedIn

We secured coverage in top trades such as The Banker, Treasury Management International and The Fintech Times, while generating over 1000 engagements and a significant increase in followers on LinkedIn.

Ultimately, the Global Payments Conference was a roaring success so kudos to the excellent P20 leadership who delivered a phenomenal event.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Three predictions for the year ahead in digital finance

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Richard Gendal Brown, CTO of R3, shares his predictions for the future of digital finance, as published in Forbes magazine. 

Trust takes centre-stage, DeFi meets CeFi, and CBDC proponents put up or shut up.

It’s fair to say the permissionless crypto world seemed to do all the running in the blockchain space in 2021. But that doesn’t mean those of us working to bring advanced cryptographic techniques to the world of business were resting. Indeed, and despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, 2021 was a year of significant progress for the digitisation of capital markets. 2022 will be another unprecedented year in financial technology – and the following three trends look set to continue reshaping the landscape for market participants, governments, regulators, and infrastructure providers over the next 12 months.

  1. The quest for trust will dominate the digital realm

We never think about it in our day to day lives but the ability to develop trust in each other in the real world is what has, uniquely, unleashed humanity’s potential. Trust is the cornerstone of human civilisation.

And as more of our personal and professional lives move into the digital realm, the sheer lack of trust in the digital realm is a trillion-dollar problem the industry must tackle in 2022.

Trust allows us to do things that would be almost impossible if we had to verify everything for ourselves. Can you imagine, for example, aviation if you couldn’t trust the airline’s safety engineers? And how often have you relied on a trusted brand when searching for a meal in an unfamiliar location? Imagine if you had to check the ingredients yourself before tucking in! Put simply: if we can trust, we don’t have to verify.

How would commercial enterprises ever have extended beyond immediate family if we had no mechanisms to develop trust in strangers? Ultimately, trust is the fundamental enabler of trade. And trade is what creates wealth. This is why I say trust is the basis of civilisation. In short, the fact humans can develop trust in each other explains the dazzling opportunities, wealth and living standards so many of us can enjoy. But consider how little trust exists in the digital realm.

In the early days of the web, you had no way of knowing if your browser really was talking to the company you thought it was. So, eCommerce and online banking struggled to take off. But the advent of the browser padlock – literally creating trust that you are connected to who you think you are – unleashed trillions of dollars of opportunity. Until recently, firms doing business with each other had no way of knowing if they had the same records. And so they wasted staggering amounts of money reconciling with each other. Blockchains are solving this problem by literally creating trust that “I know what I see is what you see.”

But there is so much further to go – and this is where the tech industry must focus its attention in 2022 and beyond. For example, when you send information to a third party, you have no technological way to know what they will do with your information. So you have to spend a fortune on ‘data scrubbing’ or audits… or, more likely, you don’t share sensitive data at all. It’s mind-blowing to imagine how many opportunities to create new value or serve customers better are squandered because we can’t trust how our information will be processed when it’s in somebody else’s hands.

One day we will look back in awe at how much we managed to achieve in the digital realm when the levels of digital trust were so low. But things are changing: trust technology is now here. The convergence of blockchains, confidential computing, and applied cryptography is happening, and firms are applying this to massively increase the levels of trust that exist within and between firms of all sizes operating in the digital realm.

The delivery of trust to all realms of our digital lives will drive the next wave of human advancement – and it begins today.

  1. The lines between DeFi and CeFi will continue to blur

Interest in decentralised finance, or ‘DeFi’, is booming in the technology world, and last year that interest peaked. The term has invited enthusiasm, skepticism and curiosity, in equal measure. But I have little doubt that the technology could be host to a number of exciting applications (assuming the grown-ups in that space can out-run the grifters). At its core, DeFi rests upon the central principle of disintermediation, and this could have many benefits – namely, democratisation of finance.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The idea that DeFi is ready to replace the existing, centralised or traditional financial system, or ‘CeFi’, is wildly overstated, especially at a time when governments are increasingly favourable to regulated financial markets and institutions.

However, and at the same time, we’re already seeing incumbent financial firms and market infrastructures adopting some of the insights and breakthroughs from the decentralised world – for example DTCC’s Ion work and the Swiss Digital Exchange, SDX – so we can imagine these two trends coming together and reinforcing each other in 2022: DeFi will mature and co-exist with the financial services ecosystem we have come to know and trust as it, in turn, evolves.

  1. CBDCs will move even closer to real-world deployment

2022 will be the year that CBDCs gain clear, policy-led direction and guidance. We’ll find out if any central bank is bold enough to launch a true digital equivalent to cash. CBDCs at both the wholesale and retail level are now being explored by countries all over the world, to different extents. Riksbank has been working on its ‘e-krona’ in Sweden for some time now, for example.

One of CBDCs’ usages that have received less attention until very recently is their use in cross-border settlements. In December, Project Jura successfully settled a “real-life” transfer of securities and cash between France and Switzerland with a wholesale CBDC.

2022 will be a year of real maturation for CBDCs. They are now understood by jurisdictions and this year, policymakers will get off the fence and tell us: will we as citizens be allowed to make digital payments with the same freedom we can make them in the real world? Yes or no? We’ll get an answer in 2022 and that will unlock everything – as we will then know what we need to go and build.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story. 

Venture capital investment ignites UK-wide tech boom

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Despite the troubles of the pandemic, the UK tech sector achieved its best year on record with success reaching far beyond London alone.

In 2021, a mixture of venture capital funding, attractive salaries and the creation of unicorns and futurecorns has led to a boom in technology development across the UK.

Tech investment grew 2.3x, the largest increase in growth since 2013/14, and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. This enormous increase in investment allowed for the creation of 29 unicorns this year, including the e-commerce platform Depop, car selling platform Motorway, insurance disrupter Marshmallow, and the challenger bank Starling Bank.

In a turn for traditional expectations, this boom also highlighted a marked shift away from the London centric financial industry, with 35% of unicorns based outside of London and 35% of futurecorns also based outside of the capital.

With a 50% increase in advertised tech jobs, and investment levels soaring, it’s clear companies are preparing for the future and looking to nurture talent to help them expand. Fintech sits firmly at the heart of the UK’s technology sector and such an explosion of investment and innovation is a positive indicator of companies’ potential for growth.

Read the full report here

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story. 

Fintech putting Belfast on the world stage

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A new breed of fintech businesses has taken the local and international business scene by storm

It has been a major centre in world finance for centuries and a thriving technology hub so it’s no surprise that London is home to a number of world-class fintechs that have become household names globally.

London will always play a central role in the global fintech revolution, but in recent times we have seen investment in creating technology hubs in other cities around the UK and this is translating into the creation of thriving, engaged communities and exciting companies.

Belfast, which is increasingly being seen as a city bursting with entrepreneurship and innovation, has been one of the main beneficiaries of this trend. Over the past couple of years, a new breed of fintech businesses has taken the local and international business scene by storm, putting the city on the map.

A growing reputation as a fintech hub

Until recently, I rarely saw anything about fintechs from Northern Ireland in the news outside of local papers. Much of the fintech hype has focused on huge investments, mergers and acquisitions for fintechs in London, New York and Asia and the odd one in Dublin, but seldom Belfast.

But Laura Noonan, while acting Ireland editor at the FT, bucked this trend with an article entitled ‘Belfast’s booming financial services rise above political unrest.’ It highlighted the investment that is pouring into the city – Citi plans to hire 400 people, bringing its headcount to 3,600+ and FinTru a RegTech firm based in Belfast, aims to double its headcount to 1,600. Citi and FinTrU’s plans follow recent announcements by Big Four accounting firms PwC, Deloitte and KPMG, who together will create 2,200 jobs in Belfast.

And it’s no wonder – with rents as low as a quarter of London’s west end and half of Dublin’s office space, and salary expectations much lower due to low living costs, firms can save thousands every month and still only be an hour flight from clients in London or just over 90 minutes from those in Dublin.

As a region, NI also has a deep pool of talent. Not only do we consistently outperform all other regions in the UK in academic qualifications at GCSE  and A-Level, we also have 4,000 people that graduate with business qualifications every year and boast the highest percentage of qualified IT professionals in the UK.

Through Invest NI, we also offer generous support schemes: PwC received £9.8m from the agency to support 108 of the almost 800 jobs it will create by 2026. It has also supported numerous local fintechs which are leading the way in Belfast. These include Datactics, specialists in user-friendly data quality and matching software which now has a 50+ strong team, fscom, a firm of compliance experts which currently works with over 18% of the UK payments sector and RegTick, which helps simplify compliance with regulation through an intuitive platform.

Furthermore, a potential benefit of Brexit, the arrangements set out in the Northern Ireland protocol could ultimately create “the best of both worlds” by making Belfast a unique jurisdiction with a toe in both the UK and the EU, as said by Michael Hall, managing partner at EY’s 600-strong Northern Ireland business.

There are a number of trade bodies and influencers who have been driving the sector forward.

Industry body, FintechNI, chaired by local fintech evangelist, Alex Lee, released a report which found NI to have the highest concentration of fintech employment in the UK.  There are an estimated 7,000 fintech related roles here and one in five people working across the financial and tech sectors in Northern Ireland work in fintech.

Furthermore, the Fintech Envoy for Northern Ireland, Andrew Jenkins, has regularly written in the media about fintech’s potential, imploring both the private and public sectors to grab the lucrative opportunity it presents with both hands.

Capitalise on this momentum with impactful communications

Having moved back to Belfast from London earlier this year, it feels there is real momentum growing behind the fintech scene here. It’s clear that we have a really strong story, different from that of other fintech hubs, that is starting to resonate with international media.

By creating compelling narratives and using the right channels to get them in front of the right audience, we can create huge opportunities for the city and its fintechs which can together attract customers, investment and talent into Belfast.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

 

 

Treading the fine line between green and greenwashing

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Greenwashing 2

It’s no longer enough to be solely profit-driven, firms have to be a force for environmental good or face the financial fall out.

The climate emergency has pushed environmental, social and governance (ESG) to top of mind for firms, investors and customers.

Investors want to back responsible businesses and there’s a reckoning coming for firms which fail to shape up.

A PwC report found that 83% of consumers think companies should be actively shaping ESG best practices and 86% of employees prefer to support or work for companies that care about the same issues they do.

On the institutional side, a survey of more than 1,000 investment professionals revealed that 77% of institutional investors plan to stop buying non-ESG products by 2022.

Profit and being a force for good aren’t mutually exclusive. The problem is that where there is money to be made, there are those with more sinister intentions.

Some see it as an opportunity to cash in and ‘greenwash’ – branding something as eco-friendly, green or sustainable when this is not the case.

Greenwashing has brought increasing scrutiny on ESG efforts, making it more difficult for those with strong green credentials to communicate them.

They risk being tarred with the same brush and accused of greenwashing, which can lead to negative backlash, reduced trust in their brand and, in extreme cases, regulatory action.

So how can firms tread the fine line between green and greenwashing?

How to spot greenwashing

Firstly, it’s important to be able to spot the signs of greenwashing so you can avoid common pitfalls.

  1. False claims or vague language – In 2019, the advertising regulator banned a Ryanair ad claiming it was the airline with Europe’s lowest emissions without sufficient evidence to support the claim. And a Hyundai advert, claiming a car “cleaned the air”, was also judged by the ASA to be misleading.
  2. Images of nature or ‘green’ buzzwords – The use of phrases such as “eco”, “sustainable” and “green” without substantiation is a common red flag.
  3. Hiding information – As far back as 2007, the ASA ruled against Shell for an ad implying it used waste carbon dioxide to grow plants. However, the regulator actually found the quantity used was only a small fraction of its emissions.
  4. Questionable carbon offsetting – There are attempts to balance emissions by finding other ways to remove an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Environmental groups argue this is kicking the problem into the long grass rather than dealing with the real issue of actually cutting emissions.
  5. Company ownership – Often large firms with a big carbon footprint will buy smaller ones to target environmentally conscious customers who otherwise might not have chosen to spend with them.
  6. Eco-friendly products in a wider range – Some firms will market beneficial products but omit information on other less green products.
  7. Is the product and its packaging recyclable? – In 2018, McDonald’s announced it was going to get rid of single-use plastic straws in its restaurants and offer paper straws instead. But the following year, it was accused of greenwashing when it was revealed the straws weren’t actually recyclable.

PR’s role in fighting, not propagating greenwashing

The public relations profession, which has been part of the greenwashing problem, now has a responsibility to help drive the solution.

The Competition Markets Authority has unveiled a new Green Claims Code which requires all environmental claims to be truthful, unambiguous and transparent. It also compels organisations to include all relevant information relating to a claim. The move follows CMA research earlier this year that found 40% of green claims made online could be misleading.

This code was backed by PRCA’s Climate Misinformation Strategy Group, with its chair John Brown stating in PR Week: “It’s about time every organisation in the UK moves away from dubious intent and towards positive action and proof. By embracing transparency and ensuring claims are backed by credible verification, brands can work fearlessly to help address one of the biggest challenges facing our world.”

How to communicate green credentials without greenwashing

Increasingly, green claims are coming under intense scrutiny, making it difficult for those which are actually making a positive impact to communicate it without facing a myriad of questions and accusations of greenwashing. Before communicating your ESG credentials, there are a few questions you should ask yourself:

  • Are my claims accurate? Can I back up my green credentials with evidence or independent assurance?

Where there is increased cynicism, evidence is the way forward. Back up your claims and make sure you’re not overegging them. Being officially carbon neutral or signing up to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), gives you the independent assurance that you need to prove that your efforts are genuine. Making your logo green does not as McDonald’s found out in 2009.

  • Are my green credentials strong enough to communicate? Do my actions go far enough?

Many companies have a paperless office and offer cycle to work schemes so marketing these types of initiatives as your unique way of saving the world might not be the best idea. That’s not to say they aren’t important but if communicating about them, it’s wise to avoid making big claims and stick to the facts. Similarly, if you’re boasting about these initiatives but have executives constantly flying around the globe for short stints, you’re likely to get called out.

  • Is the whole company involved in the ESG initiative or just a division?

You need to make clear in your communications whether the initiative is in one office or company wide. Exaggerating a one office initiative is a surefire way to get your efforts labelled as greenwashing.

Keeping your nose green

Actions speak louder than words and this is true when it comes to ESG. Don’t make outlandish claims, keep it simple, factual and authentic. These fundamental principles are the best ways to avoid being accused of greenwashing and having to contend with the subsequent wrath of the general public, customers and regulators.

Try to tell the truth about your green efforts and the challenges you face. The public and investors know it can be tough and it’s an ongoing process. Get it right and you’ll be rewarded and respected. And you’ll lock in loyalty, investment and, ultimately, profit.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures. Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value? Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

Insurance needs an urgent reboot. It’s ripe for a fintech transformation.

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Millennials want demand, smarter products they can access and manage through technology, powered by smart data and AI.

Data and AI are fuelling the fire of unprecedented change across the insurance industry. Watch out for the breakout brands and new models set to transform the legacy technology and processes underpinning this sector.

Chatsworth understands the transformative role data and AI can bring to the insurance sector. This is a huge industry and it is ripe for intelligent change, driven by technology.

The prize is massive for the fintech firms which create a better, unified, and intelligent customer experience.

Insurance is built on risk and predicting how big a risk a person, company, or event is. The more information an insurer has, the more accurate the prediction.

But an industry that has traditionally priced risk has become a risk to itself with woeful data management and manual processes which are not fit for the modern world.

Just look at the state of the insurance industry today for a moment: Disparate sources of data, inefficient contract placement needing extensive manual intervention. All compounded by a complicated claims process and archaic billing systems.

Where does it leave us? With high reconciliation costs, ambiguity in loss conditions, and settlement delays creating high expense ratios for insurers. And a rubbish user experience.

This an industry ripe for disruption. A cabal of established firms has been in existence for hundreds of years, with little change to their products or how they take them to market.

Artificial Intelligence is capable of analysing data and situations faster, increasing accuracy, and enhancing customer customisation.

Insurtech is harnessing innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) to offer super-customised policies and real-time, dynamic price premiums.

Insurance works by applying actuarial tables to put policy seekers in a risk category. Stick enough of them together similar categories and policy becomes profitable.

These policies are signed up to on a long-term basis with minimal room for manoeuvre in the policy. An aggregated lock-in.

Insurtech will tackle this by applying big data AI to deliver and price products more competitively.

The traditional model where the company has to gather records from various sources will prove unnecessary. The data can move directly from one party to the other, further enhancing transparency and eliminating human error.

Insurtech will offer far more effective profiling. Policy construction and quoting capabilities with the capability to provide on-demand policies where customers can purchase insurance when they actually need it.

Millennials are simply not going to put up with phoning around for insurance quotes. That was the 90s.

And while the on-demand insurance offering is still in its relative infancy, customers are going to want it and the ability to access, update, expand and monitor their policies simply and effectively through their smartphones, at their convenience.

Chatsworth focuses on communicating how our clients are facilitating the digital transformation of legacy markets and sectors. Applying better technology to make processes, experiences, purchases and the flow of goods and money across borders quicker, cheaper, more secure.

We’ve been working with a number of clients who are pioneering change in the insurance space.  R3 has been at the forefront of supporting the insurance industry as it moves through this change.

Distributed ledger and blockchain technology enables the entire insurance ecosystem to streamline operations and lower expense ratios from back-office operations.

R3’s Corda enables a network of insurers, brokers, cedants, and reinsurers to interact securely and near-instantaneously. Placed insurance contracts have legal validity and can be used for claims adjudication. Ultimately this frees up capital and resources spent on auditing and administrative costs

R3’s Corda Challenge: Insurtech proposed a new problem statement to challenge start-ups to build innovative insurance applications on Corda with entries working to address a host of legacy problems across the insurance industry.

Here’s just a few of them:

  • ClaimShare is working to solve the problem of ‘double dipping’ in the insurance industry, where insurance fraud is committed when claims are registered with multiple insurers.
  • Fardoe Software are building an intelligent data exchange platform to aid with fraud detection
  • IntellectEU are reducing fraud in the insurance industry by using DLT to make sure claims are unique and verifiable.
  • LISA Insurtech are using Corda to speed up the claim’s management and verification process
  • Photocert are using DLT technology to help verify images that relate to the verification of insurance contracts
  • io are building a claims data management tool for insurers, which should help reduce fraudulent claims.

For those about to shake up the insurance industry for good, we salute you.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Digital Transformation: It’s all about building a better e-mousetrap

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Digital transformation. You may have heard of it! Improving services, costs, efficiency and security through technology. In short, building a better e-mousetrap.

It’s the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses, replacing manual processes with digital processes or supplanting older digital technology with newer digital technology.

Simply put, it’s progress.

Covid and remote working practices have been major contributing factors and digital transformation is in part a legacy of the pandemic, but in truth, this transformation was already well underway. As the one-liner goes, who is driving it? Is it the CEO, the CTO or C19?

Chatsworth is fortunate to work with some of the world’s most established technology firms and the most exciting challenger brands and start-ups working to improve the way the world trades and communicates through technology.

Often backed and funded by banks and investment houses, these businesses take a laser-focused look at legacy business processes and problems and hone their technology to improve them.

We’re now seeing institutions creating functions and chief architect roles to enable digital transformation with commensurate investment and budget lines to power them. The geeks truly are inheriting the earth.

Some firms are quicker off the block than others – the early adopters, if you will – but most now recognise that change through technology is no longer an ‘if’, but a firm ‘when.’

At the heart of the matter is a simple principle: effective digital transformation leads to “stuff getting done better.”

That could be SME suppliers getting paid on time or atomising research to deliver better information to banks and their clients to inform their investment or trading decisions.

It will most likely lead to improved operating costs, greater efficiency, improved transparency and enhanced data security.

Some firms, like R3, have taken a holistic view and have developed a model and technology to serve a huge swathe of business challenges.

Its Corda platform now has an ecosystem of hundreds of firms actively building solutions for their industries and sectors – from trade finance, to shipping, insurance, payments and beyond.

This is ambitious, intelligent work delivered by some of the smartest technologists and business minds, funded well and run by people who understand financial markets as well as the broader needs of business.

At Chatsworth, we love communicating about digital transformation, talking with our colleagues in the financial and technology media to amplify the transformative work our clients are doing. But it has to be in context. What business challenge are you solving? Quantify those benefits. Why is it important?

We bring our own experience of launching and building fintech brands together with our communication skills and command of technology and data to take our clients to market and link them up with their customers and partners-to-be.

It’s an amazing time to be at the heart of this hugely important sector. We’ve focussed on it for over 20 years and now the world is really paying attention.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

The Kalifa review: R3’s recommendations for the future of fintech

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Charley Cooper R3

R3 was one of a roster of fintechs that contributed to the Kalifa review – a set of recommendations outlined for the UK’s fintech community to grow and flourish in the years ahead. R3’s Managing Director, Charley Cooper, shares the recommendations that R3 put to Ron Kalifa, which helped shape the outcome of the review.

Policy and Regulation

We believe that the UK provides an innovation-friendly regulatory environment. As an illustration of this, the FCA’s Regulatory Sandbox has provided a helpful tool in supporting early-stage businesses, both as a piece of regulatory engagement and as a marker of development when attracting external investment. We recommend the establishment of similar constructs across various industries where regulatory concerns often give pause to potential innovators who worry their work will run afoul of current legal frameworks.

When we consider the development of a market around digital assets, the UK has not been as quick as other jurisdictions to encourage the market or conduct projects utilizing new solutions such as distributed ledger technology. Therefore, whilst government stakeholders have taken a sensible stance in allowing development free from overburdensome regulation, the UK has still lagged behind several European nations, most notably Germany and Switzerland, in the application of these technologies. The commitment by the Bank of England that their renewal of the UK’s real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system will include API-enabled DLT interoperability is a welcome step. However, we believe that when the government leads from the front and deploys new technologies for its own use, the private sector will take encouragement from that and view the UK as a more friendly market in which to launch and grow businesses.

The government and the central bank also lag behind the most advanced nations with specific regard to stablecoins and central bank digital currency (CBDC). Many of the most advanced work done on this topic has been done using R3’s Corda, a technology that is being developed and supported by engineers and scientists based in London. However, despite the easy reach of the technology and expertise to the UK, greater advances are being made by the central banks of Sweden (through the Riksbank e-krona project), France (Banque de France’s wholesale domestic and cross-border work), Hong Kong and Thailand (Project Inthanon-Lionrock), Canada (Project Jasper) and several more. Given the pounds’ role as a reserve currency and the UK’s strategic interest in staying ahead of the curve, this is reason for concern and an example of the UK not making use of the talent it has at its disposal.

It is not yet clear how the UK plans to adapt post-Brexit to address the gap left in the total addressable market now that reaching the European market will require overcoming additional administrative hurdles to access. Many of our partners have raised concerns that they will be forced to leave the UK in order to take advantage of growth potential in the European market. This will prove a hinderance in incentivizing companies to choose London when selecting the best jurisdiction for their public listing.

Skills and Talent

One of the key reasons why the UK has been so competitive internationally has been London’s ability to attract global talent. A significant percentage of our London-based staff were born outside of the UK but have made London their home. To ensure this continues. an efficient, clear, and stable visa system is essential.

In the immediate term, we valued the government’s position and early communication that Brexit did not affect the status of EU citizens already in the UK, and this has undoubtedly assisted us in retaining staff and satisfying short-term recruitment needs. In the medium to long term, the UK government’s strategic positioning and promotion of itself across the world will be a factor in attracting global talent to all our London office.

The developer community, in particular, can be highly mobile, meaning that the UK cannot afford to be complacent if it wishes to retain these highly skilled individuals. Indeed, this risk applies to both maintaining UK’s attractiveness to foreign-born individuals and avoiding a brain drain of British talent to the USA or Europe. Maintaining a vibrant and innovative FinTech sector will not be possible without this workforce.1

Investment

When we consider the growth path for companies in our partner ecosystem, we believe that the UK provides good opportunities for seed funding but observe that it can get crowded out by funding opportunities available in other jurisdictions at later stages, particularly Series A & B. Attracting foreign investment can be healthy for a company because it can be seen as diversification of funding and potentially a pathway to a new market. If the UK wishes to retain companies as they grow, we believe that it will need to ensure that a vibrant domestic capital market continues to develop.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Celebrating women in the world of fintech – By Marie Graham

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Women in fintechWhile we have all faced a new set of challenges over the past twelve months, research tells us that women have felt the challenges of the last year most acutely. In recognition of International Women’s Day, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the women in business who have broken barriers during a year, which for several reasons, has been anything but ordinary.

This year has already seen a couple of ‘firsts’ when it comes to gender parity, at least at the leadership level. Jane Fraser became CEO of Citi, the first woman to hold the position at a top 10 US lender; Thasunda Brown Duckett will become CEO of TIAA, making her the second black woman to currently hold the chief executive role at a Fortune 500 firm.

Looking to our own client base here at Chatsworth, we have also seen females assume more leadership positions. Niv Subramanian was appointed Previse’s Chief Commercial Officer in early 2021, joining the ranks of women leading the way in fintech such as Catherine Minter, R3’s Chief Revenue Officer; Adeline Ee McNary, Head of Marketing at Contour; and Mosaic Smart Data’s Data Science and Research Lead, Dr. Diane Castelino.

We are seeing more women given the platform they deserve across the media, too. Dedicated journalists are making a conscious effort to commission and publish more articles written by senior females. Pursuing a gender-balanced narrative across the press is equally as important as the change taking place at the leadership level.

There are also more women running the publications which shape and report on global events. Just this week, Joy Macknight was appointed editor of The Banker. Joy joins Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times; and Financial News editor, Shruti Tripathi, as leaders of prominent publications. Key fintech publications, Finextra, The Fintech Times and Ledger Insights are also run by women.

Closer to home, I am fortunate to be a member of Chatsworth’s 60% female workforce and I am confident our thriving team is due to the strong female presence we have at the senior level. Chatsworth’s Director, Liz Fleming, has built a culture where training and development are easily accessible for all team members and Senior Account Manager Catherine Day ensures junior colleagues are valued members of the teams they work with and that no question ever goes unanswered. I have found Chatsworth to be a place where women are both heard and championed, with dynamic and inspiring colleagues, mentors, and managers.

For many, the pandemic has worsened workplace equality, as women have picked up invisible tasks at home – 64% of mothers took responsibility for home-schooling compared to 49% of fathers during the first lockdown and women with children are more likely to have stopped working (UCL, 2020). Last year the UN published a report saying that 90% of men and women hold some sort of bias against women. Clearly, the road to equality is far from over. To me, this makes International Women’s Day more important than ever.

A recent article by FT business columnist, Pilita Clark ‘Women aren’t all superstar leaders in a crisis. So what?’ really hit home. I completely agree with Clark: we must continue to pursue gender equality both in the workforce and in senior leadership until all women have “the freedom to make an utter hash of things every now and then, a right that men have cheerfully taken for granted for centuries.”

While the challenges faced by women in business across all industries still pose barriers, I am reassured by what I’ve seen over the last year. Albeit slowly, the number of women in leadership positions in the fintech sector is growing. For this, on International Women’s Day, I will celebrate.

Written by Marie Graham, Senior Account Executive at Chatsworth Communications.

For more information about our culture and job vacancies, check out our careers page. 

Fintech review sets out next steps for Britain’s fintech future

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Ron Kalifa UK Fintech Review

Today’s publication of the UK Fintech review by former CEO of Worldpay, Ron Kalifa, has set out the key recommendations for the British government to stabilise and grow the UK’s position as a fintech hub.

The treasury-backed review chimes with Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s ambition of making the UK one of the most dynamic and open places to start, operate and grow a fintech and financial services company.

At Chatsworth, we have been helping fintech brands build their reputation for over 15 years and have seen the market continue to flourish during that time. The Kalifa review marks the latest intent for the UK and London to continue its hold at the centre of the fintech world and grow into the leading location to do business in this sector.

The recommendations from the review include the development and adoption of common data standards to encourage institutions to modernise and adopt the end goal of open financing. Investment was also a central focus of the review, with the creation of a £1bn fintech growth fund to help homegrown firms scale and expand, as well as encouraging job creation; retaining and attracting foreign workers through visa routes and the retraining of homegrown talent.

Finally, Kalifa emphasised a stronger focus on national connectivity with the creation of multiple fintech hubs throughout the UK. The reach of this review will put the minds of many at ease by both emphasising investment, encouraging job creation and ensuring smooth visa processes. This will address much of the uncertainty that has befallen UK businesses, contending with both Brexit and the fallout from the pandemic.

Nick Murray-Leslie, CEO and Founder of Chatsworth, said: “Ron Kalifa’s UK Fintech Review hits the mark for fintechs up and down the UK. Even during the pandemic, the UK and London attracted more technology investment than anywhere else in Europe last year. Now is the time to consolidate and supercharge this industry. By applying the recommendations from this review, it has the potential to be the jewel in the UK’s crown for decades to come. Existing hubs in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Belfast, Manchester and beyond all stand to benefit, but so too will the banks, businesses, institutions and corporations looking to apply cutting-edge technology within their operations.”

Charley Cooper, Chief Communications Officer, R3: “Britain’s businesses have had to grapple with the double plight of Brexit and the pandemic and faced unprecedented turbulence because of this. The path to recovery will undoubtedly be led by new technologies that over the past year have proved not just complementary to business operations, but critical. The government clearly recognises the role Britain’s fintech community can play in this, and we are pleased to see the Kalifa review setting out tangible measures to help UK fintechs to start and scale.

“Attracting top talent remains a crucial enabler for the UK to retain its fintech crown. R3 recognised the importance of this even when Brexit uncertainty was at its peak two years ago, and doubled the size of its London office to accommodate a rapidly growing engineering team. We hope to see the Kalifa review act as a prompt for a closer look at the regulatory landscape which sets the ground for fertile fintech growth. If last year was the time to take stock and look at the role new technologies can play across finance, this year is the time to spring into action and put them in place”.

Laurent Descout, CEO and Founder of Neo commented: “Following Brexit, a lot has been speculated about London losing its place as the centre of the fintech world. As a fintech based in Barcelona but with also a presence in London and Cambridge, we don’t anticipate this being the case. The balance between innovative challenger companies and traditional financial institutions will continue to be the driving force behind London being a fintech hub of the world. The new visa route to the UK indicates that Britain is still looking to attract some of the best talent both within and outside its borders and ensures that it remains open for business. To date, there is nowhere in Europe that compares to the investment, competitiveness and innovation present in London, and this review signals an intent for that to remain.”

Paul Christensen, CEO and co-founder of Previse in response to Kalifa’s advocation for more open banking commented: “The data-sharing revolution can be applied to the painful and chronic problem of slow payments. B2B payments are crying out for the benefits open data can bring. By unlocking their ERP data in a secure way, large corporates can enable fintechs to make a smart calculation of payment probability, unlocking bank capital that can be used to pay suppliers, instantly. Bringing banks, corporates and fintechs together through the smart use of data, is an easy way to enable financial inclusion that can help Britain’s 6 million SMEs get back on their feet.”

Christoph Gugelmann, Founder and CEO of Tradeteq comments: “The recent review highlights a need for financial institutions and fintechs to find more effective ways of collaborating to remain a hub for the industry. Regardless of the impact of Brexit, the need for certain financial processes will remain a staple of the UK. UK export finance is one such example and would benefit greatly from fintech involvement. Banks have to increase their lending capacity through secondary trade finance distribution. Automation is therefore required to reduce the transactional friction costs, while AI-based credit scoring processes can create the required risk transparency. Corporates will gain better access to cheap liquidity while banks are able to work their balance sheets harder and as such boost their profitability. Fintechs further help institutional investors to diversify their portfolios in a time where it has become more challenging to identify yield in liquid markets. In short, breaking down the boundaries in sectors such as UK export finance is a key method for the nation to maintain its footing as a leader in financial services and fintech innovation.”

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Building FX reputations for over 20 years

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Cobalt Fintech PR - Andy Coyne

Chatsworth has been at the centre of foreign exchange – the world’s largest and most liquid market – for over 20 years, positioning our clients as thought leaders, with skill and insight to move the compass needle their way. Drop us an email at contact@chatsworthcommunications.com to set up a free consultation.

Our seed clients were CLS, the market’s core settlement system and EBS, the largest spot FX trading platform and we’ve grown a particular specialism in this asset class and the technology which drives it.

We’ve been there as FX evolved to e-trading, through the introduction of prime brokerage, API trading, and the consolidation of the industry, working with some of the key institutional and infrastructure players, and supporting the introduction and adoption of some amazing, transformative technology.

Brands like Cobalt, Currenex, FXCM, Mosaic Smart Data, ParFX, Pragma, SuperDerivatives and SWIFT,have all hired Chatsworth to tell their FX story, grow market share and move the compass needle their way.

We worked on the launch of the FX code of conduct with industry leaders Marshall Bailey and David Puth and for the industry’s trade body, the ACI, at a time when the media spotlight fell on FX along with increasing calls for regulation.

We launched FX-as-a-Service provider, MillTechFX, and have since built their profile in the industry in the past year. By providing smart commentary and data against the backdrop of increased volatility in the FX market, we have secured coverage in tier one media such as the the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and key trade publications including the Full FX and Euromoney.

Today, Chatsworth is honoured to count FX industry veterans Jack Jeffery, David Rutter, Steve Caplen and Udi Sela on our advisory board.

We understand this market from top to bottom and have connections with all key FX publications and relationships with a wide network of influencers.

FX reputation

If you’re all about FX, let’s talk.  Drop us an email at contact@chatsworthcommunications.com to set up a free consultation.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Smart social media to stay connected and grow your business in lockdown

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96% of fintech and financial services firms use LinkedIn as their key lead generation tool.

80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, this figure rises to a staggering 92% for financial services.

61 million senior-level influencers and 40 million decision makers position LinkedIn as the perfect tool for the fintech sector.

Chatsworth’s actively managed LinkedIn delivers 30% campaign performance improvement.

Attracting investment, lead generation, launching your brand, or building a reputation? LinkedIn is now the primary direct marketing channel for wholesale financial services and fintech.

With the world still working from home, it’s the perfect professional channel to stay connected, grow your ecosystem and influence your audience. But without smart content, targeting, and active management, you could be wasting time, money, and opportunity.

Chatsworth’s active LinkedIn campaign management makes your content and spend work harder, faster and smarter. We’ve helped brands lift off their businesses for 15 years – launching, growing, attracting investment, and generating leads.

Need your social media to lift off in 2021?

Contact Chatsworth for a professional audit and recommendations.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Pragma wins ‘Best Front-Office’ at American Financial Technology Awards

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Pragma was recently named ‘Best Front-Office Initiative’ provider at the AFTA’s – for the second year in a row.

Read more

MonetaGo and GUUD form alliance to strengthen trade finance across Asia

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MonetaGo APAC 2

It has been a busy few months for Chatsworth client MonetaGo, the fintech pioneering an end to fraud in financial workflows using blockchain technology.

In the past six months, MonetaGo has been growing extensively through Asia Pacific, rolling out its Secure Financing solution to businesses across the region and empowering them to identify instances of trade fraud in real time.

Today, the firm announced an alliance with Singapore-based digital trade platform GUUD, an offshoot of VCargo Cloud. The move is the latest in a series of steps MonetaGo has taken to roll out its Secure Financing solution across Asia and will directly respond to the highly documented issue of fraud in trade finance across Singapore. The partnership has received the official support of Japanese incumbent bank SMBC. You can read more about the announcement here.

To support its aggressive growth across APAC, MonetaGo has hired trade finance veteran Tat Yeen Yap as Head of Product in the region. Tat Yeen brings over 30 years’ of experience in trade finance and has been credited with helping coin the industry definition of trade finance. Tat Yeen sits in MonetaGo’s Singapore office, which was established earlier this year to support growth in the region.

MonetaGo is one of the only companies of its kind to have supported live, production-level transactions using its solutions, which harness R3’s best-in-class Corda platform, along with its own proprietary technology. In September, the fintech announced it had surpassed 1 million live transactions on its Secure Financing platform across India, worth billions of dollars in underlying assets. This was complemented by five new Indian alternative finance lenders onboarding to the Secure Financing platform in the same month.

The events of the past year have exposed shortcomings in many APAC countries’ financial workflows. India’s SME community has suffered particularly acutely as their lines of credit from big banks have depleted. Singapore’s trade finance industry has seen accusations of fraud, resulting in the country’s financial regulator calling for an end to paper-based trade transactions. At the same time, many countries across Asia are seen as trailblazers in their adoption of disruptive technologies and quest for digital transformation. MonetaGo aims to empower businesses in the region to meet this mission and overcome the barriers that stand in their way. By pioneering an end to the paper-based processes which birth many of these barriers, MonetaGo is empowering businesses across the globe to do business, better.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

TraditionDATA services now available on AWS Data Exchange

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Our client, TraditionDATA announced the availability of various Interest Rate Swap and FX data products on AWS Data Exchange, a service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that makes it easy for customers to find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud. 

TraditionDATA AWS Data Exchange

Tradition was a Launch Partner for AWS Data Exchange when it was first announced in November 2019. Initially focusing on Tradition’s Asia Pacific IRS and FX data, Tradition has expanded their use of AWS to offer more global high-quality data with a focus on the introduction of new benchmarks to replace LIBOR. Tradition’s Global Alternate Risk Free Rate (RFR) package incorporating SONIA, ESTR, SOFR and AMERIBOR data is now available directly on the cloud via AWS Data Exchange.

“By distributing our data through a cloud-native managed service, subscribers of all types from all corners of the globe can quickly discover and leverage the most relevant financial market data to power their applications and inform decisions,” said Scott Fitzpatrick, Head of TraditionDATA. “As our customers work through market changes, such as the transition away from LIBOR, they need access to the most relevant and timely data that is easy to consume and use. AWS Data Exchange was a natural channel for our data business and we look forward to building on this relationship in the coming years.”

Tradition provides access to a wide range of over-the-counter prices in many of the world’s fastest-moving markets. Given the current global economic climate and regulatory direction, Tradition’s Global Interest Rate data is particularly powerful and timely, as it helps financial institutions in their assessment of impact and plans as they transition away from Libor to new Reference Rates in 2021.

AWS customers can access Tradition content directly with AWS Data Exchange. 

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

Contour partners with CargoX to transform bills of lading

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CargoX

Our client Contour, recently announced its partnership with CargoX, a blockchain platform for transferring documents and data including a certified electronic bill of lading solution. Following Contour’s transition to full production, the business continues to grow its network with partnerships to enhance its offering.

The partnership provides Contour customers another option for electronic bills of lading to be used in synchronisation with their Contour trade finance transaction. This will not only reduce the overreliance on paper documents that is common in the industry but also streamline trade processes, reducing time and improving communication.

Contour’s non-partisan network, powered by R3’s Corda blockchain technology, allows all banks, financial institutions, and corporates to improve access, communication, and transparency when conducting trade finance agreements.

The CargoX blockchain-powered document transfer platform allows users to easily manage digital original documents, such as electronic bills of lading, and provides the tools for secure and instant transfers of those documents. The platform also provides transparency by including auditable histories of document ownership and changes.

Bills of lading have been an effective tool for trade finance due to their negotiability, allowing banks to finance goods still at sea without having to take control of an entire vessel. Digitally transforming these documents requires complicated digital registries with the support of shipping lines, banks, and corporations. Through achieving this process, bills of lading will become electronic and will no longer require ‘wet ink’ to be verified.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Cobalt adds digital assets to platform as FX market looks set for a 24/7 future

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Cobalt adds digital assets

Over the last few years, the foreign-exchange (FX) post-trade infrastructure provider Cobalt has designed and built a secure 24/7 middle office platform, which it is delivering for some of the industry’s largest participants.

One of the sizeable changes in the market over the past few years is the rise of digital assets and how they are making their way into the forefront of currency trading. This trend has been accelerated by the decision of the OCC (US Banking Regulator) to allow US banks to hold digital assets. Major FX institutions are now looking to trade digital assets, yet enterprise standard post-trade infrastructure in this market is virtually non-existent.

Cobalt adds digital assets to platform

For these participants to enter this market at scale it is critical to ensure the correct management of credit and data, to which end Cobalt is now bringing its innovative post-trade and credit FX solutions to the digital asset market.

Cobalt is already connecting to the leading digital exchanges on behalf of clients and offering full credit and ledger services for all currencies and digital assets. Cobalt clients are able to see their full portfolio of positions and risk across both fiat currencies and digital assets, available to clients across all segments. Cobalt’s middle office platform is used by the FX markets leading Prime Brokers, Liquidity Providers, Retail Brokers and Exchanges

With a full microservice architecture and 24/7 operations, Cobalt’s solution is fully compliant with the FX Global Code and Tier 1 financial participants’ information security and regulatory requirements.

“The rise of digital assets has gone from strength to strength in the past years and has moved from being an asset traded on the periphery, to being at the forefront of FX participant plans.” –  Adrian Patten, Co-Founder and Chairman of Cobalt.

“Participants today can no longer ignore the position of digital assets in the market and those who do are in danger of missing out on sizeable trading opportunities due to the 24/7 nature of the market. Major exchanges have started to translate this to the FX market, with some offering trading over the weekends. 24/7 operability has always been a priority to Cobalt. As digital assets continue their rise and influence over the FX market, participants are going to need to adapt to new ways of doing business.”

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

So you want to make a podcast? Here’s what you need to know

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Set up Podcast

Podcasts are a fantastic way to create owned content that is unique, accessible, and showcases the people behind the business. Many of the benefits of using a podcast can be seen in the consumer world, with Serial, S-Town and This American Life drawing in millions of listeners. Podcasts are also not a huge production effort – some of the most successful ones are simply a few people sitting down and speaking for half an hour. However, making sure your podcast showcases a professional edge that positions your messaging correctly is not always easy. As such, we’ve outlined some key considerations to think about when making your own show.

Podcasting in the time of Covid

First, it’s important to address the elephant in the room. Covid has made the traditional methods of podcasting harder if not entirely impossible. It’s less likely you will be able to sit in a room with people to record and may have to rely upon video chats such as Zoom to record an episode.

While the built-in record feature with these applications does make life easier, it also creates certain problems. Internet stability is often a major drawback to recording, with audio dropping and key points being missed out by a poor connection. Background noise, static and poor microphones can also make an otherwise engaging episode fall flat.

But all is not lost. There are a few things to consider when recording online. Firstly, changing your settings to recording ‘individual audio’ is an absolute must (a handy example can be found on the Zoom site here). Doing this will help limit any issues caused by speaking remotely and make editing a breeze. If you wanted to take this a step further, make sure everyone hits record on the chat and shares their own audio file afterwards – this will keep the quality is crisp and removes the potential for audio to drop out if the internet connection is poor.

Finding your format

With technical issues aside, it’s now a case of making sure you have a good idea for a show. With the topics under discussion, it’s very easy to end up with a lengthy episode that goes into extreme detail. Instead, think about keeping the recordings shorter and more focused, with 30 to 40 minutes being an ideal length to aim for. This will not only make sure your listeners remain engaged with more digestible content but also allow them to download the show onto their phone without taking up too much space. Don’t worry if you have more to say on the subject – you can always revisit it in a later episode or split the show into a two-parter.

Length of episode aside, another important factor is balancing structure with the freeform conversation. An engaging aspect of all podcast is the organic, natural way of speaking, but this needs to be balanced with a clear introduction and sign off to each show. Having a designated host will also ensure the conversation keeps on going at a reasonable pace and maintain a structure around the open dialogue of the show.

Getting it in post

The edit is perhaps the most important part of the podcast. This will remove any issues with the audio, sync up the conversation and put in transition music and the general dressing that makes the podcast feel professional. While you can simply publish the audio from the show, the added steps through good editing will bring your podcast to the next level.

In the same way, you should also consider how people will listen to the show. While putting the audio file on your company website is always an option, it can limit accessibility for users – as they will have to download the file and open it in an audio app on their phone or computer. Instead, a hosting platform will create a dedicated page for your podcast, allowing you to link the show with your website and social channels, as well as distribute it to key channels such as Spotify, Castbox and Apple Podcasts.

Creating a podcast is a different and exciting way to engage with your audience, and while there are many other considerations to take into account (we haven’t even begun to speak about which microphone to use), these key factors will help elevate the planning and production of your show. If you’re interested in learning more or want to see what other things you should be thinking about when making your show, get in touch – we’d love to help.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Fintech innovation must not leave treasury management behind

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Treasury management

The fintech revolution has replaced outdated technologies and streamlined antiquated practices across a wider range of industries. However, this wave of innovation seems to have bypassed corporate treasury departments, which have struggled to keep up with the latest developments. Fortunately, that is now changing, writes Laurent Descout.

Fintech innovation has transformed financial services at a rapid pace, enhancing customer experiences and accessibility and making services faster and more streamlined. As a result, costs have fallen, barriers to entry have been reduced and new entrants have emerged to take on the incumbents.

Yet, amidst the rise of challenger banks and alternative payments providers, relatively few innovations have found their way into the corporate treasury space.

Treasury management has been left behind by fintech

In many regards, treasury management remains hindered by increasingly outdated and fragmented processes. This becomes all the more apparent as other areas of finance move ahead in terms of efficiency, customer satisfaction and cost-saving benefits resulting from fintech adoption.

A 2019 Citibank survey echoes this. There’s a clear appetite amongst treasurers to engage with the latest innovations in technology to remedy historical shortfalls. But the technology to-date either hasn’t been sufficiently robust, easy-to-use, cost-effective or addressed the key concerns of treasurers. Of the 400 treasurers surveyed, 54% called for continuous improvement in operational treasury efficiency, with cost and integration of technologies seen as the biggest hurdles to overcome.

Take international payments and bank accounts, for example. In an increasingly globalised world, very few companies operate using a single currency. However, making international payments remains a costly and cumbersome process, and multi-currency accounts remain inaccessible, require manual input to operate and take weeks to open.

This is hard to justify when supply chains and customers span multiple nations, currencies and continents – treasurers need an equally global bank account that is fit for purpose.

To address these issues, treasurers have sought to utilise different platforms and integrated technology systems to ramp up efficiency and automation, while reducing costs. But this has only created layers upon layers of complex technology systems, processes and plugins.

This approach is not sustainable – it increases maintenance costs and hinders operational stability in the long-term. If one cog in the machine breaks down, the knock-on effects could be disastrous.

Smarter corporate treasury management 

Buying your way out of a problem that has hampered corporate treasurers for decades is not the answer – it’s not the number of plugins, add-ons and systems that will bring corporate treasury into the twenty-first century, but the functionality, interoperability, security and ease of use of a treasury management system. This has become even more critical as treasurers become accustomed to working remotely.

Put simply, enabling treasurers to perform all of their key functions without having to switch between different platforms and technology providers is crucial. The days of plugin tangles and convoluted processes are over.

In order to fully address the pain points faced by treasurers today, modern systems and platforms must address the lack of availability and high costs associated with multi-currency accounts, payment processing and FX conversion fees.

There is a huge opportunity to streamline existing processes and access all of the key services treasurers need – multi-currency IBANs, automated payments and collections, FX hedging and risk management and enhanced security – from one comprehensive dashboard. With the technology and knowledge available today, such services recognise the digital and global requirements of a modern, global corporate treasury division.

Another key area of potential is FX execution and hedging, which has been a widely mismanaged feature of SME’s businesses for years. The majority of hedging programmes are limited to providing an analytical outlook, ranging from three to six months, due to their lack of visibility and connectivity. This restricts how easily treasurers can manage and oversee their risk strategies. Corporate treasury should not be left behind in this respect, especially when the technology for this exists, and has been tried, tested and proven to work.

Maximising data and analytics

However, centralising treasury functions is just the tip of the iceberg. Fintech adoption must do more than automate the odd process or enable a more efficient method of cash management. Creating a one-stop-shop for treasurers also opens the door for leveraging analytics more effectively with enhanced visibility.

Data is increasingly becoming the lifeblood of financial services, and the analytics derived from this data have transformed numerous elements of this market. This presents a unique opportunity for corporate treasury divisions. to improve forecasting, detect patterns and anomalies, and improve financial decision making, risk management and cash flow monitoring.

For example, the increased sophistication of analytics within the trading industry enables users to inform and enhance their payment, hedging and risk management strategies, which in turn, increases profits and attracts more satisfied customers.

An all-in-one solution has the potential to transform treasury management. It overcomes the hassle of multi-layered technology systems and plugins while delivering a more streamlined experience – making it a system fit for purpose and suited to today’s working environment.

Laurent Descout is CEO and Co-Founder of Neo.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story.

Investment in technology – a strategic priority for UK’s financial institutions 

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A new survey from Lloyds Bank reveals that Britain’s financial institutions are planning for a year of investment in new technology.

Despite the uncertainty thrown up by the pandemic, 88% of senior leaders within financial institutions say tech investment is a top strategic priority for the next 12 months. Two-thirds of leaders interviewed plan to increase investment in technology and a third will focus on improving their fintech offering, either through acquisitions or partnerships, according to Lloyds.

The survey is based on views from major banks, asset and wealth management firms, insurers, and intermediaries.

The sentiment from the financial institutions interviewed mirrors what we have seen at Chatsworth across our broad and diverse fintech client base.

Fintech has emerged as one of the few sectors that have actually thrived amid the pandemic, as the legacy systems that were satisfactory during times of normality were exposed as unacceptable during a crisis. The use of technology in finance has subsequently soared.

Chatsworth clients Contour, Limeglass and Previse are among the roster of fintechs that have experienced increased interest in and applicability of their solutions since COVID-19. They all share the common theme of leveraging technology to help businesses do what they do, better: a simple mission but one which has become the holy grail of survival in the past seven months.

The Lloyds survey comes ahead of next week’s annual Sibos event: the world’s largest payments-focused conference, bringing together leaders across the world to discuss the role technology can play in transforming the sector.

The conference always provides important food for thought on the future of payments and financial services more broadly, but the events of the past year will serve as an all too real reminder of why technology is the answer.

The fact that Sibos itself will be held virtually is perhaps a testament to this.

It’s been a challenging year for businesses of all sizes across the board. Some which have had a seemingly indomitable proposition and presence have found themselves vulnerable.

We are glad to see the Lloyds survey point to the importance of technology in future-proofing businesses for not just the next 12 months, but indefinitely.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

Late payments almost doubled over lockdown

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Late Payments

Chatsworth client, Previse, spoke to the Financial Times about the urgent need to use technology to get SMEs paid on time, sharing its proprietary data, revealing late payments almost doubled over lockdown. 

The FT’s report, out this week, is an essential read and deep dive on the challenges small businesses face to get paid fairly and on time. Previse’s data reveals clearly how payment terms and practices are one of the first areas of supply chains to degenerate in the face of uncertainty over cash flow. Inevitably, this impacts small businesses the most. 

The events of the pandemic have put untold strain on supply chains all over the world. Previse’s InsantPay offering – which gets all suppliers paid immediately – has emerged as a sustainable solution to cash flow for businesses. 

Previse’s CEO and co-founder, Paul Christensen, outlined the profound impact day-1 payments could have on helping small businesses:

 “We need every small business in the UK to have the option of day-one payment if we are going to avoid a catastrophic number of bankruptcies and the inevitable rise in unemployment that follows.” 

Thanks to the Financial Times for giving this topic the attention it deserves. Click here to read the full report on the future of payments.

It rounds off a busy few months for Previse which was named a CBILs accredited lender and, more recently, received a £2.5M grant from the BCR. 

The Spectator magazine has also moved Previse into the final round of its Economic Innovator of the year award. And we have a third-year-running listing in the influential Fintech Top 50. A great firm, doing great things. 

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

 

Level up: investment in the gaming industry

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Investment in the gaming industry

A few years ago, if you spoke to someone about the video game industry, they would immediately imagine spotty teens arguing over the internet, dorky kids who can’t socialise, and – if you go further back – four player co-op with Goldeneye64.

But things have changed – a lot. The kids have grown up, got jobs – sometimes in the industry – and the world ]has evolved. During lockdown, investment in the gaming industry boomed, as people ordered a PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch or Xbox One to fill the time spent in isolation. Gone are the days where the gaming industry is just for consumers – it’s now big business.

Press F to pay

The gaming industry is worth big bucks now – most notably in the electronic sports (esports) sector. Recent news that David Beckham’s Esports team – Guild Esports – is planning to IPO on the London Stock Exchange to fund its expansion with a goal of £20m and a valuation of £50m, is just one example of how much money this sector is worth.

Established companies are booming, with Razer – the PC gaming peripheral provider – reporting a 25.3% YoY growth. The diversity, and the healthy number of businesses in the market, makes the opportunities for profit in the gaming sector extremely lucrative.

A city of gamers

The changing times have also felt its impact in The City. The evolution of electronic trading and algos has been spearheaded by individuals passionate about coding, design, and technology – something that draws a lot from the gaming industry. The generation that now makes up The City has grown up with an awareness of technology, and an understanding of the benefits that it brings.

Fintech’s role

The gaming industry has matured a lot, with more ways for the B2B market to engage with this heavily consumer-based industry. Clients of ours such as FXCM, have seen this increased engagement with gaming, and provide options for their customers to invest in Esports- further highlighting the interest in the sector.

Technology like blockchain also has the potential to dramatically affect the market. As more gaming requires online services, the focus on privacy and ownership of data has become increasingly apparent. Many are now looking to the decentralised nature of blockchain to help manage the fairness of the game, allow gamers to have full ownership of their in-game assets, and protect servers from malfunction or technical issues.

Like with many consumer industries, the step to a corporate role is gradual and often slow. However, gaming is already showing huge potential for financial institutions and investors to get involved in this booming market – taking advantage of the success in the sector. It’s something we’re very conscious about as it ensures we’re aware of the changing marketplace and the way it can affect our clients.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

 

Previse named a finalist for Economic Innovator of the Year

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Economic innovator of the year

Chatsworth client Previse has been named a finalist in the Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year awards.

This year saw the Spectator receive more entries than ever, making Previse’s shortlisting a feat in itself.

The Economic Innovator of the Year is awarded to the company that the judging panel feel has disrupted their marketplace and will help rebuild the economy in 2020.

Previse’s business proposition could be considered disruptive in normal market conditions, but has arguably become a necessity since the pandemic. Previse uses technology to get all suppliers paid on day one.

As businesses have struggled to stay afloat in the past six months, many have lengthened payment terms to hold onto cash reserves. Previse’s InstantPay solution benefits both buyers and suppliers and is an antidote to broken supply chains.

Testament to the strength of its solution is the momentum Previse has gained since the onset of the pandemic. The fintech received CBILs accreditation, as well as a £2.5 million grant from the BCR to accelerate growth. This is in addition to a partnership with the FSB.

Previse saw off stiff competition to be shortlisted for the prestigious Spectator award and is the only player in its space to be named a finalist.

Previse CEO Paul Christensen, rounds off perfectly: “What we are building here goes beyond just a great product: we’re creating a movement that ensures that every SME has the option of instant payment whenever they issue an invoice.”

Click here to read more about Previse’s shortlisting and the awards.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

Defining the new normal: fintech’s part to play

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fintech's part to play

If necessity is the mother of invention, then it is fair to say that disruption is the mother of reinvention.

Our clients all share a common faith that in using technology to enhance existing business processes, they can help businesses do what they do, better. A simple philosophy, but one which has been much harder to achieve in practice, due to well-established legacy systems. The past six months have highlighted the clear need for businesses to operate more efficiently, whether that is internally, or in how they deliver their product or service to the outside world.

The broader theme of digital transformation has long been heralded as the answer to higher growth, new revenue streams, and a better bottom line. But the case for adopting technology and digital transformation is now inarguable. Fintech just so happens to be the sector that can boast the most investment, research and experimentation with how technology can achieve this.

Although there is no knowing how the rest of the year, or even the next, will unfold when it comes to business as usual and what that looks like, there is a unique opportunity to reshape the status quo and look to fintech as the future. This will mean continuing government support for the sector, cross-company collaboration from both incumbents and challengers to define new regulatory frameworks and a greater mouthpiece given to the fintech companies that have the most experience and knowledge to share.

So, as we continue to define the ‘new normal’ and industries work to consider what that means for them, one thing is for sure: technology is the answer, and it isn’t going away anytime soon.

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

Trade Out to Help Out: Government help for SMEs

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Our client, Tradeteq, was recently featured in an exclusive article in Global Banking and Trade Finance Review. In the piece, Tradeteq CEO Christoph Gugelmann, explores a more surgical approach to helping SMEs stay afloat during the current pandemic.

Recent months have seen a variety of different measures to help small businesses, ranging from loans, the furlough scheme, to the increasingly popular ‘Eat Out To Help Out’ programme. However, these initiatives only address the problem at the surface level. Instead of giving cash to individual businesses, looking to help entire supply chains can allow governments to take a more surgical approach with a lasting impact.

Increasing government help for SMEs

SMEs represent 90% of the world’s businesses, and more than 50% of employment worldwide, meaning their stagnation would be felt in every region and across every industry. It’s here that governments can lend a hand.

Governments help for SMEs should encourage banks to open up this market and parcel trade finance loans into assets smaller investors can buy. This way, entire supply chain get access to the funds they require. The distribution of trade finance assets to alternative investors is one of the best ways to help these businesses.

Trade out to help out

This approach is similar to the Eat Out to Help Out scheme as the government would be encouraging increased investment into these smaller businesses – only from a more macro level. However, instead of looking to support businesses by eating, we’re helping businesses by trading. Through using a method that addresses an entire supply chain, the positive impact of this investment will be felt for far longer and help many more businesses.

To find read the full article and find out more about how Tradeteq are enabling trade finance distribution, click here: https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/trade-out-to-help-out-how-governments-should-be-supporting-sme-supply-chains/ 

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

Contour successfully executes Bangladesh’s first blockchain transaction

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Our client Contour recently worked with Standard Chartered Bank to successfully execute Bangladesh’s first blockchain transaction by issuing a Letter of Credit (LC) for Viyellatex Ltd.

Contour provides a distributed trade network enabling an enhanced degree of collaboration across the main elements of Trade with all participants leveraging the network to create and renew Trade data in real-time.  Built on R3’s Corda blockchain, Contour improves data transparency, removes administration costs and reduces friction in global trade: all of this leading to an overall increase in efficiency and reduction in costs for all parties.

Bangladesh’s first blockchain transaction

For this transaction, Viyellatex Ltd, one of the country’s leading ready-made garments exporters, imported textile items from Viyellatex Spinning.  Standard Chartered Bank acted as the Issuing Bank for the Applicant, as well as the Advising Bank for the Beneficiary of the LC. The entire transaction was paperless and completed digitally through Contour’s network.

Standard Chartered benefitted from Contour’s network which simplifies the LC process, delivering shorter settlement times, instant discrepancy resolution and simplified sanctions screening. This is the latest in a number of transactions on the Contour network, showcasing the company’s growing presence as a leader in trade finance digitisation.

Carl Wegner, CEO of Contour said:

“Global trade lacks a solution that drives out inefficiencies, improves data transparency and enables interoperability between all trade participants. The long-established elements of trade finance don’t have sufficient integration, ultimately causing friction and unnecessary administration. These inevitably cause significant barriers for global trade growth, adding complexity, increasing cost and delaying the process for both banks and corporates. The Contour network can overcome these issues, providing a consistent and reliable infrastructure for global trade to flourish especially in countries like Bangladesh that counts on LCs for a significant part of their trade volumes. The recent transaction with Viyellatex Ltd serves to prove that a solution is out there and readily available for adoption. It’s also hugely positive to have Standard Chartered introducing this revolutionary technology for trade in Bangladesh and we’re proud to be a part of the first transaction in the country.”

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story

MonetaGo CEO Jesse Chenard at BG2C FIN / SUM Tokyo 2020

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Jesse Chenard - Fintech PR

 

Chatsworth client and MonetaGo chief executive, Jesse Chenard, was a guest panellist at this year’s Blockchain Global Governance Conference, hosted by Nikkei and Japan’s Financial Services Agency.

Jesse joined eminent speakers across the financial services industry for the two-day event, to explore blockchain’s growth and applicability in Japan and beyond.

This year’s conference – held in Tokyo – sought to find solutions to issues confronting new applications for the technology.

The event included a wide range of international participants, including blockchain engineers, researchers, business operators, consumers and regulatory officials.

Jesse Chenard

Jesse’s panel, “Exploring Blockchain’s potentiality through Use Case”, was an important and dynamic discussion looking at the real-life examples of blockchain’s application, in financial services and beyond.

Blockchain technology is no longer limited to the world of finance; it has expanded to other fields such as international trade, supply chains and logistics. This conference showcased examples of these newer applications and examined ongoing efforts to use the technology – and the issues that have arisen in the process – by examining existing and potential business models.

MonetaGo uses blockchain technology to eliminate paper-based processes, so cutting inefficiencies and fighting fraud, across trade finance, invoice financing, and digital workflows. The fintech has a large and growing presence in Asia.

For the panel, Jesse was joined by Leon Scott, MD, Regional head of Asia-Pacific, TradeIX; Orapong Thien-Ngern, CEO, Digital Ventures; and Yoshiharu Akahane, Senior Manager, Business Strategy Section, Financial Segment, NTT Data.

Jesse brought to life the clear need for technology to improve outdated processes across digital workflows, drawing on his long experience in financial services technology to highlight blockchain’s potential to transform the industry.

Click here to watch Jesse’s panel and keep up with more from the conference: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJGSlOyuqZLiBWQajKb8UIA?pbjreload=101

Chatsworth was the first communications agency to focus on fintech. We’ve been building fintech reputations for 20 years, steering start-ups through launch, growth and onto corporate action, and protecting and enhancing established infrastructures.

Looking for intelligent, informed and connected fintech PR which delivers results and value?

Get in touch and let us help build your reputation and tell your story