One Year On: FinTech Wales CEO Reflects on Her Journey

Last month marks one year since our CEO, Sarah Kocianski, took the reins at FinTech Wales. In this reflection, she shares her perspective on the past 12 months—highlighting key milestones and challenges, and what’s next for FinTech Wales.

Being the CEO of FinTech Wales over the past year has been deeply rewarding. The role provides a front-row view of the fintech landscape in Wales, which has enabled me to fully understand both the challenges and opportunities the industry presents. It also allows me to engage directly with founders, leaders, and innovators across the ecosystem, which has been invaluable in gaining a full understanding of how FinTech Wales can best support fintechs and financial services companies here.

As my time in the role progresses, one thing that continues to stand out is the dedication and collaborative spirit of this community. Working alongside passionate people, all committed to positioning Wales as a global fintech leader, has been a defining aspect of the past 12 months.

There have been many other highlights, but, at this point, I want to call out a few notable milestones from the past year:

Inaugural Investment Conference
FinTech Wales hosted its first-ever Investment Conference at voco St David’s Hotel in November last year, which offered a vital forum for Welsh fintechs to connect with investors from all over the UK, share ideas, and initiate new collaborations. The event spotlighted the innovation taking place in Wales and reinforced the region’s growing reputation on the wider geographic fintech map.

Team growth
The core team at FinTech Wales has grown from four to six members since September 2024. This expansion has strengthened our operational capacity, and enabled us to enhance our focus on our Skills pillar — allowing us to better serve members and respond more dynamically to the needs of the ecosystem.

Partnership expansion
Partner members such as Go.Compare, Confused.com, Admiral, Principality Building Society, Monmouthshire Building Society, Hodge Bank, The Royal Mint, and Starling Bank play a vital role in enabling FinTech Wales’ community initiatives. With new partners including non-Wales HQ’d organisations Barclays and Aviva joining in 2025, the network has expanded significantly — reflecting growing confidence in our mission and the value we bring to the ecosystem. Attracting new partner members enables us to expand our initiatives and activity, as well as achieve broader reach, which in turn creates greater opportunities for collaboration.

Re-launch of the Foundry
The FinTech Wales Foundry, our flagship accelerator programme, was successfully re-launched in March this year. Since its inception, the Foundry has supported a number of startups, including Sero, Zing, Credit Canary, Final Rentals, Yacooba, Serene, ShipShape, Voltric and Everknock to name a few, on their journeys to raise investment and scale operations in Wales. Its impact on these organisations continues to ripple through the Welsh fintech community, enabling further innovation and reinforcing the fact that Wales is a hub for early-stage fintech growth.

This year’s programme will welcome a new cohort of startups that will benefit from expert-led workshops, one-to-one mentorship, and valuable networking opportunities — all under the guidance of our dedicated Programme Director, Lucy Bulley. Excitement is building ahead of May, when the next group of founders will begin their journeys with us.

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025 and beyond, the focus will remain on progressing our four key pillars of Skills, Funding, Ecosystem and Amplification and building on the achievements of FinTech Wales so far. Areas we will be exploring include supporting scaling members with their export strategies, nurturing the talent pipeline through stronger links between industry and academia, and strengthening the ecosystem by maintaining direct dialogue with global tech leaders like Google. The outlook for Welsh fintech is bright, and I have every reason to feel optimistic about what lies ahead.

Sarah Kocianski
Chief Executive Officer, FinTech Wales