The Fintech Five – 31st July 2021

  • Blog

  • News

Welcome to the FinTech Five, the part of the week where we take a closer look at the best articles, news, and features from over the past week from our FinTech Wales members.

1. Introducing Meet Cardiff – a free service to help you bring your next business event to Cardiff

Meet in Cardiff – Services Animation from Meet Cardiff on Vimeo.

Growing the Business Events sector in Cardiff is part of the city’s post pandemic economic recovery plan. The sector covers meetings and conferences, exhibitions, product launches, incentive trips and team building activities. You can play your part in helping the revival by organising your company or association events in one of Cardiff’s excellent range of stadia, business venues and hotels.

To help you the Meet in Cardiff team provides a free, impartial service for business event organisers including:

  • Free sourcing of venues, best rate accommodation and suppliers
  • Ideas for delegate experiences and itinerary/programme planning
  • Supporting Bids for association meetings
  • Event marketing support

Meet in Cardiff works with commercial partners in the city as well as Cardiff Council’s Invest in Cardiff to promote Cardiff as a good place to visit, meet and invest in. Contact the experienced Meet in Cardiff team to find out how they can help you plan your next business event in Cardiff. 

Or visit the planner’s toolkit on Meet in Cardiff’s website, here!

2. Tech Nation releases new report – ‘Open Finance: The future of insurance innovation?’

Next this week, Tech Nation’s insurtech board has released a new report titled ‘Open Finance: The future of insurance innovation?’

To be a key driver for the next wave of insurtech innovation and reach its full potential, Open Finance will require collective effort from a wide range of stakeholders across the financial industry, consumer groups and technology sphere.

That is the conclusion of Tech Nation’s latest report which aims to encourage greater awareness, wider engagement and communication within the insurance and insurtech sector while inspiring future insurtech innovation to drive positive consumer outcomes throughout the next decade.

Questions explored in the report include:

  • What do the origins and learnings of Open Banking mean for Open Finance?
  • Is the insurance sector already making the most of Open Banking?
  • What other collaborative data initiatives are already underway in insurance?
  • What might Open Finance solutions look like for insurance customers and SMEs?
  • What needs to happen to ensure the potential benefits of Open Finance are realised?
  • What challenges and risks could Open Finance pose?
  • How do we mitigate any associated disadvantages that might occur?
  • How do we keep consumers central to Open Finance outcomes?
  • How do we engage consumers in these new possibilities and encourage adoption?

Read the full report on Tech Nation’s website, here. 

3. Ship Shape celebrates its first Birthday 

Next this week, Ship Shape are celebrating their first birthday – and what a successful first year it’s been! 

Incorporating in July 2020 amidst a pandemic, founders Daniel Sawko, Alistair Baille and Miguel Neumann had an idea to democratise funding in the U.K. Along with pulling together a great team working remotely from day 1, Ship Shape has grown and naturally evolved as challenges and opportunities presented themselves.

In November 2020, Ship Shape was given grant funding by Innovate UK’s Sustainable Innovation Fund. This enabled them to develop and scale technology that is now the backbone of Ship Shape.

Some of Ship Shape’s achievements include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Growing a no-code solution to a fully stood up AI and NLP platform
  • Went live!
  • Ship Shape’s first trial customer: October 2020
  • Ship Shape’s first paid customer: December 2020
  • Shortlisted as a Fintech and Start-up of the Year 2021 
  • Ship Shape’s team finally began to meet in person for the first time
  • Joining the amazing Fintech Wales Foundry Accelerator 
  • Launching a new website
  • And soon to be opening a new office in Wales at the Cardiff Business Technology Centre!

You can read the full article on Ship Shape’s website, here, where you’ll find insightful reflections about the past year and what the year ahead holds for Ship Shape from CEO Daniel Sawko and COO Alistair Bailie. 

4. Acquis launches outsourced insurance management into Luxembourg and Poland

Next, Acquis recently announced its expansion into Luxembourg and Poland. The move takes Acquis’ geographic coverage to a total of 16 countries across the European Union, plus the UK and Norway.

James Rudolf, Chief Commercial Officer at Acquis, says: “Acquis partners with some of the largest leasing and asset finance companies across Europe, managing insurance on over €6bn of financed equipment and tracking more than 740,000 finance contracts. Our move into two new EU countries this year is part of our long-term ambitious growth plan to become a global provider of insurance management programmes to the leasing industry.

“Luxembourg and Poland offer an excellent strategic fit for our expansion. Many of our existing multinational clients also already have operations in these regions.”

James adds: “The addition of these new regions to our service area coverage is being managed by our tried and tested formula for country expansion. We have a successful track record of entering new markets, where we employ native speakers for all our regions and take our time to understand the country. We never presume that what works in one country will be right for another, nor will we compromise the provision of our exceptional customer service and value.

“As always, we learn and adapt our services to meet specific market needs and provide fantastic customer support. The last year has reinforced just how crucial the flexibility in our approach to partnerships and delivery is.”

Thanks to substantial investment in its IT platform and team, Acquis is uniquely placed to serve multinational clients with a seamless service. In line with its global expansion plans, Acquis is also currently in discussions to enter markets outside of Europe.

Read the full announcement on Acquis’ website, here. 

5. Delio share ‘Seven ways to get clients engaging with your private market deals’ in new article

Last but not least this week, Delio has shared an article exploring ‘Seven ways to get clients engaging with your private market deals.’

During the summer months, the financial world traditionally tends to slow down a little as many enjoy their summer holidays. However, that doesn’t mean that interactions with your clients need to stop. On the contrary, investors will likely have a bit more thinking time to calculate their next steps and search for new private market deals to invest in. 

Here is where a Delio-powered platform can help. Delio’s private markets technology features enable investors to browse appropriate investment opportunities at their convenience and initiate the conversation.

Delio has highlighted some of the easiest ways financial firms can use their technology to spark up conversations and share private market deals with their clients: 

1)Let your clients kick-start the conversation

2)Make sure your deals get noticed with instant notifications

3)Build targeted distribution lists based on client preferences

4)Highlight the most relevant investment deals with on-brand newsletters

5)Share deal information when investments are reaching their funding target

6)Share relevant advice or updates with the Homepage news feature

7)Build up excitement around upcoming events

Read the full guide on Delio’s website, here.

Until Next Week

And that’s it for the FinTech Five this week. Thank you for reading, and don’t forget to join us next week for more of the best content from across our FinTech Wales membership.

If you want to join our dynamic FinTech Wales community, then click here to learn more about the exclusive benefits FinTech Wales membership has to offer.