The International FinTech Mission was led by the Department for International Trade (DIT) and Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) , financed with Northern Powerhouse prosperity funding. Throughout the visit the delegation was accompanied by Chris Sier, HM Treasury FinTech Envoy and Chairman of FinTech North. A full list of the visiting FinTechs can be found at the bottom of this page.
Across all three days the delegates engaged in a range of networking opportunities with UK organisations, including taking part in a FinTech North seminar in each city. In Manchester and Leeds, this included a reverse pitch format whereby UK organisations pitched their business challenges to the FinTechs, who then had the opportunity to pitch their own propositions via a 3 minute pitch slot.
Liverpool
On each day, the morning FinTech North event featured opening comments from Julian Wells (director of Whitecap Consulting and FinTech North), Jeremy Coupland (DIT’s Northern Powerhouse FinTech Specialist), and Chris Sier.
Around 80 people attended the Liverpool morning event and a range of UK organisations presented to the group, including: Invest Liverpool, Sensor City, Building Societies Association, DLA Piper, and Tickr, a locally based FinTech.
The group spent the afternoon with John Leake and the team at Sci-Tech Daresbury, a national science and innovation campus and home to the UK’s largest commercially available supercomputer, where they heard from a range of speakers including various experts from Hartree Centre as well as IBM and Atos.
Manchester
After arriving in Manchester on Tuesday evening, the group was hosted by Gateley plc who delivered a short session on the key areas of consideration for UK market entry, covering key factors such as legal requirements and approaches to funding and finance.
On Wednesday, the group spent the day at Manchester Science Partnerships’ stunning Bright Building, which includes an open plan event and catering space which provided the perfect venue for the morning’s FinTech North event.
In the reverse pitch the group heard from AJ Bell, Arro Money, Barclays, BNY Mellon, Coop Bank, CYBG, and Nationwide Ventures. Each visiting FinTech then had their first opportunity to pitch their proposition to the audience of over 120 people.
The delegation had an interactive session with the team from Midas, which also included a presentation from University of Manchester which highlighted the many FinTech-related initiatives the university is leading or involved in.
Leeds
Wednesday evening in Leeds was hosted by Barclays at Avenue HQ, which only the day before had been announced as the location of the first Barclays Eagle Lab in the city. The delegation were treated to tours of the yet-to-be-opened facility and enjoyed an evening of networking with a number of local contacts.
On the final day a FinTech North seminar was held at aql’s iconic Salem Chapel. The listed building has been converted into a data centre and an events space, where speakers deliver their presentation from a glass floor above the servers. Over 150 people attended the event.
Kicking off the reverse pitch, the audience heard pitch presentations from UK organisations including Computershare, CPP, Eden Agency, First Direct, Hedgehog Lab, HSBC, Nexus, Rebuildingsociety.com, and Welcom Digital. Following a lively break for networking, the visiting FinTechs each delivered their 3 minute pitches to the audience.
During the afternoon, a session was held with the team from the Leeds City Region LEP which featured case study presentations from IMC and Fitek, two international FinTech firms who have recently opened Leeds offices.
DIT’s Northern Powerhouse FinTech specialist Jeremy Coupland closed the event by thanking the FinTechs for taking part in the mission and reflecting on a successful few days across the north.
The International FinTech Mission was supported by a number of northern-based organisations to whom the team at DIT, FCO and Whitecap is very grateful, including aql, AJ Bell, Barclays, Computershare, DLA Piper, Invest Liverpool, Leeds City Council, Leeds City Region LEP, Manchester Science Partnerships, Midas, Nexus (University of Leeds), and Sci-Tech Daresbury / Hartree Centre.
International FinTech Mission – participants
Company: Assure Hedge
Established: 2016
Country: Ireland
Description: Based in Dublin, Assure Hedge is a financial technology company offering digital currency hedging services (OTC FX options) to banks and FX brokers through our regulated API, whitelabel & front-end products.
Relevant Services: Payments, Risk Management, Foreign Exchange, Aggregation Services
Company: Axyon AI
Established: 2016
Country: Italy
Description: Axyon AI leverages the most recent advancements in deep learning to create bespoke business applications for capital markets and asset management.
Relevant Services: Banking, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence
Company: Braintri
Established: 2013
Country: Poland
Description: Braintri provides cutting edge mobile applications, big data solutions, and payment systems. We are shaping the FinTech and InsurTech ecosystem and deliver award winning products.
Relevant Services: Payments, Banking, Data & Analytics, Data Security, Authentication/KYC, Mobile Tech.
Company: CallVU
Established: 2012
Country: Israel
Description: CallVu’s Digital Engagement Platform automates customer experiences and creates unique fully digital and fully visual journeys over non-digital channels such as phone calls and face-to-face interactions.
Relevant Services: Banking, Mobile Tech
Company: Cappitech
Established: 2015
Country: Israel
Description: Cappitech provides Regulatory Reporting under MiFID/EMIR. Totally agnostic of file format we provide transformation, validation and enrichment before submission to the regulator ensuring full compliance for all Financial Institutions.
Relevant Services: Data & Analytics, Aggregation Services
Company: Describe Data
Established: 2018
Country: Ireland
Description: Data Analytics for complex insurance risks. Modeling cyber, directors & officers, life & health and terrorism. Combining leading edge analytical techniques with traditional and atypical data sources to provide critical underwriting insights.
Relevant Services: Banking, Insurance, Capital/Liquidity Management, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence.
Company: FinTech District
Established: 2017
Country: Italy
Description: The Fintech District is a community of startups based in Milan and works as a gateway to the Italian Fintech ecosystem. It connects the necessary stakeholders with a network of > 100 fintech startups.
Relevant Services: Payments, Banking, Lending, Savings / Investments, Insurance, Pensions, Risk Management, Capital / Liquidity Management, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Data Security, Foreign Exchange.
Company: Fortia Financial Solutions
Established: 2012
Country: France
Description: Fortia is a Paris-based software publisher specializing in AI applied to compliance management, data processing and automation of complex operational processes.
Relevant Services: Banking, Risk Management, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence
Company: ICARE Technologies
Established: 2016
Country: France
Description: ICARE Technologies has developed Aeklys, the world first smart payment ring designed by Philippe Starck. This NFC ring is meant to replace our wallets and keychains.
Relevant Services: Payments, Banking, Data Security, Authentication / KYC, Mobile Tech
Company: iDenfy
Established: 2016
Country: Lithuania
Description: iDenfy is an online identity verification company helping to reduce fraud, make business smoother and more profitable, together with complying to EU AML regulations.
Relevant Services: Authentication / KYC
Company: IFTHENPAY
Established: 1998
Country: Portugal
Description: Integration of Portuguese Payment System Multibanco for e-commerce and invoices. Is the most used in Portugal for buying online and paying services like electricity bills etc.
Relevant Services: Payments
Company: Investsuite
Established: 2018
Country: Belgium
Description: We are a EU wealthtech startup with two cutting edge products/solutions: a B2B robo advisory and a white labelled next generation retail trading platform
Relevant Services: Banking, Savings / Investments, Pensions, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Mobile Tech
Company: Mercurius
Country: Italy
Description: Mercurius BI is a tech company developing AI algorithms to trade sports prediction markets as an asset class which is truly alternative, liquid and uncorrelated.
Relevant Services:Risk Management, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence
Company: modefinance
Established: 2009
Country: Italy
Description: modefinance is a Fintech company focused on financial and credit risk management, also being the first official Fintech Rating Agency in Europe (ESMA registered).
Relevant Services: Risk Management, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence
Company: NODALBLOCK
Established: 2017
Country: Spain
Description: Company developing Logical Security and Certification solutions under Blockchain technology. Solutions addressed to improve transparency, traceability and immutability in business. Accessible for every company regardless of the industry or size.
Relevant Services: Banking, Savings /Investments, Insurance, Data Security, Authentication / KYC, Mobile tech
Company: NS Knox
Established: 2016
Country: Israel
Description: nsKnox presents a ground-breaking initiative, which addresses some of the most challenging forms of cyber fraud attacks for corporate clients, protecting payment systems from insider fraud, external fraud, social engineering and data manipulation
Company: ORCA Alliance
Established: 2017
Country: Lithuania
Description: ORCA is a personal finance management tool that offers users the ability to securely aggregate their financial data. The aggregated data is used to present insights into the user’s financial life and help them make better decisions.
Relevant Services: Banking, Lending, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Aggregation Services
Company: PangeaMT
Established: 2000
Country: Spain
Description: Language processing with Artificial Intelligence to translate, summarize, anonymize, categorize unstructured assets (documents, texts, conversations) and produce insightful and actionable information for financial companies.
Relevant Services: Insurance, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence,
Company: Shield Financial Compliance
Established: 2017
Country: Israel
Description: Shield FC is a cross-regulation compliance platform that provides a 360 view on eComms and trades utilizing AI, NLP and Visualization capabilities to make compliance more efficient and ROI driven.
Relevant Services: Banking, Risk Management, Data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Data Security
Company: Taxxo
Country: Poland
Description: Taxxo saves your time on daily paperwork and lets you easily turn your
documents into real-time cash flow
Company: Upswot
Established: 2018
Country: Poland
Description: Upswot provides on banking premises the loan onboarding product for SME, with automated underwriting (in less than 60 seconds), and continuous credit re-assessment, based on the data from cloud business systems SME use.
Relevant Services: Banking, Lending, Risk Management, Data & Analytics
Company: Welltrado
Established: 2016
Country: Lithuania
Description: Welltrado is a tool to track and manage investments across multiple P2P platforms.
Relevant Services: Risk Management, Data & Analytics, Aggregation Services
Company: Wenalyze
Established: 2018
Country: Spain
Description: Wenalyze is a big data analytics platform that provides actionable data to financial companies enabling them to increase their up and cross-selling rates.
Relevant Services: Banking, Insurance, Risk Management, Data & Analytics
