In the wake of the 2023 Fintech Awards Wales, Matt Hyde, Director of Recruit121 and the Fintech Awards Wales, engages in exclusive interviews with the sponsors and prominent figures at the forefront of the FinTech sector in Wales.
The Fintech Awards Wales serve as a platform to acknowledge and honour the remarkable accomplishments of individuals, companies, and academic institutions within the Welsh FinTech landscape.
In this special series, Matt introduces you to the key figures driving innovation and progress in this dynamic industry.
This week Matt speaks to Will Carroll, CEO – MBS
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Fintech is a rapidly evolving industry, and Wales has shown remarkable progress in this domain.From your perspective, what unique opportunities or challenges does the Welsh fintech ecosystem present, and how does your organisation contribute to its development?
The Welsh fintech ecosystem is feeding innovation and investment outside of the traditional big city hot spots like London, where there’s a lot of competition.
For fintech’s looking to start-up or scale-up, Wales should be top of mind for consideration. The Welsh Financial Services sector is vibrant at the moment, providing great opportunities for fintech businesses. In addition to a number of financial institutions based in Wales, there’s a forward looking combination of government backing and investor and advisor networks that are working alongside educational and skills development programmes committed to making Wales a fintech hotspot.
I’ve been really impressed by FinTech Wales’s Foundry programme and the way it supports entrepreneurs to develop their proposals into a viable proposition for investors. Those businesses that are succeeding are finding effective solutions to consumer challenges, including B2B, B2C, and B2B2C.
The challenges for fintech’s include being able to demonstrate they can stand up to regulatory scrutiny and demonstrate exceptional governance frameworks designed to protect consumers. Where there is innovation, there is room for exploitation and the industry needs to stay ahead of this. Cybersecurity is top of mind and as we move more and more of our life to the digital sphere, we all need to prioritise this.
In addition, there’s the challenge of attracting, developing and retaining a talent pool that is fit for the future.
But all opportunities bring challenges, and all challenges bring opportunities. We need both competition and collaboration to build a strong sector and Wales is certainly delivering in that sense.
What motivated your organization to become a sponsor of the Fintech Awards Wales, and what do you see as the significance of supporting events like these within the fintech industry?
MBS is a traditional, regional building society with the ambition to become a modern mutual. I see fintech as the key to us unlocking our potential and being able deliver on that ambition.
We’re committed to growing our presence on the high street, especially at a time when big banks are closing branches and leaving many communities without access to financial services. However, we’re equally committed to improving our digital capability for the benefit of our current and future members.
By supporting events like this, we’re showing MBS as a forward looking institution, supportive of innovation and open to change.
As a sponsor, what specific role does your organization play in promoting innovation and growth within the fintech sector in Wales? Can you share any initiatives or programs that align with your sponsorship?
MBS is a longstanding provider of financial services in Wales, welcoming its first members back in 1869. For us to be here in another 150 years, we need to support innovation and growth in the fintech sector and have this as part of our road map for the future. We need to embrace, adopt and harness the potential of fintech to enhance our service delivery.
As a sector, building societies are largely operating with legacy technology and MBS is no exception. We recognise the need to deliver digital transformation so that we can remain relevant for our current and future members. A lot of that will come down to our ability to help members transact in a frictionless way, through their channel of choice.
The nominees in the Fintech Company of the Year are innovators, agile from day one, able to harness the benefits of technology to disrupt traditional models for the benefit of the consumer. This is where building societies began life, disrupting the traditional banking model to make the dream of homeownership a reality for ordinary people. This is still part of our DNA, we exist to help our members, colleagues and communities to thrive and that won’t change. But we need to modernise our approach.
Fintech solves problems for businesses and consumers, and we want to work as co-collaborators in this sector to find solutions to the challenges our members face. By doing this we will grow our membership sustainably and welcome members beyond our traditional heartlands.
In the past few years, we’ve embraced robotic process automation to reduce reliance on repetitive manual processes, like account opening. And we’re getting ready to launch a new digital app to help current and new members manage their accounts online more effectively. While this may seem like a basic transformation, this is a huge step forward for a sector that is integrating bricks and mortar provision with enhanced digital agility.
The UK has established itself as a global hub for fintech innovation, with London being a prominent fintech centre. How do you see the Fintech Awards Wales contributing to the overall growth and visibility of the UK's fintech ecosystem, and do you believe that regional fintech events, such as the Fintech Awards Wales, play a role in nurturing collaboration and fostering connections within the industry across the country?
We have to celebrate success in all its forms. Regional recognition is a great way to showcase achievements that might get overlooked in a national context. When you look at the calibre of sponsors and nominees in the Wales awards, it really brings it home how big Wales has become in the fintech space.
The awards are showcasing Wales as a challenger nation for a challenger industry, backed by government and business. This is attractive for the wider sector, it sends out a clear message that fintech’s can be successful in Wales. You don’t need to be located around traditional centres of commerce, like the bigger cities where costs and competition can be more intense. Commercial and residential property is significantly less in Wales than in London, and you have access some of the best national parks and scenery the UK has to offer. This is an attractive proposition for people looking to grow their careers and enjoy a good standard of living.
Looking ahead, how do you envision the future of fintech in Wales, and how will your organization continue to support and collaborate with the local fintech community beyond the awards ceremony?
For MBS, it’s so important that we continue to collaborate with the local fintech community. In addition to enhancing our digital capability, we’ll need to develop our colleagues alongside recruiting new talent to set us up for success. Being part of the fintech community means we benefit from networking, conversations and have access to a rich and diverse talent pool.
We've explored some interesting developments and insights in the fintech space today. On a lighter note, with all the innovative trends in fintech, if you had a magic wand and could bring one futuristic fintech concept to life right now, what would it be and why?
I wish I had the skills and capability to innovate and develop a fintech solution! There is loads of creativity and innovation across the industry but I do think that the highly complex world of pensions still needs unpicking for consumers. A fintech solution that could support people in the management of their pension(s), which could bring pension pots together, detail returns, support with the identification of funds etc…. might help us all in understanding what we can/need to do to have a more comfortable old age and retirement….
