Smart Data Foundry and FinTech Scotland announce winners of UK Fintech Innovation Challenge

Smart Data Foundry and FinTech Scotland have announced the winners of their UK Fintech Innovation Challenge. The challenge aimed at discovering innovative solutions to strengthen the relationships between financial institutions and their SME clients.

Fintech companies Xpand and Skwile Ltd have each been awarded £50,000. This investment will fuel the development of their propositions, fostering innovation and supporting economic growth within central Scotland.

This innovation call represents a unique way of encouraging the development of new, impactful financial products and services. FinTech Scotland has a long track record of running successful innovation calls for established financial firms, and thanks to its collaboration with Smart Data Foundry, it has taken those calls to the next level. Participating fintechs were given access to a unique SME synthetic dataset, created by Smart Data Foundry’s aizle synthetic data engine, to develop and test their innovative propositions safely and efficiently.

Virgin Money and NatWest played a vital part in this innovation call, supporting fintech SMEs with invaluable workshops to help those businesses be more collaboration-ready whilst getting early access to new innovative solutions.

NatWest Group were delighted to support this industry-wide UK fintech thematic innovation call led by Fintech Scotland and Smart Data Foundry. The theme of the challenge, “Supporting and strengthening Financial Services relationships with their SME clients” is fully aligned with our purpose to champion potential, helping people, families and businesses to thrive. We’re committed to innovating for our customers and communities. We’re excited to see the ideas that were showcased through the challenge and in particular how the fintechs leveraged the specifically designed synthetic data asset from Smart Data Foundry in developing their proposals.

Elaine McLaughlan, Core Capabilities Lead at NatWest Group

This initiative continues to demonstrate the commitment of FinTech Scotland and Smart Data Foundry to drive innovation but also aligns with the objectives laid out in the Research and Innovation roadmap published by FinTech Scotland in March 2022. The roadmap highlighted the importance of focusing on helping established financial firms service their SME clients better to support them in a post-Covid world.

We were delighted to work with FinTech Scotland and Smart Data Foundry on this innovation call designed to unlock innovation in the SME sector with the use of synthetic data. As a signatory to the FinTech Pledge and as a member of the Fintech Delivery Panel, we are committed to supporting the innovative community in Scotland and across the UK.

Graeme Sands, Head of Digital Business Banking at Virgin Money

James Gumble, CEO at Xpand, said: “The challenge allowed Xpand to understand the opportunities working directly with business data on behalf of financial institutions – and has identified new opportunities, which we will use the funds to explore. Working with the partners on the challenge enabled Xpand to further our work tracking the impact of public sector funding with national and local government teams. Integrating the synthetic data into our tools showed how this enriched data can provide businesses with the most up-to-date funding information, help them grow and scale and provide support through uncertain economic times.”

Makoto Fukuhara, CEO of Skwile Ltd, added, “We are thrilled to be selected as a prize winner and are excited by the opportunity to make a positive impact in Scotland. We have gained invaluable insights throughout the competition and thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with the competition partners, Smart Data Foundry, NatWest, and Virgin Money, on this transformative journey. The knowledge we’ve acquired will be instrumental in enhancing our products and services, allowing us to continue delivering innovative solutions that empower businesses to make better informed financial decisions and thrive.”

Bryn Coulthard, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Smart Data Foundry commented, “We are delighted with the success of our first innovation call in partnership with FinTech Scotland, the first in a joint programme of innovation calls to help drive economic growth in Scotland’s fintech sector. I was especially pleased to see the value of giving access to our SME synthetic dataset as part of the challenge, which helped accelerate participants thinking and allowed for rapid iteration of ideas as they developed their pitch of their proposition.”