Adam Smith Business School

The Future Finance project - a £1.8m ESRC project in collaboration with University of Bristol held its first workshop in Glasgow recently. The event focused on how technology and an innovative mindset can transform productivity in financial services.

The flagship ‘Innovation Leadership Programme’ launched at the Adam Smith Business School, brought together 23 financial services firms from across the UK. Those who joined this nine-month programme will learn cutting-edge innovation techniques to apply to their organisation.

The School’s Dr Felix Honecker and Professor Dominic Chalmers delivered the training with guest speakers including Nicola Anderson, CEO of Fintech Scotland.

Key highlights from the two-day session included:

• The critical role of emerging tech like AI and quantum computing
• Harnessing design thinking for user-centric problem-solving
• Entrepreneurial insights on turning innovation into practical solutions.

This workshop laid a foundation for participants to bridge the gap between technological potential and real-world application.

The programme will culminate with a ‘demo day’ in London in summer 2025 where a series of new financial innovations will be showcased.

Dr Felix Honecker said: “The training focused on frontier technologies - including virtual and augmented reality, spatial computing, generative AI, edge computing, and quantum computing - and on how these technologies are expected to impact the financial services sector over the next two decades.

The goal of this session was to familiarise participants with current and near-future technological advancements, highlighting the urgent need for increased innovation within financial services SMEs, and ultimately to spark attendees’ imagination for the innovation demo day project taking place in London this summer.”

The University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School is among four universities leading a first-of-its-kind £1.8 million research project to accelerate innovation adoption in SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and Mid-Tier financial services firms to help boost their productivity and competitiveness.

Funded by Innovate UK and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the innovation adoption accelerator, called Future Finance 4 All: Innovation Adoption Accelerator in Financial Services, aims to support SMEs and Mid-Tier firms to improve adoption, awareness and widen access to innovation, including Financial Technology (FinTech) enabled products and services.

This in turn opens-up the potential for these firms to develop new propositions and create new markets among underserved communities, individuals, and enterprises.

In late 2025 Professor Dominic Chalmers and Dr Felix Honecker were involved in hosting the Future Finance Exchange, an event which brought together experts from technology and finance to explore the latest advancements in the field and their potential impact on small and medium-sized financial services firms. A highlight of the Exchange was the launch of a new Technology Insights white paper ‘Technology Insights Series: Challenges and Opportunities for Credit Unions.’

The paper, co-authored by Dr Honecker, analyses the operational and strategic challenges facing credit unions today and presents four key technologies with the potential to address these issues. It offers actionable recommendations and advice on how to implement these technologies in credit unions, empowering them to modernise their operations, improve efficiency, and deliver enhanced value to their members in the digital age.

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First published: 14 January 2025