Pioneering project set to boost innovation adoption in UK financial services
Published: 9 August 2023
Smaller Scottish businesses, who often struggle to keep pace with big financial institutions when it comes to harnessing the latest growth-enabling technologies, will soon be able to benefit from an innovative national initiative.
Smaller Scottish businesses, who often struggle to keep pace with big financial institutions when it comes to harnessing the latest growth-enabling technologies, will soon be able to benefit from an innovative national initiative.
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.
Professor Bridgette Wessels and Professor Dominic Chalmers are co-investigators on the project team at University of Glasgow.
Professor Dominic Chalmers said: ““This is an exciting project that will focus on how to turbo-charge innovation adoption across companies in the UK’s most promising sectors. By developing links between academia, fintech and professional services firms, we hope to make a significant contribution to firm-level productivity, particularly in the UK regions.”
Professor Eleanor Shaw, Head of the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School said: “FinTech is an important and globally significant development that requires interdisciplinary collaboration, and external collaboration with organisations such as FinTech Scotland, if it is to be best supported to have the positive societal impact that developments in financial technologies will make possible.
“This project presents an important collaboration between the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School and School of Social and Political Sciences and between FinTech Scotland and fintech communities across the UK, particularly including the West of England fintech cluster, and project leads, the University of Bristol.”
To maximise the reach and impact of the project, it will be rolled out in three phases - local, regional and national - and firms that participate in the accelerator will have the opportunity to shape the development of new products and services that they could ultimately take to market and scale for wider societal benefit.
The project brings together social scientists from a wide range of disciplines with expert partners from the financial services, business, legal, innovation and non-profit sectors in an interdisciplinary collaboration that runs until September 2025.
The Accelerator will be based at SETsquared, located in Bristol’s Engine Shed, and will unlock wider insights from the participation of the University of the West of England Bristol, the University of Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University and FinTech West.
Stuart Harrison, Director at FinTech West said: “This is an incredibly exciting and important project which we are delighted to be part of. We already work closely with universities on a number of initiatives, and this will further deliver benefits to the sector through the close collaboration of academia and industry.”
First published: 9 August 2023
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