How To Develop An Ecosystem For FinTechs To Thrive

Find out more on our website: https://bit.ly/3mNQWj7 There are many innovative fintech organisations in the UK. Successful growth however requires a combination of factors. It requires an ecosystem that offers access to talent, investment, support from local and national government and, of course, the opportunities to sell services to financial services institutions. This session will focus on how fintech organisations can help themselves, help each other and how they can be supported by the wider public and private sector to grow successfully . Speakers: Ian Laverty is Regional Director for Invest Northern Ireland’s FDI team, encouraging businesses from across GB and Europe to look at Northern Ireland as an expansion or relocation opportunity. Ian has a background in Financial Services having worked with Lloyds Banking Group and Scottish Widows for 11 years before moving into economic development. Invest Northern Ireland is the economic development agency for Northern Ireland. The region has a thriving financial services ecosystem and boasts impressive clusters of innovative fintechs. Invest Northern Ireland supports the growth of these organisations with a range of grants and financial assistance interventions. John O'Hara is CEO of Taskize, which he co-founded to streamline workflows between financial firms, that account for a larger percentage of post-trade spend. John has a financial technology background with 16 years at JPMorgan culminating as Chief Architect for the Investment Bank, and subsequently at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in leadership of Global Equities and Commodities Technology, and finally at RBS. John has driven open innovation, helping create FPML and inventing the AMQP technology used in Amazon and Microsoft cloud services. Kirk Wylie is a technology executive at NatWest Group. Starting his career in Silicon Valley, Kirk founded his first technology startup at the age of 23. After moving to London 16 years ago, he moved to working in financial services. He's worked at hedge funds, derivative dealers, and two of the world's largest financial services firms (State Street and NatWest) where he has specialized in technology, cloud, and DevOps methodology transformations. In addition, he founded OpenGamma in 2009 to bring Open Source to the world of derivatives trading and risk management and has advised extensively in FinTech organizations in Europe.