Member Article

Irish Fintech Firms Collaborate with Industry Experts in the UK

Over the past six months, growing Irish fintech companies have come together with industry executives from the City of London to discuss their UK market entry strategies. For a third consecutive year, Enterprise Ireland and the London Irish Business Society (LIBS) have hosted the successful City Insights Programme, aiming to increase the chances of success for Irish fintech companies in the UK market.

The annual programme, designed to support new Irish businesses gain entrance into the UK market, brought together several Irish financial services businesses and UK senior executives to provide insight into and guidance for the UK financial, retail and technology industries.

The programme gave Enterprise Ireland client companies a platform to showcase their business proposition and market strategy to UK senior executives over a series of monthly meetings in a meaningful, challenging and networking environment.

Through these mentor sessions and presentations from senior UK executives, Enterprise Ireland client companies leveraged their experience while also receiving valuable insight into trends, challenges and priorities on UK-specific business issues.

Over the past three years, the City Insights Programme has facilitated the signing of a global pilot agreement with an institutional lender, helped restructure the executive management of several companies, positioning them for internationalisation, as well as brokering several hundred introductions between Irish enterprises and senior figures from the UK financial services sector.

Valuable feedback was provided on the companies’ value propositions and business alignment as well as relevant market intelligence for their sectors - the overall aim being to help companies in expand their business into the UK market.

Stephen Burke, Founder and CEO of Cyber Risk Aware, said: “The programme has benefitted CRA immensely. In addition to the insightful presentations and introductions to large client prospects, we were given a platform to pitch our business to over 40 LIBS members and received incredible feedback from fintech and retail experts, which we would not have been exposed to previously. Our confidence has grown as a team and I can’t speak highly enough of the time, energy and guidance our mentors have assisted in helping our business. Thanks to all involved.”

Tom Skinner, Founder of pTools Software, said: “Our participation at the City Insights Programme has allowed pTools to better shape our UK plans and realise the urgency in considering challenging barriers in more detail. The presentations, introductions and insight from our mentors have given us the opportunity to present our proposition appropriately for the UK market. We’ve opened an office in London and we are making the transition to what we hope will be a technology company recognised within the finance sector internationally.”

Dublin-based Fintech company, Assure Hedge, was also present at this year’s City Insights Programme. Assure Hedge specialises in currency hedging tools for businesses of any size, that were previously only available to multinationals

Now the 2017 City Insights Programme has ended, LIBS and EI are hoping to build on this year’s success and work towards 2018.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Enterprise Ireland .