On the 4th of July UKFin+ launched in Birmingham with a terrific event at The Exchange. Our photographer Amy from Creative Media at the University of Birmingham did a brilliant job of capturing some of the highlights.
The event commenced with an overview of UKFin+ EPSRC funded Network Plus on FinTech in the UK by Professor Aad van Moorsel.
Followed by Keynote speeches by Ez Britton, CEO (CFIT) and Ed Twiddy (Atom Bank).
We then hosted a Panel discussion on the challenges of technology innovation in the UK financial services sector:
Chair – Professor Karen Elliott (Professor of Practice in Finance and Fintech, University of Birmingham)
Hilary Smyth-Allen (Executive Lead, Super Tech West Midlands)
Faith Reynolds (Director, Devon Fields Consulting)
Cam Kinsella (Director, Astor Foundation)
Professor Daniel Broby (Professor of Financial Technology, University of Ulster)
Professor John Vines, one of the directors of UKFin+ led a “futures thinking” activity in the afternoon focused on the different challenges in fintech.
The aims of the session were to:
Network and meet attendees interested in the same challenges as you
Understand if the challenges we are setting are interesting, relevant or important
Initiate collaborations across different disciplines and across academia and business to develop future projects
Seed discussion for research proposals by exploring the futures of financial services we want or need to see happen
The event also included plenty of time for networking over lunch, we hope our attendees made many new connections and the launch gave inspiration for our funding calls. Information on the funding calls is now available via the ‘funding’ section of the website.
Thank you again on behalf of the UKFin+ team to everyone that participated and made the launch a success!
