FinTech Scotland names winners of maiden AI compliance challenge

FinTech Scotland’s Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL) has announced the winners of its first innovation call focussed on ‘simplifying compliance through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies’.

The programme concluded with a demonstration day in Glasgow on 30 April, where the 15 fintech finalists showcased their solutions in front of Deloitte, Tesco Bank, Morgan Stanley, Virgin Money and abrdn – which had all contributed use cases for the call.

Five winners were selected as grant recipients, each awarded up to £50,000:

• Identity check specialist Amiqus.
• Risk manager accountability firm HAELO.
• Investment compliance surveillance business Level E Research.
• Buy-side AI surveillance start-up DX Compliance.
• Another AI buy-side compliance company Pytilia.

The funding should help these companies refine their technologies, following insights from industry, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of compliance processes to drive better customer outcomes.

The focus of the initiative has been on streamlining regulatory processes within the financial sector through advanced technological solutions. Participants underwent a three-phase programme that included challenge definition, solution design and testing, and final demonstrations.

The FRIL initiative is part of the larger Glasgow City Region Innovation Accelerator programme with Glasgow, one of three pilot regions’ sharing a £100m investment aimed at transforming R&D within the UK. Led by Innovate UK, the programme supports the UK Government’s levelling-up agenda by empowering local regions to drive economic growth through innovation.

Nicola Anderson, chief executive of FinTech Scotland, said: “I am proud to see the extraordinary level of collaboration demonstrated across our fintech cluster through this first innovation call.

“The engagement among industry leaders, academic scholars, and public sector representatives at the demo day gives me confidence that our cluster delivery approach can drive real impact and continue to help us deliver our ambition set-out in our Fintech Research and Innovation Roadmap.”

Joanne Seagrave, head of regulatory affairs at Tesco Bank, commented: “We’ve seen a high quality and diversity of fintechs involved and many of the solutions presented closely match the objective we set of streamlining compliance with regulatory developments.

“This has advanced our understanding of AI as well as offering practical new solutions.“

Antony Brookes, head of UK investment compliance at abrdn, added: “We have relished the opportunity to engage with a number of innovative fintech companies we would not normally get access to.

“Their thinking and propositions on demo day itself were hugely insightful and have proven that AI does have a place in addressing some of the challenges we face across our industry when it comes to reporting.

“We are delighted that Pytilia, DX Compliance Solutions and Level E Research who worked on our abrdn use case have been successful in obtaining grant award funding and look forward to collaborating and supporting their innovation to help enhance surveillance capabilities and ensure a more accurate and tailored approach to regulatory compliance within the asset management sector.“

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