Category: Press Releases

Phoenix Group, the UK’s largest long terms savings and retirement business, has launched a new Innovation Forum that will look to use the latest FinTech innovation to build greater engagement and support the well-being of its customers, driving forward greater financial inclusion.

In collaboration with TCS’ Co-Innovation Network (TCS COIN^TM) innovation ecosystem and FinTech Scotland, the Phoenix Innovation Forum will invite FinTech enterprises and entrepreneurs to explore partnership opportunities that will introduce innovative thinking and new ways of working. Phoenix will be looking to work with FinTech firms who share a passion for improving financial wellbeing, with a focus on making a genuine positive impact on customers’ lives on their journey to and through retirement.

Phoenix Group’s purpose is to “help people secure a life of possibilities” and as part of this, it is committed to building greater financial literacy and inclusion. Phoenix looks to engage with its customers throughout the different stages of their life, providing the right products and support, at the right time, to help them make the right choices.

The Phoenix Innovation Forum will give FinTech enterprises and entrepreneurs the opportunity to design, refine and present innovative solutions to senior leaders across PhoenixGroup. The initial focus will be on two key engagement themes:

• Curiosity – Using creative tools and interactions to spark increased levels of curiosity about saving and financial planning, which can help to nurture greater learning, especially in the area of planning for retirement.
• Gamification – Using ‘gamification’ tools and rewards which are interactive to encourage greater engagement in digital channels, by creating an immersive approach and demonstrating to customers the value of saving and investing for the future.

Phoenix’s Managing Director – Pensions and Savings, Colin Williams, said:

“This is a great opportunity for Phoenix to connect key decision makers within our organisation with innovative enterprises. We are looking to fuel creativity and come up with new solutions which really support our customers and build greater engagement and financial inclusion which is important to our Group’s social purpose and part of our long term sustainability strategy. We are looking to deliver forward-thinking propositions and to be at the forefront in developing innovative solutions, working in collaboration with TCS COIN and the FinTech Scotland community.”  

Nicola Anderson, Chief Executive of FinTech Scotland commented:

“We are delighted to support the Phoenix Innovation Forum which is a further example of the valuable role FinTech innovation can play in improving customers’ financial engagement and well-being. Phoenix’s commitment to innovation to support its large customer base and its partnership approach will attract significant interest from FinTech entrepreneurs who share their ambition of helping customers more effectively engage with savings and investments.”

Vivekanand Ramgopal, Global Head – TCS BFSI Products and Platforms, commented: 

“Enterprises are looking to form collaborative, purpose-driven ecosystems to launch innovative new offerings that deepen customer relationships and drive growth. To succeed, they need an extensible, open API-based, future-ready digital core like the TCS platform that powers Phoenix Group’s operations. That agile digital foundation is now enabling our two organisations to co-innovate around client analytics and customer experiences at our Innovation Lab in Edinburgh. We are delighted to expand this partnership with the Innovation Forum, and bring in partners from our extended innovation ecosystem, the TCS COIN, to innovate at scale and at speed.”

The initiative will provide the opportunity for FinTech innovators to develop a potential formal partnership with Phoenix Group to build solutions which will not just benefit Phoenix’s customers, but will contribute to innovation for wider society. FinTech firms looking to be part of the Phoenix Innovation Forum will be able to register their interest in participating via a dedicated page on FinTech Scotland’s website.

A quarter of a million people in Scotland were setting up or running new businesses in 2020, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey has found.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Scotland 2020 (GEM) report estimates that 7.3% of the Scottish population – 247,000 adults – were actively engaged in setting up a business or already running an enterprise established in the last three-and-a-half years. A further 5.7%  – 194,000 – were entrepreneurs running more established businesses.

Around 60,000 young people in Scotland, or 13% of 18-24 year olds, were early-stage entrepreneurs, the highest rate among the home nations. Entrepreneurship among people under 30 years old in Scotland has steadily grown from being the lowest in the UK at 3.5% in the 2007/09 period.

GEM measures rates of entrepreneurship across multiple phases in the general adult population. In 2020, nearly 140,000 people from 46 economies across the globe were surveyed, with 2,019 responses from Scotland, making it the world’s most authoritative comparative study of entrepreneurial activity.

The study found that Scotland had similar rates of total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) to other nations within the UK, mainly because Scotland held steady in the face of the pandemic while early-stage entrepreneurial activity in England suffered a significant decline from 2019 rates.

The Highlands and Islands region had the highest proportion of 18-64-year-olds in early-stage entrepreneurial activity (8.7%), followed by South Western Scotland (7.4%), Eastern Scotland (6.9%) and North Eastern Scotland (6.5%). In North Eastern Scotland, there has been a significant decline in the TEA rate from 2019 (8.7%) to 2020 (6.5%), while the rest of Scotland held steady despite the pandemic.

Around 5.3% of adult women in Scotland were trying to set up a new business or running a young business in 2020 compared to 9.3% of men – a rate that has changed little over the last decade and makes the gender gap in Scotland the highest amongst the home nations.

Further, there is a significant gender difference in reasons for trying to start a business with 62% of men citing the building of “great wealth or a very high income” as a key motivation compared to only 51% of women. In contrast, 76% of female early-stage entrepreneurs in Scotland, compared to 57% of males, indicated that a key reason they were trying to start a business was “to earn a living because jobs are scarce”.

Following previous trends, the TEA rate of the white ethnic population in the Scotland in 2020 was lower than that of the non-white population, at 7.05% compared to 12.95% respectively. However, the TEA rate for the non-white ethnic group was lower than the rate in 2019 (16.8%), while it remained comparable for the white ethnic group. This suggests that amid the higher rates of entrepreneurial activity among ethnic minorities, there is greater precarity too.

In Scotland, contrary to the trend in the wider UK, both the most deprived quintile and the least deprived quintile reported similarly high TEA levels, of around 9%. The most deprived 20% were thus just as likely to start a business as the wealthiest 20% in Scotland in 2020.

Dr Samuel Mwaura, lecturer in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship and co-lead of the GEM Scotland study, said:

“Despite the pandemic, there were around 250,000 entrepreneurs that were actively trying to set up a business in 2020 in Scotland, helping keep entrepreneurial activity on a par with 2019.

“Historically, we know that new businesses play a vital role in the recovery from major crises, however in 2020 immediate and sustained efforts to mitigate the coronavirus crisis prioritised more established businesses to the neglect of startup entrepreneurs.

“Many of the 250,000 startup entrepreneurs in 2020 will thus not have accessed much needed support and our findings suggest that thousands have thus had to delay the operationalisation of their new businesses. It is likely that many of these businesses will never see the light of day.

“We also found significant regional disparities among the four regions of Scotland, each with unique strengths and vulnerabilities. This means that different regions have different needs and tailored support is required. It is encouraging to see regional support infrastructure develop, such as Aberdeen City Region, and the new South of Scotland Enterprise.”

Dr Sreevas Sahasranamam, co-lead of the GEM Scotland study, said:

“Our findings on rates of entrepreneurial activity among young people under 30 in 2020 gives us a lot to both celebrate and draw lessons from.

“The success of this group has come from substantial investments in well-integrated national programmes such as The Prince’s Trust, the Bridge to Business programme for schools and the Scottish University Scale-Up Consortium, among others.

“Many individual universities in Scotland are also making entrepreneurship a more strategic priority internally for their students and graduates while also taking a greater role in supporting the wider ecosystem, such as Strathclyde’s partnership with Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurial Scotland to create the Glasgow City Innovation District.

“These initiatives provide fantastic case-studies of best practice that is working for young people that can be suitably adapted to address the issues we continue to observe in entrepreneurship among women and ethnic minorities as well as the regional disparities.

“Another related trend we noted was the highest entrepreneurial activity within Scotland’s most deprived quantiles, suggesting a case of entrepreneurship being seen as an emancipation tool.

“It was very encouraging to note that despite the pandemic nearly half the early-stage entrepreneurs in Scotland saw new opportunities, which augers well for an economic recovery.”

Sean McGrath, Chief Executive Officer, Entrepreneurial Scotland, said:

“These are eye catching and hugely-reassuring figures. They support the view that individuals who have an entrepreneurial mindset are key players in the economic recovery. 

“Against all the odds and in the midst of a health crisis the like of which none of us have ever lived through before, it is deeply encouraging to learn that so many individuals are either engaged in business creation or running one.

“This is undoubtedly good news and comes at a time when people everywhere are endeavouring to drive Scotland’s economy forward and out of the difficulties caused by the pandemic.”

The Can Do Collective – a connected community of enterprise support organisations and leaders on a mission to build a world-leading entrepreneurial, innovative and creative society – has today announced the election of Hazel Jane – Entrepreneur Engagement Manager for Tech Nation – as their new convener.  

Elected every two years, the Can Do Collective conveners’ role is to drive momentum for the Can Do Movement across Scotland, building on its reputation as a beacon globally in entrepreneurial eco-systems and supporting the growth of this powerful community of inspiring entrepreneurial leaders, who in turn deliver impact for Scotland.

Entrepreneur Engagement Manager for Tech Nation will harness her global expertise to drive the Collective forward to help build Scotland’s future.

Hazel Jane comments,

“As an entrepreneur engagement manager for Tech Nation covering all of Scotland, my primary role is very much speaking with founders, stakeholders and government as well as liaising with my colleagues across the rest of the UK, to understand what our eco-system looks like on a UK landscape and how we can be doing better, and how we can thrive. It is exactly these insights and experiences that I intend to bring to the Collective so that we can continue to support our business community to thrive here.”

Founded upon a shared belief that Scotland has always been a ‘Can Do’ nation, the aim of the community today is to work together to enable entrepreneurs of all kinds to flourish and to prove that by working collaboratively they can increase the odds of success.

Hazel continues,

“I am fully committed to genuinely helping with the issues that we are facing in Scotland and the rest of the UK right now. Brexit, in particular, has hit businesses in ways that we didn’t imagine. This is something that we, as entrepreneur support organisations will have to think about and hopefully share a lot of knowledge around.

“With regards to the pandemic, I think that there are still a lot of unknowns, and it’s really important to touch on the fact that these challenges aren’t just financial – there is an immense amount of change for business owners and entrepreneurs, who are leading their employees into a world that we don’t yet understand. Successful business recovery in a post-pandemic era is also going to require a new world of working and I hope that we will be front runners, leading by example.”

Concluding, Hazel Jane comments,

“I believe that the role of the Collective is to share genuine best practise and support one another to get behind movements. For me, this is about being able to reach a huge group of companies that work to drive entrepreneurship and, supporting them with information and advice that will help to drive change and growth from within. Everything that the eco-system is doing is for the greater good of all entrepreneurship in Scotland.”

The Can Do Collective is funded by The Scottish Government and supported by a dedicated team within the independent charity Entrepreneurial Scotland Foundation. Made up of over 70 public, private and social enterprise support organisations from across all corners of Scotland, The Collective community represents 16 industry sectors. 

The Can Do Collective – a connected community of enterprise support organisations and leaders on a mission to build a world-leading entrepreneurial, innovative and creative society – has announced it has opened applications and nominations as it seeks to elect a new convener.

Elected every two years, a new Can Do Collective convener will take up the role in February 2021 and will drive momentum for the Can Do Movement across Scotland, building on its reputation as a beacon globally in entrepreneurial eco-systems and supporting the growth of this powerful community of inspiring entrepreneurial leaders who in turn deliver impact for Scotland.

The Can Do Collective are seeking a convener who demonstrates a supportive, flexible and strong sense of leadership, community and collaboration, and above all, an ability to bring people on the exciting and inspiring journey ahead for the Can Do Collective and for Scotland.

Rachael Brown, current Can Do Collective Convener and CEO, The Future Economy Company explains;

“Two years ago I took on the role of convener, knowing we had a big journey ahead of us. In that time, the world around us has changed, and more than ever we need strong, entrepreneurial, fast leadership. The Collective is testimony that a collective approach to impact and activity is possible and exactly what we need in a time of challenge. As we go forward, I would hope that Scotland continues to be a beacon for entrepreneurial spirit.

“It’s been an absolute privilege to be in the role of convener for the Can Do Collective over the past two years. This is a role that is hugely important, and The Can Do Collective is a powerful economic and societal asset for Scotland. I have every confidence that we will find the right person who will continue to drive the Collective forward.”

The Can Do Collective is funded by The Scottish Government and supported by a dedicated team within independent charity Entrepreneurial Scotland Foundation. Made up of over 60 public, private and social enterprise support organisations from across all corners of Scotland, The Collective community represents 16 industry sectors.

Founded upon a shared belief that Scotland has always been a ‘Can Do’ nation, the aim of the community today is to work together to enable entrepreneurs of all kinds to flourish, and to prove there is greater power and success in working collaboratively.

The application process for the role of convener is open to all partners of the Can Do Collective. The closing date for applications is Friday 4th December, and the new convener will begin their role in February 2021.