2023 Award Judges

RECOGNISING EXCELLENCE IN FINANCIAL SERVICES & FINTECH

JUDGES 2024//

Aleks Tomczyk

Exizent

Aleks is the Co-Founder and Managing Director at Exizent, a Scottish FinTech and LegalTech SaaS platform on a mission to improve the experience of the processes associated with a death for everyone involved. Successful technology innovation has been the theme running through Aleks career. A long time ago he ran the UK’s first corporate venturing scheme for a FTSE 100 firm and has delivered successful technology innovations in a number of sectors. Immediately prior to Exizent, Aleks was an independent consultant advising on growth and technology. Before this he was Founder and CEO at Arum, a specialist financial technology advisory and transformation business with a focus on credit management.

Aleks was born and now lives again in Edinburgh. He is a member of the FinTech Scotland Board, LawscotTech Advisory Board, and, as a business angel, is an investor in technology businesses with growth potential.

Nicola Anderson

Fintech Scotland

Nicola Anderson is the CEO of FinTech Scotland, a strategic cluster management organisation that works across the private, public and third sectors, as well as academia to enable economic growth and inclusion in developing digital financial services. Through her career Nicola has worked across the public and private sectors and her experience has involved leading business and organisational development with an emphasis on innovation, collaboration and customer focused strategies.

Initially joining FinTech Scotland as Strategic Development Director in 2018, she has worked on a range of collaborative initiatives to develop Scotland’s fintech cluster, including work with the University of Edinburgh in developing the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence. In other strategic collaborations Nicola has connected regulatory, legal and cyber expertise with the fintech cluster including strategic engagement with Police Scotland, Scottish Business Resilience Centre, ScotlandIS and UK regulators as well as an advisory role with LawTech Scotland.

Since joining FinTech Scotland Nicola has worked with the FinTech SME community, supporting SMEs in navigating the regulatory environment, with proposition development and business innovations focused on customer outcomes. Her experience in SME business development comes from a variety of industries including financial services and involves a practical understanding across different stages of the business lifecycle, with first-hand entrepreneurial experience from initiating and establishing her own business in the retail sector.

Callum Sinclair

Burness Paull

Callum is Head of Technology and Commercial at leading law firm Burness Paull. He has worked in the field of information and communications technology law for over 20 years and has a life-long passion for technology. He currently chairs the IT Contracting and Advisory Special Interest Group of the Lex Mundi international alliance of “best of breed” independent law firms. He sits on the Board of ScotlandIS, and the Crypto-assets Expert Panel (Scots Law) and is on the Leadership Circle of the Scotland AI Alliance. Callum is a recognised thought-leader in technology. He was named in the 2018 UK Lawyer magazine’s “Hot 100” as a “Disruptor” and in The Times’ 2016 Digital List of 100 people from Scotland’s digital technologies industry who are “changing the world”. Callum also won the Leadership Award at the 2018 ScotlandIS Digital Tech Awards.

Joanne Seagrave

Tesco Bank

Joanne is Head of Regulatory Affairs at Tesco Bank, specialising in regulatory change and dealing with the Bank’s regulators including the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulatory Authority. She is a qualified accountant and has worked in financial services for over 25 years, holding a variety of audit, finance and regulatory roles. Joanne has held the position of chair of Women in Banking and Finance Edinburgh branch and been part of the Board of Citizens Advice Edinburgh. In 2024, Joanne has been supporting the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab use case to simplify Compliance through AI and other Emerging Technologies, working closely with fintechs, academics and industry partners.

Callum Murray

Amiqus

Callum Murray is the CEO and founder of Amiqus, the UK’s leading staff and client onboarding platform, helping organisations meet their compliance obligations whilst providing simple, accessible, and reusable online services at scale. Amiqus is trusted by and partners with government, regulatory bodies, 9 out of 10 of the largest volume law firms in the country and hundreds of organisations across sectors. Over the last four years over 2 million checks have been run as part of onboarding journeys powered by Amiqus, helping people to move jobs, move home or engage with a professional advisor digitally.

Mark Cummins

University of Strathclyde

Mark Cummins is Professor of Financial Technology at the University of Strathclyde, where he leads the university's FinTech Cluster. He previously held the post of Professor of Finance at the Dublin City University Business School, where he was also Director of the Irish Institute of Digital Business. He holds a PhD in Quantitative Finance and has research interests in the following areas: financial technology (FinTech); quantitative finance; energy and commodity finance; sustainable finance; model risk management. He is keenly interested in the intersection between finanical technology and sustainable finance.

Sue Dawe

EY

Sue Dawe leads EY’s Financial Services Practice in Scotland and has been with EY for over 35 years. She is a member of EY’s UKFS Leadership team, a former EY UK LLP Board member and a Patron for Women in Banking and Finance (WiBF). She was recently appointed Chair of Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE) having been a Board member since 2019 . Sue is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and has a degree in Accountancy and Finance from Heriot Watt University.

Graeme Rennison

Scottish Enterprise

Graeme leads the FinTech Future Industry team in Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s national economic development agency. He is responsible for managing SE’s response to Scotland’s FinTech growth opportunity and works with the FinTech cluster to help ensure Scottish FinTechs are able to innovate and scale. Graeme has led numerous digital tech and FinTech support programmes over 20+ years in economic development and was one of the founding partners involved in the formation of FinTech Scotland. Graeme holds an MBA with distinction from The University of Strathclyde.

Colin Halpin

Barclays

Colin Halpin is Managing Director of Global Market Data Financial Management for Barclays Group, is a member of Barclays Global Procurement Leadership team and Glasgow Procurement and Corporate Real Estate Site Principle. In his role, Colin is accountable for the end to end management of all market data products and services, devising and delivering the Groups Market Data strategy, complex contract negotiation, informing and supporting group wide strategic decisions around technology, data and process.

Colin has over 29 years Financial Services senior leadership experience across Market Data, Asset Pricing, Reference Data, Back Office Operations, Invoice Discounting, Mortgage Operations, Risk Management, Strategy, Transformation, Process Design, Technology Architecture and Client / Stakeholder / 3rd Party Relationship Management. Colin is on the Board of Scottish Financial Enterprise, is a member of SFE Audit Committee, Board sponsor for Talent and Inclusion as well as the Data and AI pillars of the 5 year Financial Services Strategy for Scotland and sits on the Rest of UK Talent Attraction Advisory Forum for the Scottish and UK Governments.

Before joining Barclays, Colin held a number of senior leadership roles at HSBC, JP Morgan, Ulster Bank (RBS) and Pfizer Treasury. Colin was a Political Ambassador for HSBC as well as Chair of the HSBC Scotland Leadership Team and was on the Scottish Governments Financial Services Advisory Boards Sub-committee for Banking and the Economy.

Pankaj Jain

Technology Vice President at NatWest

Pankaj has over two decades of experience across all major Financial and Technology facets - mastering roles from a Developer to a Tester to leading large teams as a Senior Manager. He is an avid quizzer & passionate photographer and family man who never fails to learns from his kids. Pankaj also loves to coach and celebrate success.