Nicola is a business leader with experience across multiple sectors and supporting innovation,
people development, building strategy, change management, understanding risk and financial
services regulation.
She has considerable experience in financial services and prior to joining FinTech Scotland
was a senior leader at the FCA, where she worked as part of the Retail Banking Supervision
senior leadership team.
In this role she contributed to the development of solutions needed to address complex
industry issues following the financial crisis. She has engaged with Boards and Executives at
different retail banks on a number of significant business transformational changes and
operational risk issues, often working in collaboration with other UK regulatory bodies.
Last year, Nicola co-authored the Research and Innovation (R&I) Roadmap – the first of its
kind in the UK and in collaboration with fintech entrepreneurs, the financial services sector,
academia, regulators, Government bodies and consumer groups – with the he objective of
boosting economic recovery, driving growth and creating jobs over the next ten years in
Scotland.
As a leader Nicola prefers to empower colleagues and coach to support professional
development. This approach has helped her in the variety of change management and change
projects roles she’s experienced throughout her career, including her role in delivering
elements of the operational programme needed to implement the FCA’s sectoral approach to
Supervision.
Nicola is a champion for consumers, people and inclusion. She has been instrumental in
developing lasting relationships between FinTech Scotland and a broad range of consumer
and citizen advocate groups such as Money Advice Scotland, Advice Direct Scotland, Age
Scotland and Mental Health and Money Advice. This work created the first fintech consumer
panel in Europe and has enabled cross sector collaboration in building fintech propositions
focused on citizen prioritised needs.
Beyond work Nicola is a business mentor in the homeless charity sector, working to support
the charities operational resilience planning and enable strategies to manage longer term
funding risks through funding diversification.