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.
Bimpe Nkontchou is a dually qualified lawyer, with over 30 years’ collective experience in England and in Nigeria. Bimpe is founder and Managing Principal at W8 Advisory LLP (www.w8advisory.com) a wealth advisory practice and multi-family office (based in London) which is focused on African entrepreneurs and their families. She also owns a sister company W8 Wealth Limited (authorised & regulated by the FCA) which provides regulated financial and investment advisory services to African business families.
W8 Advisory has been recognized in Spears 2022 & 2023 Wealth Management Index as a ‘Top Recommended’ Family Office Service provider and Bimpe has also been ranked by Spears as one of the best wealth managers in the UK.
Bimpe has recently launched a digital wealth and investment platform called ‘Wealth8’, using technology to bring access to investing in a portfolio of global financial products and also to provide financial education and the language of investment, to a traditionally underserved ‘mass affluent’ audience within the black & multi-ethic community in the UK and on the African continent. (www.wealth-8.com).
As Product Manager at TSS, Hanna Söderström is driving the strategic development of the clinical trials software platform, which is used by leading pharmaceutical companies in delivering life-saving medicine to patients faster. In productive partnerships with big pharma, Hanna has been driving change in the clinical supply chain by delivering automation and digitalization. Hanna’s mission is to deliver a product shortening clinical study timelines, increasing patient safety and serving TSS clients to become sponsors of choice.
Since joining the company in 2017, Husain has played an integral role in countless upgrades and new initiatives designed to improve Skybound’s overall value proposition. Following an appointment to the Group Operations Director in 2022, he has led all aspects of digital transformation at Skybound, winning them 9 awards and counting in this narrow window. Following the application of process design, implementation of new client facing technology and integration of advice tools across the industry – he has just launched the the offshore IFA industry’s first piece of advice technology developed from scratch, offering whole of market comparisons, intuitive recommendations, simplistic plan tracking and backed by the highest compliance standards
Senior Audit Leader with multi-disciplinary experience of over 22 years in the area of digital transformation, technology and business auditing. Expertise in risk and controls within financial services (retail, markets, insurance, investments, wealth), digital, technology, cyber, resilience, emerging technologies, data and sourcing. Building collaboration and engagement across senior leaders, regulators and control functions.
Currently, Head of Audit with Lloyds Banking Group covering Insurance, Investments, Wealth, Stockbroking business areas and strategic technology platforms, digital transformation, data management and migration. Previously, worked with Deutsche Bank, Bank of Africa UK, Credit Suisse, KPMG and Oracle.
Abigail Dirks is a Data Scientist at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Tufts CSDD) where she specializes in analyzing large datasets pertaining to industry drug development performance, including clinical research associate (CRA) performance, impact of decentralized clinical trials (DCT), and investigative site burden. She recently received her Master’s in Health Informatics and Analytics from Tufts University and has a BS in Data Science and Mathematics from St. Michael’s College. She also has experience in web development for North Shore Nurse Practitioner Associates, a psychopharmacology practice.
