Leeds FinTech Forum Write-Up
On Tuesday, the 5th of November, members from the Leeds City Region FinTech community and beyond came together for the Leeds FinTech Forum, hosted in partnership with Ventas Sales and hosted by Bruntwood SciTech in their Platform event space.
The room was full and buzzing, with over 50 attendees joining for a brief networking session before taking their seats for a morning session of insights on the Leeds FinTech ecosystem, data, scaling, skills, teams, culture and more.
Welcome and Event Overview
Joe Roche, FinTech North’s General Manager welcomed delegates and thanked Ventas Sales and Bruntwood SciTech for their support and involvement. He then provided an overview of FinTech North and the North’s regional FinTech ecosystems, touching on their specialisms, before focussing in on the Leeds City Region. He touched on FinTech North’s role in some the day’s themes, including their support of scaling organisations and their skills initiative, which has been one of their key strategic pillars for the year.
Katherine Megson, Innovation Manager at Bruntwood SciTech then provided a welcome and an overview of their role in the Leeds FinTech Ecosystem and beyond, supporting 11 hundred customers nationally by connecting them to the ecosystem and wider city, and supporting organisations in their growth and scaling journeys.
Next to the stage was Pete Evans, Managing Director at Ventas Sales. Pete shared an overview of Ventas Sales’ work in transforming sales performance locally, nationally and internationally.
He touched on some of the themes that would be covered during the event: data, scaling and hiring, addressing some of the challenges including balancing a tech vs. sales lead business and hiring the tight people. He highlighted the importance of data-informed decisioning and strategy, referencing research supporting milestone-centric processes in sales success:
‘If you have an organisation where people involved in sales follow a milestone centric process, sales will improve by 15%’
He also touched on the importance of coaching and a positive workplace culture, some themes that would be expanded on throughout the event. He concluded his talk, leaving the audience with some impactful statistics:
‘43% of people are hitting their sales quota,’ followed by ‘the cost of a wrong hire is ten times the sales person’s national salary.’
Scaling Stories
The next session was a series of ‘Scaling Stories,’ kickstarted by Leonard Burger, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Lenvi, a Leeds-based FinTech specialising in B2B consumer and commercial lending software and solutions.
He shared some information on his background, interest in scaling, role at Lenvi and Lenvi’s scaling story, which spans across 3 decades. He addressed the challenges in building a new brand and new products and services, and highlighted the importance of keeping product at the heart of the ‘TriX’- brand experience (BX), user experience (UX), and customer expereicne (CX).
He expanded on Lenvi’s reach and capabilities, with £100 billion of credit assets managed, a new loan processed every five seconds, and 180 lenders across the UK, Europe and globally.
He covered some other key themes, including the importance of remaining human2human while retaining trust, b2b FinTech marketing strategies, and the need to differentiate and simplify product marketing.
Click here to view Leonard’s presentation.
Next to share his organisation’s scaling insights was Simoon Gregory, Sales Director at Leeds-based data FinTech, Data on Demand. His presentation covered some key lessons learnt 8 years into their scaling journey:
Lesson 1: Know your goal. ‘It’s an investment of time, energy and emotion; it’s hard work to scale your business. Having a goal will help you approach and overcome challenges.’
Lesson 2: People over skills. ‘It’s important to make sure you get the right people in. It’s difficult to change people’s personalities, but you can change people’s skills.’
Lesson 3: Embrace your agility. ‘Larger corporates can struggle to maintain agility as they grow – start-ups have the advantage of being able to change quickly to address customer needs.’
Lesson 4: Try and track. ‘Embrace the opportunity to make different decisions and try different things. Spend time working out what success looks like and what a good outcome would be.’
Lesson 5: Celebrate Success. ‘It’s important to celebrate mini successes, mini wins, and wins for other parts of the team. Keep company culture at the heart by celebrating team wins.’
Bianca Spruit, Founder and Specialist Coach at Sprout Coaching was next to share her insights and experience in scaling. She provided an overview of her work in FinTech and tech, with 20 years of experience in building successful tech teams. She highlighted the importance of positive company culture, communication and trust in teams, and creating a ‘coaching culture,’ for continuous improvement.
She shared her own personal ‘scaling story,’ touching on some key themes including using data to make informed decisions, the importance of developing new skills, intentionally creating a culture to be the way you want it to be and addressing the differences between start-up and scale-up cultures.
She echoed some key takeaways from some of the other speakers, including the need to celebrate wins.
Next to share their scaling story were out of region and debut FinTech North speakers, FinTech software development specialists Keeper Solutions. Stephen Walsh, Founder and CEO of Keeper Solutions provided overview of the organisation, which designs, develops and deploys world-class financial software for fast-scaling firms in Europe and North America. He highlighted the impact of their work, noting that the organisation have created £1.3 billion in client shareholder value.
He then shared a case study on how they helped a client, Momnt, an Atlanta-based lending FinTech to scale, sharing milestones from their funding and scaling journey, and closed on some key takeaways: the cruciality of industry expertise, culture, key partnerships and resilience in scaling.
Using Data to Drive Better Talent Decisions
Following the scaling story series was Ben Tagoe, CEO of globally-operating business management consultancy, Objective Management Group, who presented a keynote titled ‘Using Data to Drive Better Talent Decisions.’
He started with some hard-hitting statistics about the detrimental impact of hiring the wrong sales people:
‘33% of all b2b salespeople are fired in their first year on the job.’
Furthermore, in 2024, research by ebsta 2024 B2B Sales Benchmarks illustrated that 75% of sales representatives not only missed their quota, but produced nothing.
Ben noted that business people are often incorrectly, under the impression that hiring a sales team will inherently generate revenue, when in reality, it is a hidden cost centre for most organisations.
Objective Management Group’s work aims to address this issue positively: hiring a better team and hiring people into the right roles significantly ‘cuts the losses.’ Ben shared that Objective Management Group impact this by providing sales-specific assessments that measure 21 sales-specific competencies to get people in the right teams, in the right roles.
He stressed the importance ongoing assessment, highlighting that ‘if your strategy is changing, you need to adjust people to be on the right teams.’
Scaling FinTech in Leeds
After the keynote, some of the speakers from the previous sessions returned to the stage for an insightful panel focused around scaling FinTech in Leeds.
The panel consisted of:
- Simon Gregory, Sales Director, Data on Demand
- Leonard Burger, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Lenvi
- Ben Tagoe, CEO of Objective Management Group
- Bianca Spruit, Founder and Specialist Coach at Sprout Coaching
And was expertly chaired by Katherine Megson, Innovation Manager at Bruntwood SciTech.
The panel discussion shed light on the critical skills and competencies for building effective FinTech teams, strategies for scaling, and the nuances of managing partnerships.
In response to a question about the most critical skills needed for building teams, Leonard emphasised the value of creative problem-solving, noting that successful team members need not only strong decision-making abilities but also a knack for innovation. Ben highlighted that relevant competencies vary across B2B and B2C FinTechs, especially as scaling often involves partnerships with larger institutions, which come with their own complexities.
Simon discussed how hiring strategies differ across team levels, stressing that leadership should bring deep industry experience, while entry-level hires, such as graduates, should be open to learning and cultural alignment. He pointed out the value of academic partnerships and trusted external agencies to secure the right talent for FinTech’s unique demands.
Bianca added that hiring from outside the FinTech sector can bring fresh perspectives that foster innovation; employees from fields like retail may contribute strong customer-focused approaches. She noted that maintaining a diverse skill set within teams enhances problem-solving and creativity, key elements in a fast-evolving industry like FinTech.
The panelists also shared their insights on leadership and culture in FinTech. Bianca emphasised the importance of supporting leaders as these are the people who are motivating and inspiring teams, while Simon spoke to the power of trust, transparency, and clarity. Leo advocated for a “flat” culture that promotes shared goals and collective growth, positioning leaders as mentors rather than managers. Ben added that in a disruptive field like FinTech, effective risk management is crucial, balancing innovation with careful risk assessment to maintain a competitive edge.
When discussing infrastructure challenges, Ben advised that FinTech companies should be prepared for complexity, especially when partnering with larger financial institutions. Leo echoed this, noting that working with banks often involves navigating numerous stakeholders to communicate the product’s value. Simon shared his approach to partnerships, stressing the importance of curiosity, customer-centred priorities, and a clear assessment of a partnership’s viability.
The conversation also delved into the alignment between sales and marketing teams, which plays a pivotal role in scaling. Ben advocated for a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role to oversee both sales and marketing, aligning goals to avoid conflicts. Bianca recommended finding ways to bridge sales and customer service teams, ensuring that insights from customer interactions can inform sales strategies. Leo and Simon concluded by underscoring the need to invest in marketing to build brand recognition in a competitive landscape, while carefully measuring results to drive informed investment decisions.
As the panel drew to a close, there were several clearly resounding themes for the audience to take away, including maintaining clear goals and aligning these across your teams, the importance of culture, the value of data in decisioning, aligning sales and marketing, and celebrating team success.
Thank You!
Joe Roche came to the stage for a final time, thanking all involved organisations for their support in creating the event, and thanking the audience for their involvement, before inviting them to join the lunch networking reception.
We’d like to share a big thank you to Ventas Sales for partnering with us on this, Bruntwood SciTech for hosting, and to all of our speakers for the contribution.
For more information on upcoming events, reach out to us at info@fintechnorth.uk
