Glasgow's rapidly growing fintech community is ideally placed to
benefit from this global trend. Guest blogger, Daniel Broby,
Director of The Centre for Financial and Regulatory Innovation at
The University of Strathclyde reflects on the creation of the
latest innovative fintech company to emerge from Glasgow's
entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Glasgow values its companies
It's not only people that make Glasgow, but also its
entrepreneurial spirit. Unlisted, an
innovative start-up, has begun trials of its proprietorial
automated valuation engine. Its team believes that it has the
potential to generate a large number of financial data analyst jobs
supporting its algorithms.
Unlisted owns patented technology developed at Strathclyde
University. It uses Artificial Intelligence to generate private
company valuations in real time. The company claims its valuations
are more accurate and cost effective than manually generated
alternatives.
The team consists of senior ex bankers and technologists from
well known IFSD financial companies, JP Morgan and Morgan
Stanley. It has received support from a number of financial
giants, like Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander bank.
The valuation engine took one and a half years to develop, some
5,000 man hours from a team of developers and interns. It
uses the stock market to derive valuations for companies that are
not listed. The founders believe this will democratise
valuation and may even have the future possibility to create a
virtual stock exchange for the pricing of private companies.
Initial test clients include one of Scotland's largest
accountancy firms, HM Revenue and Customs and a large private
equity investment fund. With the Higgins report suggesting
that Scottish SME's will need £6bn to revive the economy, there
will no doubt be plenty of demand for its services in the SME
segment of the economy. The client tests are designed to
validate the demand and ensure the end product gives a user
friendly experience.
The market for Unlisted's technology is global. It hopes
to become the Zoopla of private company valuations. If it
succeeds, it will widen the financial competitive advantage of the
IFSD to include financial analysis. Investment bankers will
look to Scotland to source their market intelligence.
The lockdown hit the company only six months after moving into
its new offices. That said, the development work was largely
on the cloud. The company utilises the AWS supercomputer to
ensure real time data streaming. Being agile meant the
company was able to regroup on zoom and continue as normal.
Unlisted is a testament to Glasgow's entrepreneurial ecosystem.
It has received support from the Strathclyde Entrepreneurial
Network and the RBS Entrepreneur Accelerator and was shortlisted
for the prestigious Converge Challenge, which recognises the best
technology being spun out of Scottish universities.
Picture shows Unlisted Limited's development team enjoying a
pre lockdown beer.
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