Aleks Tomczyk

FinTech Scotland, which is marking its eighth anniversary, has welcomed the figures, which they say confirm Scotland’s position as one of Europe’s most dynamic and collaborative fintech clusters. 

Growth has been driven by higher levels of investment, deeper partnerships across industry, academia and the public sector, and more businesses scaling up and trading internationally.

Innovation in practice has also taken a major step forward, with the 10-year FinTech Research and Innovation Roadmap now embedded and over 40% of recommended actions under way.

Central to this has been the 2025 award-winning Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL), which plays a key role in creating the right conditions for collaboration and product development.

A recent example is the partnership between Amiqus and Virgin Money: through the FRIL programme, Amiqus moved from an initial pilot to live production with Virgin Money, using AI to transform business banking onboarding – demonstrating the capability and scalability of its platform.

In 2025, the cluster also launched two major new initiatives: the Centre of Excellence in Distributed Ledger Technology, focusing on digital assets, payments and tokenisation, with digital trust at its core, and the Finance and Health Lab a pilot cross-sector research and innovation programme dedicated to improving financial wellbeing, resilience and long-term financial health in Scotland.

Looking ahead to 2026, FinTech Scotland will focus on translating innovation into economic and social value, in line with UK industrial policy priorities, and enabling all participating in the cluster to thrive.

Aleks Tomczyk, chief executive of FinTech Scotland, said: “The doubling of Scotland’s fintech density is a clear signal that our collaborative and cluster-based approach is working.

“The Research and Innovation Roadmap provided a national framework to accelerate purposeful innovation, and it’s been inspiring to see how fintech entrepreneurs, financial institutions, and universities have got behind that shared vision.

“As I begin 2026 as FinTech Scotland’s new chief executive, I look forward to leading our plans to support the next stages of cluster growth and thereby accelerate successful business growth and innovation in financial technology.”

Jane Martin, managing director of innovation and investment at Scottish Enterprise, added: “A major strength for Scotland is its connected fintech cluster, an inclusive network of entrepreneurs, researchers, and industry leaders working together to solve real world challenges.

“This growth shows that Scotland can have a global impact by focusing on purposeful and collaborative innovation.”

Callum Murray, CEO of fintech Amiqus, said: “FinTech Scotland has provided practical ongoing support to Amiqus and many other fintech scale ups across the country for many years.

“Our involvement in their FRIL innovation programme dramatically accelerated relationships with large scale banks, built trust in our capability to deliver at scale and directly led to us securing a new ongoing client partnership.

“We look forward to the collaborative opportunities working with the Fintech Scotland team over the years ahead.”