Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, the UK’s largest long-term savings and retirement business, has launched its second Innovation Forum. This year, FinTechs will pitch and develop solutions to help pension customers engage more fully with their investments and in particular Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors. The winner will partner with Standard Life to roll out their concept to a pool of more than three million Standard Life customers.

As part of an ongoing focus on embedding sustainability and putting the planet and people at the heart of the Standard Life business, the Innovation Forum will be looking to partner with a FinTech firm that shares a commitment to finding new ways to bring the benefits of responsible investing, through digital innovation, to savers. Ideas might include ways to bring to life how customer pensions are invested, how to assess investments from an ESG perspective or the impact that investing responsibly now can deliver in the future.

The initiative involves a five-way collaboration with TCS’s Co-Innovation Network (TCS COIN™) innovation ecosystem, Fintech Scotland, Women In Banking & Finance (WIBF) and Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE) and builds on the success of last year’s forum which was won by Edinburgh-based Behavioural Finance. Behavioural Finance use psychometric testing to enable users to see how their personality will affect their relationship with money. Standard Life plans to introduce the wealth personality test they developed to a number of its customers, with the aim of rolling it out more widely later this year. This year the Forum will follow a similar process, giving FinTechs the opportunity to design and present innovative solutions to senior leaders across Standard Life and the wider Phoenix Group. Each short-listed participant will work closely with a Standard Life ‘mentor’ to further refine their proposition before a winner is eventually selected for a long-term partnership.

Standard Life’s Managing Director, Pensions and Savings, Colin Williams, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for Standard Life to connect with creative thinkers to enhance our proposition development and better support customers to engage with their investments and understand the impact they have on the world. This is key to our Group’s wider social purpose and sustainability strategy and follows the transition of £15bn of workplace assets to our new sustainable default fund. We are looking forward to hearing from innovators from across the FinTech Scotland, TCS COINTM and broader start-up community.”

Fintech Scotland Chief Executive, Nicola Anderson, said: "We're delighted to be partnering with Standard Life and Phoenix Group for a second year in a row to bring innovation and better outcomes to its customers. The first iteration of their Innovation Forum in 2022 was a real success and we’re very excited to see Standard Life’s plans for integrating the technology from Behavioural Finance into customers’ journeys. This year, they’ve set themselves an even bigger challenge as they're looking to bring more innovation to ESG investing. Customer outcomes are directly linked to environmental and social issues, and vice versa - bringing this relationship to life is vital as we move towards a net zero future. At FinTech Scotland we identified Climate as one of the 4 key areas of focus in our Research and Innovation Roadmap and this innovation challenge will help us achieve our goal to move towards greener finance and have the sector contribute to the net zero agenda."

President – TCS BFSI Products and Platforms, Vivekanand Ramagopal, said: “Our innovative and productive partnership with Standard Life continues to expand in market-leading ways, highlighted by our continued support of this dynamic Innovation Forum. This year’s Innovation Forum theme of engaging customers to help them gain insights into Environmental, Social and Governance investing tracks with our own focus at TCS on helping firms align technology and investment goals, as well as providing them with enterprise digital transformation roadmaps with intelligent solutions for sustainable change. By bringing in partners from our extended innovation ecosystem, the TCS Co-Innovation Network (TCS COINTM) and the TCS BaNCSTM Marketplace, we are supporting exploration of how modern technologies can improve ESG investing and reporting.”