Scotland’s Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL) has secured £3.18 million from Scottish Enterprise to deliver three more years of its fintech innovation programme, deepening collaboration between academia, industry and regulators and accelerating the adoption of responsible, technology‑driven solutions in financial services.
Led by FinTech Scotland in partnership with the University of Strathclyde, FRIL is described as the UK’s centre of excellence for innovation in technology to efficiently meet financial regulation requirements.
The new Scottish Enterprise funding will support a further phase of the award‑winning lab, which brings together financial institutions, regulators and fintech firms to tackle regulatory challenges through structured innovation calls.
FinTech Scotland says the programme will use the investment to advance solutions that enable fairer financial futures while helping technology innovators to scale their businesses.
According to FinTech Scotland, FRIL will focus on industry regulatory challenges that include ensuring artificial intelligence is adopted by providers in a way that is responsible and explainable, so that businesses and consumers receive fair financial outcomes.
The lab will also seek solutions that strengthen the effectiveness, integrity and efficiency of financial crime controls, with agile prioritisation during the programme intended to track emerging regulations around the use of AI, open data and digital assets.
By uniting industry, academia, technology innovators, government and regulators, FRIL aims to turn shared insight into products, partnerships, investment and real‑world adoption.
To date, FinTech Scotland reports that the lab has supported 120 fintech SMEs to accelerate solutions, enabled £28 million in committed private investment and delivered a projected 6:1 economic return on investment for every £1 of public funding.
Jane Martin, managing director of innovation and investment at Scottish Enterprise, said: “FRIL is a shining example of how collaboration between industry, academia and regulators can make a real impact, utilising the development of advanced technologies to create high‑value jobs and attract private investment.”
“This funding underscores our commitment to fintech innovation and our support for innovative businesses, helping them to scale with confidence and build the global competitiveness of Scotland’s financial services sector.”
Aleks Tomczyk, chief executive of FinTech Scotland, said the growth prospects for the sector made initiatives like FRIL increasingly important.
“The opportunity from the current and forecast future growth of fintech is huge. We are proud of FRIL’s impact to date. FRIL’s success evidences the strategic value of innovation to the economy and the strength of our fintech cluster in simultaneously delivering growth and better outcomes for consumers. Scottish Enterprise’s investment will use FinTech Scotland’s proven Innovation Labs model to accelerate innovation in large companies and speed growth in fintechs.”
The programme highlights existing industry partnerships as evidence of its model in practice.
Derek Shanks, technology platform lead at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We’ve supported three FRIL innovation calls as a challenge partner and have seen first-hand the value of this model. It brings together the right mix of expertise, technology and challenge to turn ideas into real solutions. We welcome Scottish Enterprise’s investment and look forward to building on this partnership over the next three years.”
On the fintech side, Edinburgh‑based compliance platform Amiqus is cited as one of the SMEs to have benefited from FRIL’s earlier financial crime innovation calls.
Calum Murray, CEO and founder of Amiqus, said: “The potential impact delivered by FRIL over the next three years to the broader Ecosystem is enormous. Thanks to a previous FRIL financial crime innovation call, we were able to build, pilot and take to production new capability to directly support Virgin Money with their new business onboarding journeys.”
“This three-year commitment effectively sets the stage for collaborative and rapid progress across both financial services developing new capabilities with the support of a wide range of fintechs going forward. It’s a win win on all accounts.”
Looking ahead, FRIL’s backers say the combination of targeted Scottish Enterprise funding, industry challenge partners and Scotland’s existing fintech cluster provides a platform to test how far responsible AI, stronger financial crime controls and new approaches to open data and digital assets can be taken from pilot to production in the next three years.
