Last Thursday, we hosted the Department for International Trade (DIT). The DIT and rebuildingsociety are collaborating to stimulate UK SME exports.
Our Managing Director, Daniel Rajkumar, Legal & Compliance Manager, Kylie Greeff, and Director of Marketing, Julian Wells, who is also Director of Leeds-based Whitecap Consulting, met Head of Banking & FinTech Innovation, Tomas Helm, Partnership Manager, Business and Partnership Team, Paul Stephens, and Regional Specialist, Financial Services Organisation, Jeremy Coupland, during a visit organised by the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP). Tony Mcdonald, Strategic & Business Development Director at the LEP, took the opportunity to reiterate his appreciation of the work being done to further the FinTech field.
The meeting covered topics relating to the support offered to UK SMEs in order to help them increase their export sales, something the rebuildingsociety.com team are passionate about. The participants also discussed what actions can be taken to further promote the FinTech sector in general.
The DIT representatives commented on their need to have regional reach throughout the UK. They also expressed a desire to support events at which they can facilitate workshops, to help educate SMEs of the benefits of international trade, and encourage them to participate in foreign trade missions to find customers and partners. They would like this to form a key part of their international growth strategy.
As Daniel Rajkumar explained, “I’ve participated in several international trade missions, and I developed a key business relationship with a partner after a trade mission to Washington in 2006. I can appreciate how a key international contract can be transformative for small businesses, especially those new to exporting.” He went on to elaborate: “While working with Web-Translations, part of our work involved collaborating with the Institute of Export to run workshops helping companies understand how they can use a few multilingual pages on their website to capture international demand for their product or service.”
Julian Wells told the DIT representatives of our collaborative work in the FinTech sector, explaining how UK FinTech organisations have opportunities to sell to entrepreneurs or banks looking to leverage UK FinTech innovations. He also showed the visitors the video of this April's Fintech North event, and described the work that went into organising the day of speeches, panels and networking opportunities that was attended by 350 delegates, many of whom were professionals at a director level. Closing discussions covered potential future events involving rebuildingsociety.com and the DIT.
