Tag Archives: Wealth

News

UK impact investment more than doubles since 2018

Written by by Mr. Kunal Sawhney, CEO, Kalkine Media

The technological advancements across the world have been spearheading the transformational shift to newer processes that are assisting in optimising the existing operations and end products. Contributing towards climate change, healthcare, clean energy solutions, food insecurity and several other causes, the technology landscape in the United Kingdom has been helping various enterprises from manufacturing to services to construction.

The ongoing processes certainly require a slew of advancements that can ameliorate the overall operations, subsequent to which the resultant objective can be achieved in a more efficient and affordable manner.

Bolstering the businesses and various other commercial setups with the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and technology can assuredly help in levelling up the scale of operations, at a time when largest of the economies fear the resurgence of infection with the new Covid variant Omicron emerging at a sharp pace.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has already warned about severe consequences following the outbreak of the new variant as a number of countries are contemplating the possibilities of reopening the international borders on a wider scale.

The tech startups operating with an objective of generating returns for the stakeholders while supplementing the environment have been highly preferred by the investors as the global forces join hands to bring down the carbon emissions, the decision that can comprehensively reduce the carbon footprint across the world.

The UK-based tech startups are helping in their respective capacities to provide solutions for the most pressing problems in the world including a number of climate change concerns, food insecurity and shortcomings in providing the best healthcare facilities. As a result of increased inclination of institutional investors and big-ticket money managers, the impact startups in the UK have managed to mobilise £2 billion investment in the present calendar year so far.

According to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), impact startups in the UK garnered an investment to the tune of £1.7 billion in the Covid-laden 2020. Surprisingly, the impact investment in the UK has more than doubled since 2018 with the quantum rising by 127%.

The impact startups based out of the UK remain aligned towards building a number of solutions to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. With more and more enterprises looking forward to incorporating tech-driven solutions within their operations, the proportion of startup investment has been progressively gaining pace with a large section of age-old conglomerates pledging to reduce the cumulative emissions from their operations.

With nearly half of the UK’s impact startups located outside London, the country is poised to witness all-round growth in the upcoming years as a number of startups have already attained a unicorn status, while many others are fast approaching towards the valuation of $1 billion. Locations including Briston, Sheffield and Horsham are adequately populated with impact startups that are based outside the City of London.

On a collective basis, all the impact startups employ more than 35,000 individuals. The combined valuation of these companies is approximately £50 billion. At the moment, there are a dozen of impact unicorns based out of the UK with six of them having main operations in London. Along with these, there are 22 impact futurecorns operating across the UK which are on track to achieve a billion dollar valuation in the forthcoming years as the nature of business remains aligned with high growth potential ideas.

The London based unicorns include Arrival, Octopus Energy, Babylon, Compass Pathways, Depop and Tractable. Ovo Energy and Vertical Aerospace are situated in Bristol, ITM Power in Sheffield, Ceres Power Holdings in Horsham, Britishvolt in Blyth and BenevolentAI  in Cambridge. The impact startups located outside London effectively demonstrates the wide-reaching enterprises operating to ease the challenges in the clean energy space and other environmental concerns.

The Bristol-headquartered Vertical Aerospace is building flying taxis for commercial usage with zero-carbon emissions, Ceres Power Holdings of Horsham is working to introduce low-cost fuel cell technology that will pave the way for energy corporations to deliver next-generation clean energy, while Sheffield-based ITM Power is developing and designing hydrogen energy systems.

The niche area of operations makes these enterprises unique and highly sustainable in the long term as large-scale businesses contemplate various avenues to source clean energy solutions from such startups to optimise their in-house processes, productively increasing the efficiency and resultant output.

Amid the futurecorns, fusion power energy corporation Tokamak Energy and alternative protein startup Agri Protein are progressing with their respective objectives. These companies are highly likely to attain unicorn status as they take their offerings on the global platform.

The proportion of impact investing has been on a rising run across the world with the market participants backing the enterprises that are focused to safeguard the environment throughout their operations, and, at the same time providing lucrative opportunities of wealth maximisation for international stakeholders. In the UK itself, the number of impact startups that are actively operating has risen to 900 as innovative ideas across the country are able to secure capital from various sources.

The numerous applications of artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain technology and big data are effectively helping to develop next-generation clean energy solutions that can back the big conglomerates and multi-billion dollar corporations.

Appointments, Law, News

Senior appointment for Aaron and Partners’ Contentious Estates team

The Wills, Trusts and Tax department at legal firm Aaron and Partners has announced a senior appointment to help meet increasing demand from private clients.

Vlad Macdonald-Munteanu joins as a Senior Associate, specialising in contested wills, trusts and estates. The new hire adds a range of experience to the firm, having specialised in the resolution of contentious probate matters for the last six years and being listed in both the Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners directories – two coveted industry guides.

Vlad’s appointment will see him help to deal with high value and complex claims for a wide range of clients. He is known for taking a personable approach and has successfully pursued claims in the High Court and Court of Appeal, as well as resolving matters through a variety of alternative methods.

“I’m very pleased to be joining Aaron and Partners and to be part of a team that is already so well regarded,” said Vlad.

“The Wills, Trusts and Tax team at Aaron and Partners has an outstanding reputation for delivering outcomes that focus on clients’ needs and I’m looking forward to being able to strengthen the services they offer and enable us to help even more clients across the country.”

Clive Pointon, Partner and Head of Wills, Trusts and Tax at Aaron and Partners said, “We’re very pleased to welcome Vlad to the team. His appointment comes following increased demand of new instructions and additional work for clients seeking expert advice in contentious probate matters.”

Vlad will be working remotely from Cardiff but will be supporting the firm’s Chester and Shrewsbury-based teams following a rise in enquiries and instructions relating to contested estates probate.

He is also a member of The Association of Contentious Trusts and Probate Specialists (ACTAPS) – a forum for leading specialists in contentious trust and probate work.

Clive added: “Vlad has a fantastic reputation and a wealth of experience in dealing with complex claims, and with remote working much more prevalent, we’re delighted that he will now be supporting our teams in Chester and Shrewsbury, as well as growing our offering in South Wales too.”

FInance

Managing Payments in Unprecedented Times

Lynton Buxton, TALL Group of Companies, considers how businesses can manage payments in these unprecedented times.

“The coronavirus pandemic is a public health emergency. But it is also an economic emergency. We have never, in peacetime, faced an economic fight like this one.

“I know that people are deeply worried. I know that people’s anxiety about the disease itself is matched only by their anxiety about their livelihoods.”

Strong words from The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak who has described the current emergency as an ‘economic fight’.

As businesses throughout the UK assess the impact of the coronavirus on their day-to-day operations, it is clear that ‘normal’ activity will be severely restricted as members of staff are forced to remote work or self-isolate as necessary. The plight of many industry sectors that are faced with significantly reduced revenues as a result of restrictions will only continue to grow.

As businesses find their financial teams reduced in numbers, the ability to process payments whether ‘in’ or ‘out’ can become stretched. For those organisations that receive large numbers of cheques, the new Image Clearing System (ICS) can provide an answer with the ability through some banks to remotely deposit cheques.

The use of a desktop cheque scanner to image a cheque, for these images then to be consolidated into a data file for onward transmission to the organisation’s bank, can assist in reducing staff travelling time to local branches, avoiding social contact and free up resource for other stretched areas of the organisation. For smaller numbers of received cheques, mobile banking app’s may well provide an answer again avoiding the need to visit a local branch.

Where businesses are still making payments by the ‘good old dependable’ cheque, there are ways in which the process of cheque production can be facilitated. For businesses that rely on the use of ‘special’ or corporate cheque books to make payments that require hand writing and signing, the introduction of computer cheques may be an answer to speed up production. These ‘special’ computer cheques can be branded with corporate logos, colours and fonts and available pre-signed if necessary. Using dedicated cheque production software, or integrated accounting packages, these cheques are ‘infilled’ at the organisation prior to distribution.

Indeed, the use of cheque production software packages can also have an added benefit by the addition of Image Survivable Features (ISF’s) on printed cheques. With the introduction of cheque image clearing in the UK, there has been an associated rise in attempted cheque fraud as fraudsters seek to identify ‘weak spots’ in the clearing system. The addition of a security device, such as a Unique Coded Number (UCN) or UCN Plus® QR code can help prevent attempted fraud by encrypting ‘key’ details from the face of the cheque, either in the case of the UCN at the time of printing of the original cheque stock, or for the UCN Plus® at the time of cheque infilling. ISF’s are becoming a major deterrent in the fight against fraud.

For those businesses and organisations that are really struggling to maintain payment processes, the use of Business Process Outsourcing services could be an answer. Outsourcing business processes has major advantages in freeing up valuable resource and enabling ‘business-as-normal’ processes to be undertaken. Additionally, for those organisations faced with increased payment workload processing refunds, compensation payments, etc as a result of the continuing issues surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, the ability to outsource extra fulfilment is a major benefit. Payments, whether as paper documents or electronic services, can be made on an organisation’s behalf, branded appropriately and at a scheduled point in time to suit.

The TALL Group of Companies has had 30 years’ experience of providing organisations with secure print and electronic payment solutions. From the printing of corporate cheques, the provision of cheque production software through cheque imaging and cheque fraud prevention tools to the ability to provide Business Process Outsourcing services to organisations of any size, TALL has a complete range of products and services to enable organisations to weather the coronavirus ‘storm’ whilst still maintaining customer service levels throughout.

Martin Ruda, TALL Group Managing Director said,

” In the face of the ever-changing national challenges, it is a company’s responsibility to ensure that firstly all its staff are cared for but also to assist our customers in meeting their obligations in the current circumstances. TALL can help organisations meet those obligations and will work with our partners to develop appropriate solutions. Together we can work through this current crisis.”

For more information, see https://tallgroup.co.uk