Show Notes 192: The East of England's Hidden FinTech Gem: Why Norwich Is Punching Above Its Weight

In this week's episode, hosts Faye Holland and James Parton dive deep into the region's thriving fintech ecosystem with Tim Robinson, COO of Tech East, and Anthony Bellingall, co-founder of Norwich-based compliance software company iDempo. What emerges is a compelling story about regional tech excellence, female founder leadership, and why London's dominance in fintech might be masking some genuinely impressive talent elsewhere.

The Numbers Tell a Story

The whitecap report commissioned by Tech East has been eye-opening. The forecasts predicted the East of England fintech sector would be worth £100 million by 2027 and create 600 new jobs. But here's the exciting bit: they're ahead of schedule.

Tim Robinson explains: "We're certainly on track and ahead on the overall economic contribution from fintech." Companies like EPOS Now are growing by a third year-on-year, creating what Robinson calls the "flywheel effect" that comes when successful companies cluster together.

Why Norwich Matters

What makes this particularly interesting is that Norwich wasn't even mentioned in the government's 2021 Khalifa review of UK fintech—despite financial services accounting for one of the highest proportions of GVA in the city's economy. The oversight was glaring.

But there's something special happening there:

• Female founder leadership: Outside London, Norfolk has the highest proportion of female tech founders in the UK

• Strong role models: From university leadership to corporate executives, visible female pioneers are normalising entrepreneurship

• Supportive ecosystem: Professional services, legal support, and university partnerships create a genuine community

The iDempo Story: Global Ambitions, Local Roots

Anthony Bellingall's journey perfectly encapsulates why the region works. After stints in Japan and Singapore building compliance expertise, he returned to Norwich to launch iDempo in 2019. Today, they have 2,000 customers across 15 countries.

"Norwich is a very good place to live and to work," he says, "but what's been helpful is maintaining connections I've had throughout the world while being based somewhere that has the accountancy and legal support you need."

The collaboration with the University of East Anglia on hologram detection systems for identity cards shows how academic partnerships can drive real product innovation.

AI Is Changing Everything

Perhaps the most compelling insight comes from how AI is reshaping fintech narratives. iDempo's backend infrastructure project that was originally scheduled to take a year can now be completed in three months thanks to AI tools.

More importantly, the investor conversation has shifted. "The old hooks that you used to sell yourself on as a founder are changing. Previously, SaaS was the magic word. Now it's AI enablement," Bellingall notes.

What's Next?

Tech East is launching FinTechEast.com later this month and planning a major push to connect fintech businesses across the entire region—Cambridge, Norwich, Ipswich, and beyond. Rather than competing with London, the strategy is smarter: build a distributed network of smaller hubs that collectively punch well above their weight.

Tim Robinson will be speaking at London Tech Week 2026 on Regional Tech Ecosystems, bringing the East's story to the capital.

The Takeaway

If you're a founder or investor looking beyond the obvious London hotspots, or simply curious about where the next wave of UK fintech innovation is happening, this episode is essential listening. The East of England isn't just emerging—it's already here.

Listen to the full episode on the Cambridge Tech Podcast and discover why this region deserves a place on every tech investor's radar.

AI generated transcript

00:00VoiceoverTechnology moves fast and now so can you. Discover polestar, the all electric performance brand vehicles redefining how we drive. Precision engineering, minimalist design and software that evolves with you. Experience it at Holdham Group in Norwich and Bury St Edmunds or let us bring the test drive to your door. Proud sponsors of the Cambridge Tech podcast, Polestar Electric Performance Redefined. Discover@holdengroup.co.uk Polestar. Welcome to the Cambridge Tech podcast, talking all things technology from the heart of the UK's tech capital. Here are your hosts, Faye Holland and James Parton.

00:58Faye HollandI'm Faye.

01:00James PartonAnd I'm James. So, Faye, how's the week been for you?

01:03Faye HollandBusy. It was really quite a tiring old week. One of the reasons it was a big week was it was the first board meeting for the partnership, so obviously me and my new role. So I wanted to make sure everything was fine and it all went very well. So now we're full steam ahead. Not that weren't before, but even more so that was that. I went to Cambridge Innovation Capital, had their investor summit and they had a reception on the Tuesday evening. So I went to that and it was great because they had some of their portfolio companies exhibiting. So Beyond Math, Pragmatic Semiconductor Dr. And CMR Surgical were there. So it was great to see them. And then Wednesday morning I did my regular slot, I've been doing it for years.

01:48Faye HollandI go in as a business expert, so to talk about marketing and planning and communications at the Impulse program. So I had about, I don't know, over 40 young entrepreneurs in that session, which is always a pleasure. And I think about it and I'm like, last week was an easy week compared to this week, so I shall tell you all about that next week. So what about you?

02:12James PartonMost weeks you put me to shame and this week is no different. I've only actually had a couple of days in the office since the last episode. But there's some really interesting collaboration conversations underway for both the Bradfield and the podcast, which I'm, yeah, really excited about. We'll see how those develop.

02:27Faye HollandAre you going to tell me what they are about the podcast or. Yeah, okay, fine. As you were.

02:33James PartonYeah, yeah. Need to know basis. It's a fast moving thing and all positive. So most of my time actually has been taken up by the great music festival in Brighton. So I think it's about the 10th.

02:42Antony BellingallYear of VIN in a row.

02:43James PartonThat's what I've been.

02:44Faye HollandOh, nice. What's the highlights then? What's it like for myself and anyone.

02:48James PartonElse who doesn't know it showcases new music. So it's mostly unsigned bands and you just wander around the city in different venues, which makes it really interesting and it's a bit hit and miss. Some stuff's amazing, some stuff is not so much. But my one tip, if you want it is. And I'm going to have to check my French pronunciation here, so Angie de Patrin is my tip. Now you've got a music degree.

03:08Faye HollandYeah.

03:09James PartonSo they are Marmites. So you either love them or hate them for our non UK listeners if they don't know what Marmite is. But yeah, they play semitonal music. Sorry, not semi microtonal music. Do you know what?

03:21Faye HollandNo, no, I mean I was classical music though. Yeah.

03:26James PartonSo it's bizarre. So it's. It sounds really jarring and they play. The drummer plays really odd time signatures as well. So yeah, like I say, you're either gonna love it or you're gonna be.

03:36Faye HollandFunny and not really selling it to it. Okay.

03:40James PartonBut. And you have to watch it on YouTube. Don't just listen to them on Spotify or something because their visuals are just something else. Check it out. Because if you thought guitar and drum based music had nowhere to go, then you are wrong. Search for them, their performance on KEXP. So look out for that on YouTube.

03:55Faye HollandOkay, thank you for that extra little tip there. That's super. Should we go back to what we're supposed to be talking about now and maybe cover a bit of news?

04:03James PartonYes, I will shoot music podcast away for a couple of weeks, but. So our first piece of news this week is from video game company Frontier Developments. They've released impressive trading updates which has sent their shares skywards. The Cambridge based Science Park Company's UK stock rose almost 16% and 53p higher to £3.81. Just hours after updating guidance for the year to May 31 was released. The success of Jurassic World Evolution 3 combined with strong ongoing sales across Frontier's other games has increased the board's expectations for revenue in financial year 26 to approximately 103 million pounds above previous guidance. So that's good news for them.

04:44Faye HollandAbsolutely. And we have a little bit of infrastructure news as well. The new Cambridge South Station begins operating on Sunday 28th June. It makes it our third train station in our very small but impactful city. So it's pretty big news. The economic benefits will be for thousands of commuters accessing the Cambridge biomedical campus and it will be obviously an extra resource for our local residents I'm still inclined to agree with David Cleveley though. That's Cambridge south and we've got another Cambridge south with King's Cross. I think our reach is just expanding. And maybe Manchester's Cambridge north as well. Who knows? Anyway, I've just gone off on a tangent, I feel.

05:28James PartonIs there a joke about getting back on track now?

05:30Faye HollandOh, that's so bad. That is so bad. You're on it today.

05:34James PartonAnd our final story is news related to the Oxford Cambridge growth corridor. King's College London and Cranfield University have signed an agreement as a first step towards a merger by bringing the two institutions together from August 2027. Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, said the combination of Cranfield and King's creates an extraordinarily powerful university. It holds potential for the Oxford to Cambridge growth corridor and for wider UK research capability and training. Bringing together two world class institutions and giving King's a place in the heart of one of our most important regions with science and technology.

06:12Faye HollandThat's pretty impressive that those two universities are merging. And I wonder whether that's going to be an indication of more things like that happening over the coming years. Because we know that a lot of universities, I'm not saying these two are, but a lot of universities are under pressure to do things differently. So that's definitely something to watch out for. So let's get on to this week's episode. We are speaking with Tim Robinson from techiast, who listeners no doubt will already know, but specifically this week we're going to dig a little bit deeper with him on the topic of FinTech, with additional guest Anthony Bellingal from iDempo.

06:58James PartonSo, Tim, Anthony, welcome to Cambridge Tech Podcast. We always like to start with an introduction. Tim, do you want to introduce yourself first? And Anthony, we'll come to you in a second.

07:07Tim RobinsonThanks very much, James and Faye and thanks for having me back on the podcast, I think for the third time. Yeah, I'm Tim Robinson. I'm chief operating officer of Techist. We're actually celebrating our 10th birthday this summer. Unbelievably, we're the regional tech cluster organization for east of England.

07:24Tim RobinsonOur primary sort of geographic focus has always been on Norfolk and Suffolk, but we do cover the region or we try to, and we do what I guess tech cluster organizations all around the UK and all around the world do, which is try to curate a community and a network of tech businesses, large, small and people who are just thinking about Getting going, looking at all the issues that really tech companies need to think about, whether that's access to finance, access to skills and talent and try to provide a platform to celebrate those businesses within the region and on a wider canvas.

08:03Faye HollandThat's brilliant. It's great to have you with us again, Tim. We're going to find out new things from you today, I hope. Anthony, thank you for joining us. Do you want to introduce yourself, please?

08:12Antony BellingallYeah. Thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to your podcast. My name's Anthony Bellingall, I'm a co founder of iDenfo Ltd. We're a Norwich based anti money laundering and know your customer software company, which basically means that we sell our products to financial institutions, to legal firms, accountancy firms and so on, where they can then perform a KYC on their end clients. And KYC Know youw Customer means basically we perform identity verification, name screening and risk rating assessments on them. We've been around since 2019, so we're just about seven years old and we've now got around 2,000 customers around the world. So we operate in about 15 countries globally now.

09:05James PartonExcellent. So yeah, really looking forward to this conversation. It's going to be fintech heavy, which is fantastic because it's not a topic we've covered a lot in the podcast to date. So Tim, we're obviously chatting ahead of the interview. Tell us about the origin of FinTech east and how the whole thing came about.

09:22Tim RobinsonSo thanks, James. In 2021, government published the Khalifa review of UK fintech, which was a big strategic report looking at how the UK stacks up against other ecosystems around the world in terms of its strengths in fintech. Looking at how the fintech sector or subsector, however you want to describe it, might grow, but it also looked at the kind of regional diversity of fintech ecosystems around the uk. And what we found when that report was published was that although all the usual suspects like London and Edinburgh and Manchester featured quite heavily, there were some real gaps as far as what we knew to be important regional fintech ecosystems.

10:17Tim RobinsonAnd especially in the east of England, which as we all know is a big geographic area with a number of smaller cities and big towns, but nothing on the scale of a Bristol or a Birmingham or a Manchester and therefore, for whatever reason it was left off. Scroll forward to Government's new Industrial Strategy published last year. You can clearly see that when we talk about, say, financial services, if we use that definition, financial services ecosystems, that somewhere like Norwich is absolutely leading the way in terms of the economic contribution that Financial Services makes to its overall economic landscape. So it's one of the highest ranked in terms of proportion of gva.

11:03Tim RobinsonBut somehow, despite that, despite the fact you've got a huge corporate interest of Aveva in Norwich, still employing over a thousand tech people and some really interesting fintech startups and scale ups, it just seems to get missed off some of the national indices. So what we've tried to do quite simply is to address that problem by really carefully mapping all of the fintech companies initially in Norfolk. And we had a project that ran through 20, 23, 24 to do that culminated in the publication of the Whitecap Norfolk and Norwich FinTech report. And then last year we did the same exercise in Suffolk.

11:49Tim RobinsonOne of the reasons we started with Suffolk as the next step is that as lots of people will probably know, we are on a trajectory towards devolution and to having a mayor in Norfolk and Suffolk in a couple of years time. And so it really makes absolute sense to take Norfolk and Suffolk together and then beyond that, we would look to really do the same exercise on the wider east of England, including Cambridge. But that's for the future. For now, what we've tried to do is encapsulate what's here today, looking at all aspects of the ecosystem, so startups, scale ups and corporates, universities and education and the skills piece, the public sector and then the kind of various ecosystem players.

12:36Tim RobinsonAnd what we found really is what we already knew, that the east of England is probably the UK's best kept secret in fintech and we just didn't have a vehicle to express that. And that's what we've been building over the last couple of years.

12:51Faye HollandIt's fascinating to be talking about a slightly different area to where we normally talk. I'm also interested in what's the differences you found for Norfolk and Suffolk. Were there any key differences or did you find a lot of similarities?

13:07Tim RobinsonSo I think there are more similarities than differences. Faye. Some years ago, pretty much when I started doing this role, I noticed that there was this real insurance and insuretech belt that runs from Norwich down through Ipswich and into London. I think in terms of differences, Norwich just has this really vibrant tech community. It's a small cluster, but it punches above its weight. For example, it always used to feature in the Tech Nation report as one of the most vibrant tech communities in the uk, in spite of its relatively small size. Whereas if you come down to Suffolk, actually the history of tech in Suffolk is more closely linked to bt who have their one of Their biggest R and D hubs globally still at a Dastrell park just outside Ipswich.

13:59Tim RobinsonSo there the focus has traditionally been on things like telecoms and networks, but that is changing as, and I'm sure we'll come onto this as we enter into this exciting world of AI and advanced connectivity technologies and tech overspill between the traditional tech sector and industries like financial services, energy, agriculture, logistics and so on.

15:14Faye HollandForeign.

15:22James PartonWe're keen to bring Anthony into the conversation, but just if you can bear with us a second more, Anthony, just a couple of quick supplementaries on the white cap report that you mentioned there, Tim. So we're a couple of years into that and there was a couple of forward looking forecasts in there. One in particular which was a prediction around the sector being worth around 100 million by 2027 and it creating 600 new roles in the region. So as we're a couple of years into that three year prediction, from the data and the conversations you're seeing, are we on track for that? Are we behind, are we ahead? What's the kind of the general feeling?

15:56Tim RobinsonThe short answer to that is that we're probably ahead. We're certainly on track and ahead on the overall economic contribution from Fintech. You only need to take one or two companies in Norwich to see and I'm thinking of a business like EPOS now, for example. EPOS now, their last published accounts at Companies House grew by a third in one year. That's a dramatic increase. It just goes to show the sort of flywheel effect you get when you get one or two successful companies in a cluster. I think on the number of startups.

16:32Tim RobinsonI could give you the cheat answer, which is that when you add Suffolk in, you get to that number much more quickly, which is the point that we're trying to make about joining the wider regional ecosystem up, that you get much better indication of strength when you look at it beyond just one small city.

16:51James PartonYeah, no, that's great. And the final, I think data point that was interesting was the report highlighted that outside of London, Norfolk has the highest proportion of female founders of tech businesses. Just wondered if there are. Was there any insight in terms of why that might be?

17:06Tim RobinsonI think part of it's to do with role models. So there are some really positive female founder role models in the Norfolk tech ecosystem and not just in the companies actually, but also within sectors like for example, within the universities, you've had really senior people, pro vice chancellors at the university, you've got execs within companies like Aviva pretty Good on gender diversity, I would say. And so I think there are some really positive female role models there. We've also had, for example, a female chair of the old local enterprise partnership who's herself a tech founder, CJ Green. So you don't have to look very far to see women who are ambitious and doing well leading tech or tech related organizations. So I think that really helps.

17:59Faye HollandThat's great to hear. So, Anthony, let's bring you into the conversation here because we've talked about the sector better overall. What we'd like to do now is find out a little bit more about what it's like being a business in Norwich. What has been your experience to date?

18:16Antony BellingallObviously, Norwich is a very good place to live and to work. I'm from Norfolk originally, but my career has taken me to live in places like Japan and Singapore. I was living there for around 12 years, but I came back. Norwich has a habit of pulling you back. But what's been helpful for me is that while maintaining the connections I've had throughout the world and the knowledge and the skills that I picked up, particularly in the compliance space. Norfolk and Norwich is still a place to base a business, to have the accountancy and legal and other type of support that you need while also being easily accessible with London to meet with customers. We've also benefited that we've done some research and development collaboration with the University of East Anglia.

19:10Antony BellingallWe worked with their School of Mathematics and AI to develop a hologram detection system for identity cards which we've since commercialized and used within our product. So there's been a whole series of areas, both academic and commercial, that being in Norwich has benefited us.

19:29Faye HollandYeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think it's replicating that same level of community you talked about, the lawyers and the professional services and that support ecosystem that surrounds you. But also leveraging the academics too is really important. How have you found in terms of partnerships and business sales, is there anything that you've specifically experienced there from being based in Norwich?

19:55Antony BellingallWe're a bit of an unusual company in the sense that the vast majority of our sales are actually overseas. A lot of my network and our connections are across the Middle east and Asia. So when we started building the product, we initially tailored our sales to those parts of the world. But two, three years ago we decided to launch in the UK and of course we chose Norwich as the place to try the system out. But it's been helpful being in Norwich because it does act as a very sort of microcosm incubator, if you like, for what we learn here, we can then apply to the rest of the market on a national level.

20:36James PartonWhen you think about the classic challenges of being a founder at an early stage business, the two probably at the top of the list are things like talent, building the teams and then I guess access to investors and capital. It sounds like you've just got a very international, outward looking approach to everything in terms of building the company. So would you argue it doesn't really matter where you're geographically based anymore or are you dipping into the local talent pool or are you hiring distributed teams? How are you approaching the talent acquisition side of things and then also access to investment?

21:09Antony BellingallI suppose we do have a very global outlook and from that point of view it's enabled me to be based in Norwich. We were here throughout Covid. I was still able to work even though previously we'd been traveling a lot for sort of consultancy assignments globally. In terms of our talent pool, we have hired people from both from this country and overseas. We have taken people in the past from the University of East Anglia, we've offered internships to bring people in, particularly on the marketing side where there's a lot of skills within the Norwich Business School to bring people in there. So we found that a useful source of recruitment.

21:51Antony BellingallIn terms of investment, I think it's probably a little bit more mixed because the type of industry that we're in, it's an industry that you've got to know and understand compliance and on the requirements around anti money laundering to really appreciate the business case that we are offering. It has been challenging within the Norfolk angel community to find people who can match that. We've had better luck within Cambridge and within London for it.

22:22James PartonThat's really interesting, Anthony. You're going through your Series A fundraising at the moment and one thing I just wanted to see if you've experienced. A lot of recent guests have been telling us how AI is fundamentally changing how they're thinking about building their startups. AI now can do so much more heavy lifting from the admin side of the business through to even writing production code. How are you thinking about that? How are you planning your growth and does that conversation come up with VCs around your series A?

22:50Antony BellingallClearly there are huge advantages in AI when it comes to writing production code. Previously we had talked in the company about a major project to uplift our entire backend infrastructure. That was originally scheduled to take a year, but with the advent of AI tools we can now accelerate to do that. In as little as three months. So the productivity gains from AI are enormous within the compliance space itself. From a functional point of view, regulations have grown and grown in recent years. This has meant that banks and insurance companies have had to devote more and more attention to compliance. AI gives them an opportunity to streamline some of that. Can some decisions on whether you onboard someone or not be taken by a machine first and then checked by a human?

23:46Antony BellingallThis is the kind of thinking that we, as a software vendor, have been putting a lot of thought into. My own background is in compliance. I'm a sort of a functional compliance person who's developed a technical solution, rather than a technologist who's developed compliance solution. So we've always tried to keep AI at the forefront of thinking because it's going to radically change everything. And if we don't invest in this and we don't think about the best ways that we can adapt AI in order to benefit onboarding procedures, someone else will and will be swept away. I think when it comes to investors, they of course, recognize this from a general point of view, and the old models and the old hooks that you used to sell yourself on as a founder are changing.

24:37Antony BellingallPreviously, SaaS was the magic word that seems to have fallen a little bit, and now it's AI enablement. What are you doing to really use AI? So the stories that we are telling them, the narrative that we're giving, are very much like I've just explained that we are utilizing AI to look at particular pain points in compliance, the operational cost, how our system can be used to reduce that cost and manage decisions much quicker. And that's the story that investors are very interested in.

25:10Faye HollandYeah, it definitely feels like we're entering a new phase of how you build and develop a business. And I think what you've just suggested confirms that too. I have one final question for you, Anthony, which is you've been doing this now since 2019, you said. So in your seventh year, what has been your biggest learning that you can share with the listeners?

25:31Antony BellingallSo before I started the company in 2019, I had a corporate setup. I used to work for Norwich Union back in the day, and then I worked for other software companies and major financial institutions. The decision to start IDENTFO was based on the fact that having experienced these compliance issues on either side, on the customer side and on the vendor side, I felt that it could be done better. And also, of course, I was fed up of making money for other people. I've never regretted starting a business. It's, of course, created a lot of challenges, a lot of turbulence. I knew nothing about the importance of marketing and PR seven years ago. Now this is in my mind one of the most important things that we need in order to scale the business properly.

26:26Antony BellingallThe most important learning, I think, is how you keep your mind flexible, how you never take for granted what you previously learned. You're constantly unlearning and relearning and that's the joy of being an entrepreneur.

26:40Faye HollandYeah, I was having a conversation with someone earlier on and they said it's not about businesses pivoting anymore, it's about pirouetting because you're constantly changing and going in different directions. So that's brilliant. Anthony, thank you very much for your insights there. And I guess the final questions are going to come back to Tim on what's next for FinTech East.

27:00Tim RobinsonThis year, 2026, our focus is really going to be on building on what we've been doing around fintech east for the last couple of years. When we commissioned that Whitecap report back in 2024, it's really helped us. It's been a real magnet actually for interest from all kinds of organizations and partners, including central government. It really helped us engage with DBT Department for Business and Trade. It's helped us engage with international partners. But building a stronger magnet, that's the story for 2026. And the starting point for that is we're launching a new platform later this month, FinTech East.com which incidentally and I should credit James Blower, who a few years ago had the bright idea that the east of England needed a fintech cluster and set up the URL and claim that territory and built a minimum viable website.

27:58Tim RobinsonWe're taking that mantle forward with FinTech East.com so thanks to James very much for initiating. But beyond this year we really need to build it into more of a machine because if you look around the UK's fintech clusters, they are all different and some of them are bigger than others. If you add together the populations of the biggest built up areas in east of England like Cambridge and Norwich and Ipswich, you still end up with something that's not even going to be in the sort of top five UK cities. We don't have a massive city so we really have to connect things up. We're really interested, I think in what's going on in the north of Essex at the moment around Colchester and the University of Essex and there are some really good fintech businesses down there.

28:45Tim RobinsonThere's obviously some fantastic fintech businesses in Cambridge So we'd really love to see that kind of go more regional. But yeah, on a practical level, running some events and networking and having some community mixer activity that brings people together, getting some more delegations into the region and getting out and about. We will be at London Tech Week again this year. I'll be speaking on Regional Tech Ecosystems on the Monday and I'll certainly be talking about FinTech East. Lots of inward activity and then lots of activity outside the region. And hopefully with all the partners that we have involved, even at this early stage, it'll be a team effort.

29:25Faye HollandSounds really great. And I know just talking about Cambridge specifically, we have got those good companies too. We've got the Luminances, the Bangos. We had renewal acquired by GoCompear, so there's a lot of stories out there already. It doesn't matter about the size. Yes, we're always going to be smaller when you add up the constituent parts, but the impact is what actually makes the difference. It sounds really exciting. And keep us informed on how you get on.

29:52Tim RobinsonWill do. Thank you.

29:59VoiceoverToday's show was produced by Joe Donaghy of Cambridge TV and supported by our media partner, Business Weekly. The Cambridge Tech Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms and on cambridgetechpodcast.com if you've enjoyed this podcast, please give it a five star review. It'll really help others discover the show.

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