Jack charts course for financial services ECONOMY: MCCONNELL'S

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, May 14, 2006 | by Ken Symon Business Editor

IMPROVING mobile technologies to support Scotland's financial services is at the heart of a joint government-industry strategy for the financial services industry.

The Financial Services Advisory Board (Fisab) strategy, which will be unveiled tomorrow, will also include further moves to raise the profile of Scotland as a leading international financial services centre.

It will also seek to improve skills, encourage and support innovation and best practice and strengthen the competitiveness of the industry's Scottish supplier base.

First Minister Jack McConnell, who chairs the board, said: "Government cannot run the financial services industry, nor should we try to.

"But I think that the person in this seat can play a role in creating a culture and infrastructure that will help the industry to thrive and I have tried very hard to do that this past couple of years." The report will highlight achievements made as a result of the governmentindustry co-operation on Fisab, among those, helping secure more direct flights from Scotland to other major world financial centres, including a new route between Edinburgh and Geneva.

It will also point out that it has helped to promote improvements in mobile phone coverage on the Glasgow-Edinburgh rail line.

John Campbell, the Fisab industry deputy chair and chairman of Scottish Financial Enterprise, said that a key achievement in the board's first year was in "training the trainers" to rise the profile of the industry.

More than 600 people, including careers advisers and many affected by redundancies in other industries, had been on familiarisation visits to companies within the industry.

About 200 pupils and students had been introduced to the industry through "e-mentoring relationships" with staff from 10 Scottish- based companies.

The board had also been successful in securing priority industry status for financial services within Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International.

The First Minister said that the model of close co-operation between government and industry had been based on the Pilot model a body linking the oil and gas sector and government.

McConnell added that he believed that the work done since 2003 had gone a long way in helping to do away with the traditional image of Scottish Labour not supporting the financial services sector, nor understanding its importance to the Scottish economy.

In the past, some industry leaders had been critical of Scottish politicians particularly of some Labour MSPs for their lack of support of financial services.

He said: "I think that our position has been far and away the most consistent and resolute in supporting Scottish industry and the contribution it makes to the Scottish economy." Campbell, who in his "day job" is managing director of State Street, said that co- operation with the government had improved greatly over the time of the working group on financial services and the first year of the board.

He stressed the importance of industry representatives, politicians and civil servants working together for the good of the sector.

And he added that a few years ago the sector had been facing problems because it was growing so fast and there had been difficulties in recruiting employees.

The development of Glasgow as a financial services district, said McConnell, had alleviated the problems and had provided the industry with another pool of well-educated labour to draw on.

Campbell said that one of the keys to the future would be improving transport links so that there would be a much greater mobility of labour.

Scotland had to enable people to travel easily in any direction, he said, if it wished to further improve the labour base of the industry.

Meanwhile, future skills were being improved through work with pupils and students, which was continuing to raise the knowledge and profile of the financial services industry.

The latest figures show that financial services generate pounds- 6 billion for the Scottish economy, or more than 6-per cent of gross domestic product.

The sector accounts for more than 9-per cent of Scottish jobs, employing 113,000 directly and around 90,000 more in related industries.

In the last five years, the industry in Scotland grew by 36-per cent four times faster than the overall Scottish economy and more than twice as fast as the UK financial services industry as a whole.

The First Minister said he did not believe that the responsibility for regulating the financial services industry should pass from London to Scotland.

"I am a glass-half-full sort of person. I am not seeking to gain the powers that someone else has, I am looking to see what I can do with the power that I have already got." He said he believed that there were advantages in Scotland not having responsibility for the regulation of the industry but on being able to concentrate on what it could do to support it.

This included work on infrastructure issues, such as transport, on skills and on boosting the profile of the industry around the world with a clear set of messages.