Scottish National Investment Bank – maximising the opportunity for Scotland
The Scottish National Investment Bank was launched in November 2020, with a vision to be a development investment bank that provides patient (long-term) capital to businesses and projects throughout Scotland to deliver impact investment and support the development of a fairer, more sustainable economy.
As well as its role in investing its own allocated public capital, the Bank has a clear ambition to amplify its positive impact by encouraging additional private capital to invest alongside it, to support the delivery of their three defined missions for Scotland:
Achieving a just transition to net zero by 2045
Extending equality of opportunity through improving places by 2040
Harnessing innovation to enable our people to flourish by 2040
The Bank became a member of Scottish Financial Enterprise last year and we recently brought together senior leaders from the Bank with senior leaders from a range of our other member firms to discuss how we can collaborate to ensure that we collectively maximise the opportunity for Scotland that their creation provides.
The Bank’s position in the financial ecosystem
The creation of the Bank provides a unique and powerful opportunity to accelerate and underpin broader aims. Their stated missions align very closely to the four key themes of the financial services sector strategy developed with members of SFE and published in 2021. Both organisations have also spoken repeatedly the potential that exists to accelerate positive outcomes and impact through more effective collaboration across the sector.
For this collaboration to happen, it’s crucial that we build on initial conversations and identify some early, practical areas where different organisations in the ecosystem can work systematically together, from collaborating on deals and investments, to piloting and scaling impact investment projects.
The nature of the Bank’s public capital and mission-led priorities means they can underpin relevant projects and blend their capital with other types of finance to improve viability and return (both economic, and social/ environmental) for shared benefit.
Manufacturing supply chain opportunities
Scotland has some key strengths and assets in areas of potential global interest. This is especially the case in relation to two of the Bank’s missions – enabling a just transition and harnessing innovation. Both of these would benefit from our sector developing our thinking and practical proposals focused on developing the manufacturing supply chain here in Scotland and understanding how that supply chain development can accelerate the transition and missions while also providing direct positive outcomes for people and planet.
This area offers huge potential to deliver not only domestic benefit but also international competitiveness and a contribution to global thinking on how to enable a successful, just transition.
Skills challenge
Referring to the Scottish Government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) and the focus on skills, another key opportunity relates to the role that finance can play to influence the skills agenda not only for our sector, but also the wider economy. This includes areas linked to the manufacturing supply chain – for example investing in the development of new ‘green’ skills and jobs, reskilling people who might be displaced from traditional manufacturing roles.
More broadly, as recognised in NSET, a stronger skills base and better aligned education and skills system for our future economy – for example with a focus on digital and technical skills, would improve investment and productivity.
Growth and productivity in the wider economy
The final area highlighted in discussion was a broad theme, linked to other points above. How can we, as an industry, develop our shared thinking around how to deliver sustainable growth, inclusion and productivity in our economy?
Leaders at the discussion feel there is a clear opportunity to implement practical and innovative projects to address some of the long-term structural issues holding the UK and Scotland back.
Collaboration and innovation between the Bank, other financial institutions, and both UK and Scottish Governments can help to identify and scale practical, innovative solutions to support equality of opportunity, business investment and productivity gains that support the Bank’s social, economic and environmental missions, while also addressing some of the long-term structural issues that have been holding the UK and Scottish economies back.
For all the above areas, it’s critical that we realise the huge and potentially transformational opportunity that exists from having this new keystone institution within the Scottish financial ecosystem. Over the coming year, we’ll be creating further opportunities for engagement and connection between the Bank and our other members. Whichever area of opportunity feels most relevant or inspiring to you, the success of the Bank, and what that can do for our country and our sector is reliant on successful connection and collaboration, so please get involved to find out more about you and your firm can support them and us with our shared missions.
Scottish National Investment Bank released their first full year results last week. Click here to see their results in full.