The Managing Director of FinTech at Legal & General, Nick Frankland, has joined the Board of NorthInvest.
As a senior director at Legal & General, Nick Frankland specialises in identifying high potential initiatives and start-ups disrupting the financial services sector in the UK and US markets and sits on the board of a number of Legal and General investments and companies.
Nick said “I am delighted to add my support to NorthInvest in order to help businesses to “scale up”. Legal and General is a very active investor in the region and our mission to be economically and socially useful is part of our inclusive capitalism drive. Over my career there has not been a time when that mission has been more important.”
The appointment comes as NorthInvest explores an early stage start-up focused support initiative in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Matt Cooling, founder of Inditra, a Leeds-based Business Strategy & Innovation Consultancy, and former UKI Innovation Programme Lead for Cisco, also joins the NorthInvest team in an advisory role.
Both roles will involve assisting NorthInvest in developing a COVID-19 response for the organisation to benefit local early stage tech and digital start-ups.
These additions to the team and Board represent further growth for NorthInvest, following a successful first quarter for the investment facilitator with four investment rounds supported and over £2m raised for Northern start-ups.
Founding Board Director, Helen Oldham, said: “We’re delighted to welcome both Nick Frankland and Matt Cooling to our Board and operations team, respectively. Both bring valuable experience in the transformation and innovation space and will help NorthInvest further adapt to safeguard digital economic growth during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.”
Founder of NorthInvest, Professor Adam Beaumont, added: “Post-COVID we recognise the urgency to stimulate trade, growth and seed-level investment for innovative start-ups. We are dedicated to supporting start-ups to become scale-ups and the multinationals of the future. We look forward to developing – rapidly – a recovery response that enables this and acknowledges the urgency and importance of this mission.”
