Scottish Widows has inducted the second wave of future tech stars at its Dundee Tech School, following the success its first year of trainees achieved.

The latest group of 24 digital skills students will work together on developing new ‘gamification’ content for banking and pension apps for Scottish Widows, as well as Lloyds Banking Group’s other brands including Halifax and Bank of Scotland.

The content that the students design will help more people connect their pensions and make it easier for them to plan their financial future, much like the popular Pensions Mirror tool, which was released last year that has already had more than 500,000 views.

The students, who are training for roles including experience designers, product owners, quality engineers, and software engineers, begin with an intensive eight-week training and development course in association with tech training organisation QA and Scottish Widows’ fintech specialists.

The programme will then provide participants with a permanent role and a competitive salary, designed to embed participants into the Scottish Widows business for the long term and rapidly teach them the skills necessary to excel in a career in technology.

Lyam Walburn, a Tech School graduate who is now a junior developer with Embark, said: “My time in the Tech School was transformative. 

“The level of training and investment in us as developers was a massive confidence booster and it really helped prepare me for moving into the job.”

The Tech School, which is being supported by a £1.2m training grant from Scottish Enterprise, will also collaborate with the Universities of Dundee and Abertay and members of the local gaming community on ‘GAMEJAM’, a hackathon event with an emphasis on gaming.

GAMEJAM will see Tech School recruits and university students collaborate on a series of challenges designed to get them sharing knowledge and teaching each other, set to be hosted by the Victoria & Albert Museum in Dundee on 4 March next year.

The work is a key part of the Tech School’s commitment to create a pipeline of 150 new technology-led jobs in the city and address the current gap in tech jobs in the UK.

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Graduates from the initial 2023 intake – who collectively moved into roles within Embark – have already gone on to pursue further qualifications alongside their employment, with the Tech School itself being recognised for its work as a finalist for the Innovation Award at the Scottish Financial Services Awards.

Jackie Leiper, managing director at Scottish Widows, said: “We’re extremely proud of the great work last year’s talented group have already delivered, including brand new gamification content in our app to make it more engaging and user friendly.

“It’s important for us that this investment in technology directly benefits the local area, and we’re looking forward to more collaboration with Scottish Enterprise to help Dundee maintain its reputation as a centre of excellence for digital innovation in the UK.”