UK Fintech industry to play major part post-Brexit

freddie achom brexit

The UK’s burgeoning Fintech industry is likely to play a large part in helping the country retain its status post-Brexit.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding exactly what leaving the European Union will mean for the UK on a long-term basis, moves are underway to bolster Fintech as a likely saviour.

Successful industry

With an increasing number of multi-nationals moving significant amounts of jobs away from the UK in the wake of the issuing of Article 50 by the UK government in March 2017, the country faces an uncertain future.

One sector that is coming out on top if the Fintech industry, in which the UK has been a leading force. Now, a number of the world’s leading banks and businesses are coming together to get behind the UK’s Fintech sector.

World leader in tech

The UK is a world-leader in technological innovation and efforts must be made to allow this to continue. Banks supporting Fintech start-ups is a positive and important step in this process. Entrepreneurs have also made promises to stay in the country rather than moving elsewhere in Europe. This is also vital for the future prosperity of our economy.

More than 20 major financial institutions, including Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays, along with Level39 (the Canary Wharf-based Fintech hub) have signed up to the idea of helping the UK remain an innovative hub of successful start-ups.

Ideal place to do business

The Head of Level39, Ben Brabyn, believes that now is the time to show the global community that London will continue to be at the forefront of the Fintech industry, saying: “London… [is the] leading Fintech ecosystem in the world.”

While market uncertainty continues in almost every sector during the impenetrable Brexit negotiations, there is no reason why we can’t start telling a more positive story about London and the UK as a whole.

As a country, the UK is still in a good position to continue to encourage entrepreneurial spirit, start-up businesses and technological innovative thinking.

Developing global technology

John Elliott is the head of Fintech and Innovation at Investec. He agrees that the UK can still lead the way, saying: “…technologies built in the UK are designed to work globally, whereas other ecosystems tend to simply work domestically.”

This global awareness and open-minded outlook, combined with our historically excellent technologically skilled developers in the UK, should mean that we can continue to be a major player after Brexit.

Executives agree

High level executives from companies like Mastercard and Aviva are also publicly on board with the movement to support UK Fintech.

In addition, the UK Treasury and Tech City UK (an industry group) have together created the Fintech Delivery Panel (FDP) recently. This has been designed to increase support from across the financial industry to promote Fintech in the UK post Brexit.

It will be interesting to see how Fintech start-ups continue to cement the UK’s position as a leading force in technological innovation.

– Freddie Achom

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