Maintaining the UK’s leading global position in FinTech
Roberto Napolitano is CMO at Innovate Finance
In 2023, despite economic challenges, the UK’s FinTech sector remained resilient, securing over $5 billion in investment, second only to the US and more than all European countries combined1. This solidifies the UK’s position as the second-highest recipient of global capital in FinTech, underscoring its leadership in financial innovation. Looking ahead, as technology advances, maintaining this leadership is crucial and collaboration among industry players, regulators, and government is key.
There are many initiatives Innovate Finance spearheads in supporting the growth of the FinTech sector, whether it is attracting capital, ensuring smarter regulation, or driving further diversity of talent.
An example is the recent launch of the Unicorn Council for UK FinTech (UCFT)™, a coalition of ‘unicorns’ aimed at accelerating growth in the sector. Co-chaired by Innovate Finance and industry leaders like Zilch, Revolut, and Clearbank, the UCFT wants to provide key policy recommendations to the government on UK regulatory environment, capital markets, R&D, investment schemes, VAT and other matters that are crucial to maintain the global leadership of UK FinTech.
Innovate Finance continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the UK’s FinTech landscape, ensuring it remains dynamic and inclusive, benefiting both consumers and businesses
Looking at the months ahead, we have worked with our members to produce a General Election Fintech Manifesto that outlines the strategy we need to implement to ensure the UK remains the best place for FinTech businesses to scale and prosper. The three areas of focus of the Manifesto are:
1. To become the world’s first smart data economy by leveraging technologies like open data, AI, and blockchain, and pioneering smart data initiatives. Recent advancements in legislation, such as The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, support this evolution.
2. To secure the UK’s digital finance sector by combating payment fraud, which accounts for 40% of all UK crime and whose majority originate from social media platforms. Smarter regulations and collaboration among stakeholders are vital to ensuring consumer and business safety in the digital finance sector.
3. To embrace new technology and regulations: as AI continues to drive innovation, updating regulatory frameworks is necessary. Investments in growth capital and enhancing IPO markets are essential for ongoing innovation.
Moreover, to strengthen the UK’s FinTech ecosystem, Innovate Finance spearheads various initiatives that aim to drive further diversity and inclusivity of talent, essential for the UK FinTech sector to continue to prosper.
One example is our annual Women in FinTech Powerlist shining a spotlight on +250 women and 45 standout leaders across 8 categories that are making significant and impactful contributions to the FinTech ecosystem. In addition to this and given the success of last year, we had the privilege to launch our second Pride in FinTech™ to champion the incredible LGBTQIA+ community making an impact in UK FinTech with the support of leading organisations such as Google, Zopa Bank and Alloy.
This year, we are also collaborating with Zopa Bank on the first Pride in FinTech Barometer 2024 that wants to evaluate the current state of affairs for the LGBTQIA+ community working in FinTech and provide actionable recommendations to FinTech companies to assess what more can be done to make a tangible difference.
In summary, sustained collaboration and innovation are vital for maintaining the UK’s leadership in FinTech. Through initiatives like the UCFT, the General Election Fintech Manifesto, our leading initiatives in diversity and inclusion, we want to play a pivotal role in shaping the UK’s FinTech landscape, ensuring it remains dynamic and inclusive, and benefiting both consumers and businesses with more transparent and more democratic financial services for all.
Endnote
1. Please see Innovate Finance’s ‘FinTech Investment Landscape 2023’
Innovate Finance is the independent industry body for UK FinTech. Its mission is to accelerate the UK’s leading role in the financial services sector by directly supporting the next generation of technology-led innovators to create a more inclusive, more democratic and more effective financial services sector that works better for everyone. Innovate Finance’s membership and partnership community ranges from seed stage startups to scale up and high growth FinTechs; from multinational financial institutions to big tech firms; and from investors to global FinTech hubs. Innovate Finance supports our members and the wider financial innovation ecosystem by promoting policy and regulation that allows innovation to thrive, encouraging talent, diversity and skills into the sector, facilitating the scaling journey, fostering business opportunity, partnerships and domestic and international growth, and driving capital into UK FinTech. By bringing together and connecting the most forward-thinking participants in financial services, Innovate Finance is helping create a financial services sector that is more transparent, more sustainable and more inclusive.
More information at www.innovatefinance.com.
