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UK FinTech State of the NationAbout Department for International Trade (DIT) DIT secure UK and global prosperity by promoting and financing international trade and investment, and championing free trade. We are an international economic department, responsible for: bringing together policy, promotion and financial expertise to break down barriers to trade and investment, and help businesses succeed delivering a new trade policy framework for the UK as we leave the EU promoting British trade and investment across the world building the global appetite for British goods and services About HM Treasury (HMT) HM Treasury is the governments economic and finance ministry, maintaining control over public spending, setting the direction of the UKs economic policy and working to achieve strong and sustainable economic growth. Responsibilities include: public spending: including departmental spending, public sector pay and pension, annually managed expenditure (AME) and welfare policy, and capital investment financial services policy: including banking and financial services regulation, financial stability, and ensuring competitiveness in the City strategic oversight of the UK tax system: including direct, indirect, business, property, personal tax, and corporation tax the delivery of infrastructure projects across the public sector and facilitating private sector investment into UK infrastructure ensuring the economy is growing sustainably About Innovate Finance Innovate Finance is an independent membership association that represents the UKs global FinTech community. More than 250 global members have joined the Innovate Finance ecosystem to date. These companies range from seed stage startups to global financial institutions and professional services firms. All benefit from Innovate Finances leading position as a single point of access to promote enabling policy and regulation, talent development, and business opportunity and investment capital.About the document and acknowledgments The FinTech State of the Nation is a comprehensive summary of the UKs FinTech industry to help inform stakeholders for trade and investment and demonstrate the UKs attractiveness as a FinTech destination. The brochure convenes knowledge and perspectives from industry leaders across the domestic FinTech ecosystem. This collection of expert views broadly covers the UKs past successes, current state, and future objectives in key areas that include: demand, capital, regulation and policy, and talent. The editors are thankful to all contributors to this document. The time dedicated to sharing their knowledge and experience of the sector is of huge value to the UK and the FinTech community. Chief Editors: Tomas Helm Head of FinTech at the Department for International Trade Alex Low FinTech Specialist at the Department for International Trade Joshua Townson Policy and Membership at Innovate Finance 3 UK FinTech State of the NationPreface The Rt Hon Liam Fox MP Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade UK FinTech State of the Nation 4The positive impact of technology on the financial services sector in the United Kingdom is unprecedented globally. Technology has the power to increase transparency and efficiency, reduce cost, and give the most vulnerable access to financial services. Society and businesses both stand to gain from these changes, as incumbents are challenged by the new wave of digital innovation. The UK has long been at the forefront of financial services. However, in more recent times, the sectors positive response to the fourth industrial revolution has truly set us apart. The perfect storm caused by growing technology demand, right touch regulation, and customer empowerment in financial services, coupled with the sectors response to the financial crisis, has fuelled FinTechs rapid growth in the UK and its expansion globally. The UK is the leading global FinTech hub with a thriving ecosystem and international talent pool spanning the whole country. With an increasing number of FinTech firms exporting globally from the UK, we are continuing to set the global standard on the application of technology, and more broadly, innovation in financial services. Using key stakeholders from across the UKs FinTech ecosystem, this document tells us the story of how the UKs FinTech sector has emerged as the global leader it is today, and why this will continue in the future. 5 UK FinTech State of the NationForeword The Rt Hon John Glen MP Economic Secretary to the Treasury I am proud that the UK has been recognised as the best place in the world to start and grow a FinTech firm, and I am committed to ensuring that this remains the case. 6 UK FinTech State of the NationThe foundation of our success lies in our leading international financial services sector, combined with a strong consumer appetite for innovative products and services and a regulatory environment that leads the world in the support it provides for innovation. So, it is no surprise the UK is a leading global FinTech hub, and one that promises to go from strength to strength in the coming years. As the FinTech sector matures, on the back of an increasing demand for technology in financial services, the importance of the sector in sustaining growth will increase further. The UK government recognises the positive impact that FinTech has had on financial services, making it easier, cheaper and faster for consumers and businesses to access products that better meet their needs. FinTech also addresses the needs of underserved markets, including the financially excluded, and it helps to tie together an increasingly interconnected world, promoting trade and global growth. This document describes the actions that the government, regulators and industry have taken to stimulate and sustain the growth of our FinTech Sector. I hope youll agree with me that all of this creates a compelling rationale for entrepreneurs to set up their next FinTech venture in the UK and for investors to choose a UK-based FinTech firm for their next major investment. 7 UK FinTech State of the NationContents 8 UK FinTech State of the NationPREFACE 4 FOREWORD 6 AN OVERVIEW OF THE UK FINTECH SECTOR 10 THE UK AS A TECH CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE 15 REGIONAL ANAL YSIS - FINTECH ACROSS THE UK 17 THE UKS INVESTMENT ENVIRONMENT 23 FINTECH INVESTMENT IN THE UK 25 A VIEW FROM THE REGULA TOR 28 REGULA TION: THE BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE 30 FINTECH T ALENT 3. Smaller scale, speculative investments in emerging tech, like AI. Total investment and number of deals in digital tech companies have risen significantly since 2012. From 984 million in 2012, spread over 870 deals to 3.3 billion in 2016 over 2645 deals. Ambitious tech companies increasingly seek out smart capital. This investment comes hand in hand with support from people who have experienced the challenges of accelerated growth and understand how to help a company develop from initial proof of concept to mass- market growth. International investment acts as a catalyst for global connections bringing together companies and investors from across the world. This stimulates worldwide network building, which in turn contributes to the emergence of ground-breaking global companies. 15 UK FinTech State of the NationTech transformation in financial services Financial services is being disrupted in a number of ways by technology. This section explores the impacts of tech talent, and emerging tech adoption. Tech skills are being used across a diverse range of sectors aside from technology, including financial services, professional services and architecture and engineering. Using LinkedIn data from the UKs 23 million members showed that 2.2 million people claimed to have tech skills in their profile. Tech Nations research found that tech skills are highly transferable 36% of members now working in tech moved from non-tech jobs. 7% moved from professional services, 5% from financial services and insurance and 3% from media and entertainment. For a long time London has been the European capital of finance. In the East of the city, hundreds of financial institutions dominate the skyline and the economy. However, FinTech is not the exclusive preserve of the capital. The next largest regions for FinTech are the South East and East of England, which surround the capital. When broken down, this geographic bias is unsurprising. London has always been home to the UKs and Europes most dominant financial services. It is also the centre of governance and financial regulation nationally. In an industry so dependent on legal rules, being close to regulators is invaluable. Equally, almost all of the UKs premier FinTech accelerators are based in the East End. It is therefore unsurprising, that 85% of the accelerators attended by UK FinTech firms are in London. These pull factors add up, and go some way to explain Londons dominance in the field. Yet some firms are blossoming outside the capital. Durham-based Atom Bank is revolutionising commercial lending. Its customer-centric approach to banking makes getting a personal mortgage or loan easier for consumers. Even more geographically surprising is Penarth-based Wealthify, an investment platform for everyone. Last year the company expanded from the UK having raised 2.14 million in investment. Initiatives like FinTech North have also sprung up to showcase the best FinTech companies the Northern Powerhouse has to offer. Tech Nations FinTech programme - supporting UK growth Tech Nations sector-specific FinTech programme is aimed at company founders. In 2018, through a 24 hour induction, series of in-depth learning sessions, networking events and a three-day international showcase trip, founders became part of the very first Tech Nation FinTech cohort. Last year was an exceptionally strong year for investment in the UK FinTech sector as it attracted a record 2 billion in VC funding, including many weighty deals, indicating a maturing ecosystem. But nearly half of the UKs high- growth FinTech firms are still at seed stage, and we need to feed the pipeline. This is why Tech Nation has decided to target this programme at bridge-stage startups. Gerard Grech CEO at Tech Nation 16 UK FinTech State of the NationRegional Analysis - FinT ech across the UK The UK is the undisputed FinTech capital of the world. This position has been built on 3 key factors: the strength of the UK in financial services, the nature of UK consumers and the UK regulatory environment. FinTech businesses in the UK benefit from its skills in financial services, its network of supporting service businesses, and its draw as a place for international investment and capital raising. These factors have turned the UK into an incredibly attractive place for innovative businesses like Zopa to grow. UK consumers are also some of the most digitally savvy in the world, sitting behind only the US in terms of their uptake of digital commerce. UK customers, in general, are very open to trying new and innovative financial services products and services that take advantage of new consumer technologies. The UK benefits from a unique combination of one of the most advanced and robust regulatory regimes in the world, but one that is also very supportive of innovation in financial services, fostering competition in the sector and providing consumers with more choice. Zopa has benefited from this approach - through both the FCAs bespoke peer-to-peer lending regulations, and the PRAs new bank startup unit. The FCAs regulatory sandbox the concept of which I worked closely with the regulator on in the Blackett Review on FinTech, commissioned by George Osborne has become a blueprint for fostering innovation around the world.” Giles Andrews OBE Co-Founder incumbents trialled FinTech partnerships to assess feasibility and viability; and some others decided to fine tune their business models after exit, choosing to give up the “regulated activity” element of their business model to becoming a pure innovative technology infrastructure player. What all of them got in common was the rigour and challenge from the regulator around risks and controls and the ability to demonstrate that technological innovation can deliver consumer and/ or market benefit in an innovative and safe way. The regulatory scrutiny of business models in the sandbox and results of sandbox testing, helped a number of FinTechs to have productive conversations with investors and future partners, including incumbents. And the FCA has benefitted too. It is instructive to see how the FCAs experience gained from the sandbox is feeding through to policy. The FCAs recent perimeter guidance consultation on cryptoassets draws on a 30 UK FinTech State of the Nationnumber of regulatory sandbox case studies to explain how existing regulation would be applied to cryptoassets. The sandbox experience has also led the FCA to reflect on the fact that technology-based models are global rather than national in their reach and ambitions. This led the FCA to explore a global initiative the Global Financial Innovation Network. It is an experiment still in the making but it has the potential to remove some of the cross-border regulatory barriers that firms face. As with all complex experiments, the constraining factors are many regulatory cooperation, lack of international regulatory harmonisation and creating a seamless testing experience. But again, the FCA has demonstrated that it is willing to experiment and has tried to facilitate the international dialogue to support innovation. Being close to innovation has also encouraged the FCA to try new technologies in its own supervisory activities. This again is invaluable experience which will reveal the softer challenges such as culture and scalability that innovating firms will face. This rounded knowledge will help focus attention on some of the wider risks associated with driving and implementing technological innovation, at scale, in regulated firms. In the UK, regulators have shown that regulation can be a tool for opening up competition and has acted as a leader in a number of FinTech policy areas, with Open Banking (OB) being a key example. Introduced in 2016, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) OB Standard required UK banks to design and implement industry-wide Application Programme Interfaces (API) communications standards. This enabled greater interoperability between OB solutions and consumer adoption compared to other EU Member States. Third party access to previously closed consumer banking data has forced incumbent banks to be more competitive and consumer focused. New FinTech aggregator apps have flourished focussing on providing tailored financial guidance to consumers and forcing incumbents to up their game or indeed collaborate with these new entrants. However improvements in both the design and implementation of OB APIs are still needed to ensure consistent high performan
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