The fintech industry is one of the planet’s fastest-growing sectors, and London is one of the key centers where it is currently expanding from. What are the numbers behind this city’s dominance and the main factors that are behind it?
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The Latest Investment Details
A report from London & Partners suggests that the fintech sector in London received around $3.6 billion in venture capital investment in the first nine months of 2020. Only San Francisco received more, while New York was in third place with $2.2 billion.
This means that fintech companies in London have already beaten the $2.3 billion total that was invested in them in 2018, with over half of all venture capital invested into this sector in Europe flowing into the English city.
The UK capital overtook the Big Apple in second place for total investment value in 2019, and has now taken first place in terms of number of completed deals in 2020 with 169, followed by San Francisco with 107. Indeed, fintech investment in the UK has grown by 500% since 2017, with the first quarter of 2020 seeing as much money invested in his industry as in the whole of 2017.
What Is London’s Fintech Scene Growing So Fast?
One of the keys to this success is the sheer volume of fintech operations that were set up following the last financial crisis. There are over 2,000 of them, making it the global city with most businesses of this type and an immense talent pool for newcomers to dip into. Despite competition from Zurich, Singapore, and the US, London remains the first name on many people’s lips when thinking about fintech.
Cutting-edge financial products have an increasingly high adoption rate in the UK. For example, around two-thirds of transactions in the country now take place using contactless methods. It was also reported by Nucoro that six million British adults downloaded their first banking app this year.
Companies here have also worked out how to expand their customer base into other countries, with the impending Brexit issue seemingly doing nothing to slow down the rate of innovation and growth in the UK.
As many of these companies are looking to foreign markets, the currency exchange rate becomes important for their growth. It is also worth remembering that a number of fintech firms have ideas based on making it easier to move money around on the world with digital currencies and mobile banking among their services, meaning that they can also go on to have an effect on those same markets.
The foreign exchange market is huge, with a trade volume of more than $5.3 trillion per day according to TopOnlineForexBrokers.com. This is far higher than the volume of trading seen in the New York Stock Exchange, which is $22.4 billion. As well as the many traders that use forex brokers to invest in this market, firms carrying out international trading or looking for investment from abroad need to be aware of the current trends.
In this way, London´s fintech firms can look to take advantage of any movements in the exchange rates that favors the traditionally strong British pound.
What Does the Future of Fintech Look Like?
It is clear that the British government has high hopes of continuing to be a global leader in the world of fintech. Their Department for International Trade brought out a document called UK Fintech State of the Nation in 2019, pointing out the importance of this sector and how they plan to remain as a tech center of excellence.
Many countries around the planet are eager to become fintech leaders, but the progress shown by London in the last couple of years suggests that this will continue to be a major fintech hub for the foreseeable future.
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