What’s the biggest opportunity for UK fintech after Brexit? Here’s what those in the know say ahead of the Innovate Finance Global Summit
Six experts give their opinion on what the biggest opportunity for UK fintech us after the vote to leave the EU.
Mike Laven, CEO Currencycloud
Continued international investment in UK businesses, such as ours, indicates faith that the UK continues to be the epicentre of fintech. Entrepreneurs are the masters of dealing with a changing environment. UK tech will open its eyes to expansion further afield and with Asian and US markets are primed for fintech investments. Open banking is a huge opportunity post-Brexit. Creative use of PSD2 is a larger chance for incumbents to work with fintech.
George Bevis, founder and CEO, Tide
The biggest opportunity for Britain post-Brexit is to reinvent itself as a nation dedicated to having the most fintech-friendly regulation in the world, unshackled by European Union strictures. Examples include clear AML standards, government-backed deposit guarantees for e-money, and easy access to payment schemes for fintechs at the same price as incumbents.
Marieke Flament, UK MD at Circle
We know that the Brexit-related future is still taking shape and we are hoping that the coming months will bring greater clarification. As a global fintech company, with offices in the UK, we will be looking for clarification on two things in particular: keeping our passporting rights and easy access to international talent that we need as a technology business.
Claire Calmejane, director of innovation at Lloyds Banking Group
With London being a global financial centre, there will continue to be opportunities for fintech. We see this thriving tech community through our technology working group, which we launched in London to support our strategic aim to Help Britain Prosper. We pledged to recruit mentors from across Lloyds Banking Group to provide support to fintech startups, and increase our Digital Champions in the region.
Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays UK
The advent of open data, AI and blockchain offers a hugely exciting opportunity for fintech. London has taken a great lead but we have to stay competitive with cities like Berlin, Mumbai and Tel Aviv, which is why investing in UK high-growth firms, and really backing our fintech sector is vital to our national economic success.”
Marta Krupinska, co-founder, Azimo
The biggest opportunity for fintech post-Brexit is the fintech opportunity despite Brexit. Just look at what people think of traditional financial businesses: choice is minimal and customer satisfaction is at an all time low. The need for businesses that give customers better prices, service and convenience is higher than ever before, it’s just a crying shame that we will have to do all that without access to the the huge EU market and dealing with a massive digital skills shortage in the UK if visas for Europeans were to be introduced.