The UK’s world-leading fintech sector has emerged as one of the nation’s greatest success stories following the 2008 recession. Initially led by those located near the now famous Silicon Roundabout in London, pioneering entrepreneurs in tech hubs across the UK have sought to take advantage of the FCA’s consultative approach to financial regulation by reshaping the sector’s core processes. Almost a decade on, the fintech industry currently makes up £7 billion of the UK’s total GDP and is responsible for approximately 60,000 jobs nationwide.
Critical to the growing success of this dynamic industry has been the simultaneous development of the UK’s globally-renowned alternative finance ecosystem, offering both debt and equity investment opportunities to scaling businesses. The fluid approach to regulation around a sector born amidst acute economic uncertainty has allowed alternative finance to channel otherwise lost investment into the nation’s SMEs, with fintech featuring prominently amongst a new generation of high-growth British companies now at the scale-up stage. In more recent years, supporting this generation of scaling businesses has become a central priority for the UK Government, which has placed the global expansion of these companies at the forefront of its post-Brexit industrial strategy.
At IW Capital, we remain committed to the next generation of scaling fintech businesses by connecting high-growth companies at the peak of the fintech wave with a sophisticated network of investors. As we prepare to launch a Series B funding round for WeSwap – a company we have proudly supported since 2014 – we are proud to announce the launch of a new report charting the rise of the UK’s fintech industry from its early-beginnings to now.
Register here as a member of Access 42 to download ‘2017: The Year of UK Fintech’