DevDosh Ltd recently found out that according to the trade body Innovate Finance released Wednesday 19th July 2017, that 2017 has been a fantastic year so far for the FinTech industry with nearly 430,000,000 GBP flowing into UK financial technology companies in the first half of 2017, this is up for the same period of 2016 by nearly a third, making Fintech the fastest growing sector in Britain.
Of the 430,000,000 million GBP that has been invested into the sector over 50% was from overseas investors, seeing overseas investment increasing by 37% in the same period last year, putting the United Kingdom in third place of total investment into to FinTech, behind the United States and China.
DevDosh Ltd sees that the latest figures from Innovate Finance go a long way to alleviate any concerns that Brexit would remove the United Kingdom as the destination of choice within the European Union for FinTech investment.
For DevDosh Ltd, the FinTech industry is playing a major role regarding growth within the UK economy.
Although the figures are very impressive they are still some way off from the amount invested in 2015 when a record 514,000,000 GBP was invested in the first half of the year and over 1 billion total in the full financial year.
“We saw a period of uncertainty over the summer last year but I would say that by around the third quarter, things were starting to recover,” said Innovate Finance’s chief financial officer, Abdul Haseeb Basit.
“Things have slowed but we’ve seen an improving recovery since the referendum last year.”
The FinTech industry provides 60,000 jobs in the UK and nearly 9 billion GBP to GDP.
“Brexit clauses” – contractual provisions that meant investment was contingent on Britain voting to stay in the European Union – that had been triggered after the Brexit vote and meant funding had been pulled, causing concern said Mr. Basit.
One of the big concerns for UK investors born out of the Brexit vote was the loss of the UK’s passport rights to operate freely in other EU countries, these were unfounded concerns as figures show that if the UK did lose these rights this would only affect 20 per cent of the almost 300 startups that are members of Innovate Finance.
The biggest concern should be a loss of skilled labor as 30% of the FinTech workforce is from overseas.
Mr. Basit Said:
“Talent is the number one concern, and has been consistent since the referendum – we test [our members on] that every three to six months. So that’s been fairly consistent – it’s been a worry and until we have more certainty around that, it will remain a worry”.
“There is a lot of competition in the investment space – there’s a lot of capital available and it’s looking for good companies to invest in,” said Mr. Basit. “Were they to not invest in UK companies, they feel like they might miss an opportunity. The appetite is still strong.”
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