Report highlights key strengths and regulatory innovations to inform stakeholders for trade and investment.

By Laura Holden and Nootan Vegad

The Department for International Trade, with the support of Innovate Finance, has published a report titled the “FinTech State of the Nation”. Providing an overview of the UK’s FinTech industry and highlighting the UK’s appeal as a FinTech destination for entrepreneurs and investors, the report seeks to demonstrate how the UK’s FinTech sector has emerged as a global leader and why this will continue in the future.

The report describes the actions that the government, regulators, and industry have taken to stimulate and sustain growth of the UK’s FinTech sector. The report includes an overview of technology demand, a regional analysis of FinTech, details of the investment environment, views from the FCA, a summary of the talent, skills, and diversity in the industry and the “Essential Eight” technology trends — which includes block chain, drones, and artificial intelligence to name a few.

Notably, from a regulatory perspective, the FCA’s sandbox has been mentioned in the report for providing tangible benefits to firms. The report also explains the work of the Green FinTech Challenge, TechSprints, the RegTech programme, and the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN). The report details that the FCA “is a key influence in setting standards of regulation globally” and cites increasing levels of investment in the UK’s FinTech industry.

Innovative global initiatives are also described in the report, such as the establishment of “FinTech bridges” with jurisdictions around the world to “support international expansion in a post-Brexit world”. It also mentions that the UK was the first G7 nation to provide guidance on outsourcing to the cloud, as described in a previous Latham blog post.

The full report is available online.