The UK has been seen for some time now as one of the (if not) best places in the world start a Fintech business due to favourable government policy. According to Accenture research from 2014, the UK and Ireland is now the fastest growing region for investment in fintech. Deal volumes here have been growing at 74% per year since 2008, compared with 27% globally and 13% in Silicon Valley. During the same period, the value of Fintech investment increased nearly eightfold, to $265 million in 2013 – a rate of 51% a year, nearly twice the global average (26%), and more than twice that of Silicon Valley (23%).
The UK’s position as the leading incubator for innovative Fintech startups is due to several macro and microeconomic influencers:
- The presence of a large and technologically sophisticated customer base
- London’s position as a world-leading centre for financial services
- A good availability of business capital
- A supportive regulatory approach
- Access to a global talent pool
- Excellent financial services infrastructure
We have taken a look at a few examples of Fintech businesses which are proving to be disruptive, innovative and highly successful in their respective industries:
Equity crowdfunding
Equity crowdfunding platforms such as Seedrs lets people invest in businesses they believe in and share in their success. In 2015 alone over £64 million was invested on the platform. As the UK’s number one equity crowdfunding platform and the first to regulated by a government body in the world, Seedrs continues to lead the field through a combination of scale and professionalism. As the largest equity crowdfunding platform in Europe, Seedrs will soon be launching in the United States.
P2P lending
Prime residential mortgage peer to peer lending platform, Landbay has seen no less than 5 fundraising rounds on Seedrs. The platform directly matches investors’ funds to loans using the resource and capital efficiency of peer to peer. They offer mortgage borrowers a responsive alternative to the banks, while offering retail investors a higher rate of return than they would receive from traditional, FSCS-backed savings products. Successes for Landbay have been golden. Not only was the platform the fastest growing P2P lender with a loan book growth of over 1000% in 2015, but in Q4 of 2015 alone 63 mortgages totalling £9.4M were completed. 2016 has got off to an impressive start for Landbay, with almost £9M of mortgages in the first five weeks of the year.
Payments
The cost of converting and sending money overseas has been reduced dramatically by platforms such as TransferWise, Azimo and CurrencyFair. They offer customers significantly reduced fees for sending money overseas for a few reasons. Being internet based means there’s no need for branches. The global exchanges occur in cloud-based markets. In addition, demonstrating the power of the smartphone, the TransferWise iOS App was recently chosen by Apple as ‘Most Innovative 2015′
