Let’s rewind to the heady days of 2020. Amid Covid and the end of the beginning of Brexit, the then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak asked Sir Ron Kalifa to conduct an independent review to identify priority areas to support the UK’s fintech sector. 

The goal was to assess the state of the UK fintech sector, identify barriers to growth and recommend how the UK could maintain and strengthen its global leadership in fintech post-Brexit.

The review set out four central recommendations designed to support growth and widespread adoption while maintaining the UK’s global competitiveness:

• Reforming UK listing rules to make the country more attractive for IPOs
• Improving tech visa routes to attract global talent
• Creating a regulatory fintech scalebox to support growth-stage firms
• Establishing a Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology to strengthen national coordination across the ecosystem

Fintech is now embedded in the UK economy. Fintechs and alternative lenders account for 60 per cent of SME lending, and that eight in ten adults use at least one fintech tool regularly

More than 1,000 fintech firms now operate across the country, spanning London and Edinburgh through to Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool.

And the UK’s global standing remains strong, having regained second place globally for fintech investment and remains the clear European leader, attracting $3.6 billion across 535 deals last year.

The review has helped align government, regulators and industry behind a shared ambition. Listing reforms have strengthened the UK’s capital markets proposition, visa pathways have evolved to support high-growth companies, and CFIT, created directly from the recommendations, is now leading industry coalitions tackling systemic challenges across financial services.

The FCA’s sandbox and Digital Sandbox continue to serve as internationally recognised models for responsible innovation, while fintech’s inclusion within the UK’s industrial strategy reflects its growing importance to productivity, competition and financial inclusion.

The foundations are strong, but continued coordination and execution will determine how effectively innovation moves from pilot to scale. While the UK continues to attract international capital, there is increasing emphasis on mobilising more domestic institutional investment, including pension funds, to support fintechs at scale. 

Maintaining a competitive tax framework, strong skills pipeline and effective immigration routes will remain important if founders are to continue choosing the UK as the place to build.

At the Canary Wharf 5^th anniversary event, Sir Ron Kalifa also cautioned against complacency, noting that the UK risks becoming “the country that invented open banking and then watched others commercialise it.”

He cautioned that while markets such as Brazil and India have accelerated adoption of pay-by-bank, the UK’s rollout of commercial variable recurring payments has been slower than anticipated.

Open finance remains a work in progress, and Digital ID, which underpins a modern financial ecosystem, continues to move more slowly than many in the sector would like.

“In many ways, it’s as if we’ve laid the railway tracks and then hesitated to run the trains.” 

Working closely with some of the UK’s most ambitious fintech businesses, we see first-hand the energy, depth of talent and global ambition that define the sector today. 

Fintech firms remain at the forefront of innovation across payments, regtech, lending, investing, digital identity and data, and their ability to scale will shape not only financial services but the wider economy.

The next five years will determine how effectively that innovation is supported, commercialised and embedded at scale, and whether the UK fully capitalises on the opportunities.