As a member of TheCityUK, Chatsworth is wholly supportive of the work that the organisation is doing to promote the UK as a leading financial centre, particularly given the recently published manifesto for the next government.
A crucial element for the UK economy
As TheCityUK highlights, the country’s financial and related professional services industry is a national asset and of vital importance to the UK economy. The industry contributes 12% of the UK’s total economic output, is the largest net exporting industry and pays more in corporation tax than any other sector in the country.
The financial services industry also employs over 2.4 million people and plays a crucial role in the transition to net zero and driving economic growth by providing capital, investment and professional advice. With all this in mind, it’s clear that financial services play a key part in retaining the UK’s competitiveness on the global stage.
It is, therefore, even more critical that we modernise our financial centre and infrastructure to retain the country’s position as an international leader in the industry.
Key priorities for the road ahead
TheCityUK’s manifesto gives five key recommendations for the next government to keep the UK in the international financial services spotlight.
Chief among these is the need for the government to collaborate closely with the FS industry to create the conditions that drive economic growth, job creation and investment opportunities on a national scale.
The manifesto also outlines the need to ensure a stable and predictable regulatory environment to help attract more investment and capital, in addition to the need for a clear tax policy roadmap to give businesses and international investors the certainty they need to invest across the UK.
On top of this, devolving and empowering different regions to grow their local economies, and setting out a long-term policy and delivery roadmap to make the UK a leader in the net-zero transition were highlighted as additional key recommendations for the government to deliver upon.
Maintaining momentum
The manifesto laid out some priority recommendations for the new government to action within the first 100 days after coming into power. These key steps include:
- Developing a strategic plan to drive investment and economic growth, ensuring that the UK has the strong levels of long-term savings and investments necessary for its societal needs.
- Collaborating with the FS industry to incentivise greater retail investment in UK shares and companies.
- Better supporting UK companies’ journey from start-up to scale-up through policy delivery, including removing growth barriers and improving incentive schemes.
- Continue the implementation of the listings rules reform and Secondary Capital Raising Review at pace.
- Increase the UK’s competitiveness by reviewing stamp duty on trading, incentivising more institutional and retail investment into UK equities.
- Produce a clear strategy for modernising technology that will secure the UK’s future economic resilience, particularly in the areas of open finance and AI.
- Creating a digital infrastructure to modernise the share ownership system.
- Committing to protecting and improving the UK’s strong reputation for upholding and advancing the law within the FS sector
Securing the future of UK financial services
Working closely with market players at the centre of the UK’s financial industry, Chatsworth welcomes these recommendations and echoes TheCityUK’s calls to maintain our place at the heart of global finance. In particular, modernising financial infrastructure to ensure the future efficiency of the country’s capital markets and shareholding systems must be prioritised.
This means putting an emphasis on digitising our share ownership system and eliminating paper share certificates, in addition to speeding up our settlement timeframes to ensure that institutional and retail investors alike can smoothly engage with UK markets.
The UK has a strong history as a world leader in financial markets. However, if we want to maintain this stance in the modern era, we must ensure that our financial infrastructure and systems can keep pace in a rapidly evolving financial environment.
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