What is the Conservative Party proposing?
The Conservative manifesto acknowledges Britain’s status as a “leading market for starting and growing a FinTech firm”, and Labour’s highlights that “Financial Services is one of Britain’s greatest success stories”, and both talk about expanding open finance. We agree, and indeed asked for more progress on open finance in our wish list prior to the Spring Budget. Accelerating this would bring clear benefits by encouraging more firms to set up in the UK. Entrepreneurs who have the next big idea need to be incentivised to utilise British talent from our universities, expertise in our law firms and to stay in the UK as they grow.
What is the Labour Party proposing?
Labour’s pledge to assist regulators is welcome, though we must be careful not to add more red-tape (and hence delays) to the approval of new regulations (including those regarding crypto and AI) and the speed of approving new financial services (FS) businesses to trade. Again this comes back to making Britain a place that firms want to do business, Labour’s National Wealth Fund plan disappointingly includes nothing for the FS sector despite the acknowledgement noted earlier about financial services being a success story.
What does the Financial Services Sector want to see?
We would welcome support from the Conservatives in the creation of regional mutual banks and Labour’s plans for pension funds to invest more in UK markets.
Both would be beneficial for growing companies to receive the funding they need to make the overhauls required to go from a medium sized to a large business, what we like to call ‘The Greatest Leap’.