Unlocking the Next Phase of Financial Innovation

2

By Ezechi Britton MBE, CEO, Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT)

The financial-technology (fintech) industry is at a critical juncture. In the United Kingdom, major pledges made by the new government during its first month in post have already demonstrated the scale of national commitment to driving economic growth through new technologies. This includes pledging new legislation promoting innovative data sharing and digital identity-verification practices, which have particularly compelling applications in financial services.

We know that fintech innovation has been a fundamental component of fuelling economic growth. Our first coalition on open finance at the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) made that clear—showing how technology and data can be used in novel ways to empower consumers and significantly enhance small businesses’ access to commercial finance.

But in addition to these big opportunities, the industry faces some significant challenges. Under the post-Brexit restructuring, we’ve seen just how important it is for regulators to be agile and react quickly, with 45 percent of all businesses identifying red tape as burdening their success.

Yet, the UK has long been punching above its weight—both in London, where a global financial hub and burgeoning technology sector have made the city a global fintech leader, and beyond, where thriving fintech ecosystems are fed by talent from high-quality universities based all over the country. In Leeds, enormous fintech growth spurred its number of fintech firms to more than double in three years, while 18 of the UK’s 52 tech unicorns in 2024 are now fintechs—far and away the most represented sector.

Our organisation, CFIT, was born out of “The Kalifa Review of UK FinTech” with a mandate to unblock the barriers that are impeding growth in financial technology and lead the drive to expand and scale the UK’s position as a global leader in financial innovation.

Exploring open finance

CFIT’s coalition model is turning the tables on some of the greatest obstacles to financial innovation in the ecosystem: fragmentation and a lack of consistent coordination.

A CFIT coalition is a dynamic and purpose-driven collaboration of industry experts who move rapidly to unlock innovative solutions that have real-world impacts. Our inaugural coalition on open finance convened some of the brightest minds from finance, technology, academia and policymaking to foster data sharing that can build the crucial datasets needed to unlock scalability across the financial-technology sector; in February, it published its milestone “Blueprint Report”.

This blueprint represents the culmination of hundreds of hours of collaboration and research and is the first step on the roadmap to open finance’s adoption. The coalition successfully demonstrated that increasing access to data has helped deliver better outcomes to consumers and businesses. In fact,…