5 influential FinTech companies in the UK’s financial services space

By Leandra Monteiro

Financial Technology or FinTech is not a sub-sector of financial services in the traditional sense of describing a particular activity or business model within the wider financial services market. Rather, it is a label applied to firms operating across a wide range of financial services sectors, which use new technology to provide services in modern ways.

Whilst technological innovation has always been at the forefront of progress in the financial services industry, FinTech is marked out by the way a range of emerging, new age technologies are being harnessed to change how financial services are delivered across different product-types and customer segments.

Innovate Finance, the industry body representing UK FinTech, reported that the UK FinTech sector witnessed record-breaking investments during the first six months of 2021. The UK FinTech sector raised $5.7 billion in H1 2021, outstripping the total investment secured in 2020 ($4.3bn) by 34% and breaking the record year set in 2019 ($4.6bn) by 26%.

According to Beauhurst, FinTech is the UK’s strongest start-up sector, with more than 1,400 high-growth FinTech companies currently active, 20 FinTech unicorns (around half of the UK’s billion-dollar start-ups), and more venture capital investment than any other industry.

Here are 5 top FinTech companies in the UK:

• Revolut

Revolut is building the world’s first truly global financial superapp to help people get more from their money. In 2015, Revolut launched in the UK offering money transfer and exchange. Today, more than 20 million customers around the world use dozens of Revolut’s innovative products to make more than 250 million transactions a month.

Revolut recently raised Series E funding of $800m, to continue to build the first global financial superapp. The company also launched Stays, making it easy to book holidays directly from your Revolut app. It also launched On-Demand Pay to manage expenses when you need to by withdraw earned pay early.

• Thought Machine

Thought Machine’s mission is to create technology that can run the world’s banks according to the best designs and software practices of the modern age. In doing so, the company aims to properly and permanently rid the world’s banks of the problems generated by poor technology running on legacy infrastructure.

Its core banking engine Vault Core was born in the spring of 2015. Since then the company has expanded to more than 500 people across Europe, Asia, North America, Australasia, and the Middle East. Temasek, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Morgan Stanley have invested in Thought Machine’s $160m series D funding round, doubling the company’s valuation to $2.7bn.

• Tide

Founded in 2015 and launched in 2017, London-based Tide is one of the leading business financial platforms in the UK. Tide helps SMEs save time and money in the running of their businesses by not only offering business accounts and related banking services, but also a comprehensive set of highly usable administrative solutions.

Tide has 450,000 SME members in the UK (around 8% market share). Tide has been funded by Apax Digital, Anthemis, Augmentum, Creandum, Goodwater, Jigsaw, Latitude, LocalGlobe, Passion Capital, SpeedInvest, SBI Group and Tencent, amongst others. It employs 1000+ professionals worldwide. Tide selected India as its first international market in 2020. With over 350 highly skilled employees in India.

• Truelayer

TrueLayer is a global open banking platform that makes it easy for anyone to build better financial experiences. Businesses of every size can use TrueLayer to power their payments, access financial data, and onboard customers across the UK, Europe and Australia. Founded in 2016, TrueLayer is trusted by millions of consumers and businesses around the world. The company’s vision is to create a financial system that works for everyone.

• Starling Bank

Starling Bank is a fully-licensed and regulated bank built to give people a fairer, smarter and more human alternative to the banks of the past. In addition to current accounts, it provides B2B banking and payments services through its Banking-as-a-Service model based on the proprietary technology platform that it uses to power its own bank. The Starling Marketplace offers customers in-app access to a selection of third party financial services. Headquartered in London, it has offices in Southampton, Cardiff and Dublin.

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