London’s position as global fintech hub resilient despite Brexit
London's fintech crown has slipped — not dramatically, but enough to notice. A decade after the Brexit vote, The Banker reports the city still ranks third globally for fintech investment since 2016, with $57bn flowing into London-based companies.
Jocelyn Davenport·updated June 27, 2026
The numbers behind the "resilience"
The headline is that London held its ground. Dealroom data, cited by The Banker, shows the city absorbed $57bn in fintech funding across the decade since the referendum — a comfortable third place, and one that easily outpaces every other European capital combined. For a sector that spent 2016 bracing for talent flight and regulatory walls, that's no small feat.
But "third" is doing a lot of quiet work in that sentence. The Bay Area alone attracted roughly 60% more capital. And when FinTech Global tracked last week's 22 largest fintech raises — totalling $2.3bn — only one of them landed in the UK. Equipal was the British flag-bearer. Twelve of those rounds were US-based.
Why competition is closing in
The money isn't just drifting across the Atlantic. It's fragmenting everywhere. The week's standout raise was India's CRED, which closed a $900m Series H led by Meta at a $4.5bn pre-money valuation. France's Alan secured €480m for its insurance platform. Airwallex, split between Singapore and the US, raised $320m and stepped into decacorn territory at an $11bn valuation — up from $8bn just six months ago.
Each of these companies is solving a different regional friction: India's credit-rewards loop, France's health-insurance stack, Southeast Asia's cross-border payments. The point isn't that London is failing — it's that the choice architecture of global finance is no longer built around a single Anglo-American axis. Capital is following consumer behavior, and consumer behavior is stubbornly local.
What this means for the app on your phone
For us as users, the practical question isn't whether London remains a "hub." It's whether the products we're signing up for are being built in jurisdictions that match our expectations around currency, data rights, and recourse when things go wrong. The Banker's verdict is correct: the sector is resilient. But resilience and dominance aren't the same thing. Before you assume your favourite challenger is built on the same foundation it was last year, check where its most recent nine-figure round actually closed.