The FinTech Capital of the North

Manchester is the place where finance meets the future.

Home to a thriving community of traditional finance institutions and cutting-edge innovation, Manchester is the UK’s fastest growing fintech sector which contributes more than £1billion to the regional economy.

Across Greater Manchester you will witness a vibrant concentration of ingenious startups, visionary scaleups and global Fintechs converging, collaborating and driving digital transformation. Manchester is a home of disruptive collaboration where firms like GFT and Starling’s Engine are working together to create the digital bank of the future.

In Manchester, Payments disruptors are rewriting the rules of transactions, creating a seismic shift in the financial landscape. With a workforce totalling 10,000 people across nearly 250 active firms, global brands like Adyen, OakNorth, Klarna and MoneySuperMarket complement homegrown Fintechs including Interactive Investor, AccessPay and Raisin alongside 14,000 other financial services and technology companies.

The rapid growth of Manchester’s Fintech sector is underpinned by a strong and growing pool of tech talent and digital and tech hubs providing a base for start-ups, SMEs and larger firms to collaborate. There are outstanding market opportunities for Fintechs across our digital and technology sectors; from Cybersecurity across the North-West Cyber Corridor, or within the UK’s eCommerce Hub enabling opportunities across embedded finance and the future of lending. Already an important home of Artificial Intelligence, Fintechs in Manchester are set to benefit from Innovation Greater Manchester, a business-led partnership between the GMCA, Innovate UK and DSIT whose Innovation Accelerators will include the Manchester Turing Innovation Hub linking Fintechs to cutting-edge A.I. research and technologies.

Laying claim to 25 Nobel Laureates, innovation is at the heart of Greater Manchester’s ethos. Fintechs are benefiting from the quality of our academic institutions and the five universities in the city-region have a proven track record of working with Fintechs on R&D projects. Alliance Manchester Business School launched the Centre for Financial Technology Studies in 2022; a knowledge and research hub to accelerate digital advancements in finance across areas like cryptocurrency, A.I. and Green Finance. Their mission is to develop cutting-edge research to support the Fintech revolution whilst educating the next generation of analysts, managers, regulators, investors, and entrepreneurs.

Manchester’s thriving technology and digital cluster is also the highest funded outside the South East of England. Manchester-based companies have collectively raised over £1.8 billion in venture capital funding in the past five years, with tech companies in the city raising over £500m of funding in 2022, more than many major European cities. Regulation is also at the heart of the city’s Fintech sector as the home of the Government’s Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum. The Government body has been established to ensure coherence and collaboration between four UK regulators with responsibilities for digital regulation (CMA, FCA, Ofcom & ICO) ensuring better outcomes for industry and consumers within the rapidly developing digital economy.