of companies surveyed having moved to the implementation stage, compared to 27% who are still in the consideration stage of remote working. IT-based companies, especially those in the start-up sector, tend to find it easier to make decisions quickly and remote working is often already part of their DNA. “In heavily regulated industries, companies need to think about which roles can be done within a particular market for regulatory reasons,” says Marc Burrows. Agile FinTech companies are embracing this new flexibility in working methods and the labour market in order to source talent across the world and open up a hiring pool beyond local geography. “That is one way FinTech
is creating differentiators and advantages for themselves in a competitive talent market compared to some of the more traditional employers,” he says. “The challenge is to do it in a measured, well managed way so that these companies can continue to maintain their compliance profile and the levels of integrity within the business that they need in order to work effectively with the regulatory agencies and larger financial services partners.”
FINTECHS BOOST THE ECONOMY OF LONDON – AND BEYOND London is a ‘superhub’ of Fintech activity, and along with nine additional high-growth FinTech clusters around the UK, it is showing a growth rate of 16% per year, compared to 1.3% for small businesses overall. This is according to the
FinTech Strategic Review which was commissioned by John Glen, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and led by former Worldpay CEO, Ron Kalifa, with input from Deloitte. The UK continues to create
global category-defining FinTechs and has strengths across the board, particularly in WealthTech and payments, the report found. FinTech connectivity can drive levelling up and equalling out, with the potential to drive gross added value of between £2.4 billion and £3 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs over the next three years. Philipp Buschmann, CEO
of AAZZUR, an FinTech API embedded finance platform, says his organisation recruits far and wide and allows work to be flexible in order to attract the best talent. “Just look at what happened
at Google and Goldman Sachs – these companies ordered all their
employees back and only half turned up,” he says. “Covid has changed the way we work and if you want the best talent you need to be flexible. Our team is 12-13 people, headquartered in Berlin, yet we only have one German employee – we recruit far and wide and allow work to be flexible.” He says that because of the
Ukraine crisis, the sector is also seeing more difficulties when looking for programmers. Many programmers are Russian or Belarusian and there is now a hesitancy to employ from that region and potential candidates from Ukraine are distracted by the ongoing war. “There are now lots of platforms
where you can hire people from all over the world and because of this, wages are becoming fairer,” he says. Prices in the developing world are increasing and from the west are levelling out, which indicates how the location of the talent is now less of a barrier. “The UK is the leading country
for fintech in the EU. The UK is a huge consumer of lending, investment and real estate. Because the British have the most cash and highest borrowing, the industry that serves this ecosystem has to be the most developed,” he says. The UK is also more likely to try something new and innovative as compared to other more conservative countries in Europe. “We need an openness to
regulations for continued growth,” he adds. “Brexit will hurt over the next 10 years and scaling will be difficult. Any relaxation of the financial border should be encouraged, and red tape avoided.”
FAVOURABLE IMMIGRATION ROUTES BENEFIT EXPERIENCED TECH SECTOR PROFESSIONALS Rajiv Naik, Partner at global immigration law firm Fragomen, says there is a clear distinction in UK immigration between those tech professionals who enter the UK with an offer of employment and those who want the freedom to embrace the true spirit of entrepreneurialism. “The former will typically result
in the individual being sponsored by their employer under one of the UK’s work authorisation visa categories,
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