A group of senior industry leaders is spearheading the establishment of a new £1 billion fintech fund designed to accelerate the growth of promising scale-ups in the UK, according to Sky News.
Lord Hammond, the former chancellor, is among the notable figures supporting this initiative, provisionally named the Fintech Growth Fund. Other prominent individuals involved include fintech veteran Al Lukies and Phil Vidler from the Fintech Alliance.
Hammond also serves as an advisor to UK crypto startup Copper and challenger bank OakNorth. Sources in the City revealed to Sky News that the fund aims to attract capital from institutional investors and will operate independently of the government.
Companies such as Barclays, the London Stock Exchange Group, and Mastercard have reportedly been approached for small seed funding to kickstart the initiative. This fund intends to address a gap in financing identified by Ron Kalifa in his government-sponsored review of the UK fintech sector.
Kalifa noted in his report, “With a £2 billion fintech growth capital funding gap in the UK, many entrepreneurs prefer to sell rather than continue to build their promising company. There is £6 trillion in UK private pension schemes alone, a small portion of which could be redirected to high-growth technology opportunities like fintech.”
The fund aims to support companies as they progress beyond the Series B stage of capital raising, where they typically seek to secure tens of millions of dollars to scale their operations. Insiders indicated that plans for an announcement regarding the fund’s launch could be made as soon as this autumn.