Here we look at the top UK Fintech Companies in 2021 – the innovative and disruptive product and service providers who are making finance faster, more secure and more convenient for businesses and consumers alike.
Due to the fast-changing nature of consumer behaviour, cyber security threats, government and industry regulation, and the finance technologies available, Fintech is one of the most dynamic, and therefore exciting, areas of technology.
Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has been forcing accelerated digital transformation across most sectors, and financial services is no exception.
On this page we profile some of the leading fintech companies to watch.
Atom Bank
Based in Durham, Atom Bank is first bank in the UK to run entirely run via a mobile app. In 2015, it became the first mobile-only bank to be licensed by the Bank of England. Atom now has over 100 current employees and was valued at £150 million before it launched.
As you can imagine from a bank largely powered by mobile phones, cyber security is fundamental to Atom, and it is leading the way in terms of biometric security adoption, including face and voice recognition, for the finance sector.
Digital Shadows
A Fintech startup established in 2011, Digital Shadows is a ‘cyber situational awareness platform’ in the field of IT security. The scalable platform provides in-depth data analysis to help organisations protect themselves against cyber threats and intellectual property losses. This also helps to protect brands and their reputations from issues related to cyber security breaches. Digital Shadows has dual headquarters in London and San Francisco. In 2018, Forrester named the company as a Leader in Digital Risk Protection.
https://www.digitalshadows.com/
Funding Circle
Funding Circle is a lending platform for small businesses. It currently focuses on those that operate in the UK, Continental Europe and the USA. The company was founded in 2010, and by mid-2018, it had facilitated £3.8 billion of lending to 39,000 UK businesses.
Funding Circle works to speed up and streamline the borrowing process to help businesses expand, hire staff and boost their cash flow, with unsecured loans of £5k to £500k.
https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/
TransferWise
A cross-borders payment service, TransferWise helps was set up to provide lower cost solutions for customers to perform money transfers around the world than offered by the large, established banks. Founded in 2011, this fintech company in London now enables £500 million of global money transfers each month.
Bud
Another financial services platform, Bud was only established in July 2015, but has already won several banking and fintech awards. Accessed via either the website or a mobile app, Bud offers technology to link financial service providers with consumers find and sign up to the best finance solutions for their needs. By October 2017, Bud had formed partnerships with and investments from global bank HSBC, investment bank Investec, and Sabadell Bank from Spain.
Day One Technologies
While they create solutions for a number of sectors, Day One Technologies are perhaps most notable for the work they have done in creating software training simulations for the financial services industry. Finance administrators and call centre staff often need to juggle half a dozen desktop systems to deal with a single customer query or issue. Day One help to make training faster, more enjoyable and more effective by creating true-to-life system simulations.
Based near Leeds in West Yorkshire, Day One’s clients have included the likes of Lloyds, Halifax, Co-operative Bank and TSB. Their training solutions were key to the successful transition of Lloyds and HBOS staff onto a unified system when the banks merged in 2011. The project won praise for going through with little to no disruption to customer service.
https://www.dayonetech.com/solutions/finance-elearning
Onfido
Onfido is a software company that uses artificial intelligence to run background checks for businesses. Their technology uses combinations of photo-based identity documents and customer ‘selfies’ alongside their AI algorithms. Headquartered in London. Onfido has completed over 10 million background checks since 2012, for over 1,000 business customers.
Blockchain
Based in London, Blockchain was founded as a company in 2011 and is now a fundamental part of the Bitcoin and broader cryptocurrency revolution. Blockchain as a concept and technology was invented in 2008 to provide digital wallets to help people buy and sell the new currencies. The company of the same name now also builds software to help businesses to accept them. Blockchain backers include Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson. By mid 2018, Blockchain was catering for over 27 million wallets and had powered over $200 Billion of transactions.
These are just some of the tech providers we see as the top UK fintech companies in 2021, and we’ll continue to update this list.
