Following Brexit uncertainty, investors' money is flowing back to unlisted fintech firms in the UK.
The United Kingdom attracted £432m ($564m) of new venture capital investment in the first six months of 2017 representing an uptick of 37 per cent compared to the same period in 2016, according to research from Innovate Finance.
Alternative lending, challenger banks and wealth management were the top three investment verticals for UK fintech investments with notably large cash raises from Atom Bank,Funding Circle and Monzo.
Of course the first half of 2016 was dominated in terms of news flow by the June 24th referendum on membership of the European Union. This was likely one of the causes of a substantial fall in new VC money into fintech compared to the same period in 2015. Despite this year’s uptick, the number is still below 2015’s level for H1, however.
The US attracted the largest amount of VC investment at $3.3bn with over 357 deals recorded in Innovate Finance's numbers. US online personal finance firm SoFi raised the largest round globally at $453m. The most active global investors were 500 Startups, Startupbootcamp and Y Combinator with 17 investments each.
