Fintech firms face ‘growing skills gap’ in 2024, warns top chief

The chair of the government-backed Centre for Finance Innovation and Technology has warned that the UK's fintech sector is facing a growing skills gap

The UK’s fintech sector faces a “growing gap” in talent next year as the demand for digital skills continues to outstrip supply, a top industry chief has warned.

Charlotte Crosswell, chair of the government-backed Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology, warned that the financial services and fintech sectors in the UK face a “critical” year as the government looks to revive the sector after a troubling 12 months globally.

“There is a growing gap between the demand for technology skills from financial institutions and he available supply of talent,” Crosswell told City A.M.

“The industry will need to work more closely with academia to ensure the UK has the people to sustain its world-leading position in fintech.”

CFIT, which was founded in 2021 with £5m seed backing from the Treasury, has rolled out a number of partner initiatives with universities this year to try and train up undergraduates with digital skills.

However, tech firms in the UK have felt the squeeze of a labour shortage acutely since Brexit choked off the free flow of talent from Europe.

According to a report in September this year from digital talent platform Gigged A.I., some 34 per cent of UK-based tech firms are experiencing large internal tech skills shortages.

Some of the UK’s most high profile fintech firms have similarly sounded the alarm over their ability to access talent this year. Speaking at London Tech Week in June, chief of digital lender Oaknorth, Rishi Khosla said the firm was no longer able to hire the talent it needed to grow.

“When it comes to scaling up, [and] getting [people] to come in who have scaled up businesses previously, it’s a challenge,” Khosla said. “It is a challenge that I know my co-founder and I have faced, and many other entrepreneurs face in this country.”

Ministers have been on a drive to bolster the flow of talent into the tech sector globally in recent months.

A new ‘High Potential Visa’ has been rolled out by government to allow young graduates from the top 50 ranked global universities to work in the UK with their families for two years. The Global Talent Visa was similarly introduced in 2020 to allow workers deemed highly skilled to allow skilled tech workers to travel to the UK.