The UK Built the Fintech Model. Now It Must Keep the Value
By Ryan Mendy, Chief Business Officer, Zilch; Founding Co-Chair, Unicorn Council for UK Fintech (UCFT) - April 2026
Charlie Munger once said, “trust is one of the greatest economic forces in the world.”
Britain has quietly built an economy around that principle. In financial services, you don’t scale products - you scale trust.
Two years ago, we launched the Unicorn Council for UK Fintech (UCFT) at the annual IFGS in London to address a structural gap in the UK economy: we are world-class at creating fintech companies, but inconsistent at scaling and retaining them.
I co-founded the UCFT alongside Philip Belamant, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Zilch, and Janine Hirt, Chief Executive Officer of Innovate Finance. As co-founders and co-chairs alongside that of Charles McManus of ClearBank and Francesca Carlesi of Revolut, our ambition was not to create another industry forum, but a first of its kind working bridge between operating CEOs, policymakers, regulators and capital allocators.
That ambition was grounded in lived experience.
At Zilch, we built from first principles to fix what we saw as a broken consumer credit system. But as we scaled, a deeper issue became clear. The UK does not have an innovation problem. It has a translation problem - converting early advantage into global scale and retained economic value.
The numbers are compelling. In the last three decades, the UK has now created more than 200 unicorns, up from around 100 in 2020 (Dealroom, 2025). Venture capital investment reached $23.6bn in 2025, up 35% year-on-year (Dealroom, 2026).
And yet, despite this momentum, IPO activity remains subdued. Value is being created here, but too often realised elsewhere.
The UCFT today represents companies worth far north of £100bn in aggregate enterprise value, growing at 30-50% annually, with a cohort that could credibly access public markets within the next one to three years.
The issue is not ambition. Nor is it capital availability.
The UK has over £3 trillion in pension assets1. The problem is not capital scarcity. It is capital allocation.
Or more bluntly: we have a capital routing problem.
When fintech companies reach scale, typically raising £50m to £200m+ rounds, the capital base becomes overwhelmingly international. With that comes influence over governance, listing location and long-term strategic direction.
We are winning company formation. We are losing company retention.
This is not theoretical. It is happening in real time.
Over the past two years, the UCFT has worked to close this gap. We have supported the development of the FCA’s Scale-Up Unit, contributed to discussions on IPO reform, and improved coordination between the City, regulators and institutional investors.
But the next phase is more direct.
The UK needs credible domestic growth capital capable of consistently leading £50m-£200m rounds. Today, that capability remains limited.
Without it, the system will continue to export value at the point it matters most.
The stakes are rising.
Cybercrime is projected to reach $23 trillion annually BY 20272, and in financial services, every $1 lost to fraud can cost closer to $4-$5 when factoring in operational and reputational impact3.
In this environment, resilience is no longer just defensive. It is the price of growth.
The UK remains one of the most sophisticated fintech markets globally, with a regulatory framework that has driven innovation through mechanisms like the FCA sandbox. But early-stage advantage is not enough.
As companies scale, what matters is alignment - between capital, policy and operators. Today, that alignment is incomplete.
There are signs of progress. Conversations between government, regulators and industry are more direct and more constructive than they were two years ago. But coordination alone is not the goal. Execution is.
“The capital is here. The companies are here. The system just isn’t connecting them.”
If we solve that, the outcome is significant.
The next generation of global financial platforms will not just be built in the UK - they will stay, scale and list here.
And with that comes something more important than individual company success: the ability to compound national economic advantage over the next decade.
The UK has already built the foundations, talent, trust and regulatory credibility.
Now it needs to do the harder thing.
Turn that foundation into a system that scales.
–ENDS–
3 https://risk.lexisnexis.com/global/en/about-us/press-room/press-release/20250910-fraud-multiplier
