London’s finance exports hit £50bn

A new report from TheCityUK, ‘Exporting from across Britain 2019’, shows that London’s financial and related professional services industries continue to go from strength to strength. London exported £50bn of financial and related professional services in 2017, up 4.4% from 2016.

Financial services exports from London accounted for 49.5% of Great Britain’s total financial services exports in 2016, and related professional services exports from the region accounted for 59.2% of Great Britain’s total related professional services exports.

London’s financial and related professional services exports exceeded the value of all goods exports from the capital in 2016 and accounted for 41% of all service exports from the capital in 2016, underlining the importance of the industry to London’s economy.

While London remains the UK’s main hub for international finance, many of the country’s regions and nations are playing an increasingly international role, with exports in financial and related professional services growing across the UK.

In terms of absolute exports, the South East (£10.8bn) is the largest exporter outside London (£50bn), followed by Scotland (£7.2bn) and the North West (£5.9bn).

Anjalika Bardalai, chief economist and head of research, TheCityUK said, “There is a common misconception that financial and related professional services are only of value to ‘the City’ of London.

“This report helps to debunk this myth, showing clearly that the industry, including international finance, is a UK-wide success story. London and the regions and nations all play a role in making the UK a world-leading international financial centre.”

In 2016, financial services was the largest exporting services sector in all British regions and nations except the South East, where ‘real estate, professional, scientific and technical services’ took the top spot. Taken together, financial and related professional services exports as a percentage of total regional services exports ranged from 27% in the South East to 50% in Wales.

For the first time, TheCityUK’s ‘Exporting from across Britain’ report also contains sub regional (NUTS2) data on industry exports. These new data show that out of a total of 40 sub-regions in Great Britain, 15 have financial services exports in excess of £1bn.