August 3, 2018
Financial centres in UK cities outside London are set to suffer most from Brexit
Although news reports about the impact of Brexit on the UK’s financial services sector have focused almost exclusively on London, a new report from the Centre for Cities claims that the decision to leave the EU will have a disproportionately larger impact on the centres in the UK’s other major cities, which employ two thirds of all people in the sector. The report explores the financial and professional services sectors in cities across the UK, and looks at what the relationships are with London-based firms in these industries. The report by the think tank supported by the City of London Corporation London: The geography of financial services in the capital and beyond looks at how much individual cities across the UK export in services, and what proportion of these services exports came from the financial sector.
Key findings
- Financial services and related professional services play an important role in a number of other cities for jobs, productivity and exports.
- London-headquartered businesses in these sectors accounted for just under 220,000 jobs in other British cities in 2017.
- 40 per cent of all of urban Britain’s finance and related jobs were in a London-based firm.
- The relationships different cities have with London varies, both in terms of their number and their nature. While not everywhere had strong links with London, a number of cities had a large share of financial services jobs in particular in London-headquartered firms.
- These jobs vary in their nature. In cities such as Brighton, Leeds and Bristol (pictured), this large share of jobs tended to be in high-skilled activities.
- Cities such as Sheffield, Sunderland and Swindon also had strong links to the capital, but the types of jobs tended to be lower-skilled activities, suggesting that the jobs they have attracted have tended to be more back-office in their function.
- The report finds that the average productivity of those working in the financial sector is almost double that of the national average (£58,888), ranked at £114,678 in 2016.
- It’s estimated that there are 1.1 million financial services jobs in the UK – two-thirds of these are based outside the capital.