Labor Party recognizes fintech as one of the ‘crown jewels of UK PLCs’, says fintech VC fund boss

The Labor Party recognizes fintech as one of the “jewels in Britain’s PLC crown”, according to the head of Europe’s largest listed venture capital fund.

Tim Levene, CEO of Augmentum Fintech, which supports UK challenger bank MoneseIwoca and German, UK SME financier Grover technology rental platformShe said:

“Everything Labor has talked about in terms of the UK fintech sector, they recognize that this is one of the jewels in the crown of the UK PLC.”

His comments come amid expectations that Keir Starmer’s Labor Party will win next week’s general election.

Levene continued:

“A lot of good things have happened in the last ten years and I think why would you try to change something that is built on a very good foundation?

“Everything we heard was very encouraging: they want to support the sector, they want to drive growth and innovation and I think that’s everything the UK fintech industry is trying to do.

“I hope everything is business as usual.”

Levene was speaking as Augmentum Fintech reported a 3.1% rise in its net asset value before performance fees, rising to £303.3m in the year to 31 March 2024, from £294.1m pounds from the previous year.

The company listed in London it said the value of the investment portfolio grew to £265.1 million in the year to March 31, compared with £254.3 million a year earlier.

Augmentum Fintech also announced that it has made a £2.6 million investment in London-based FX trading platform LoopFX.

Levene said its founder and CEO Blair Hawthorne was one of the “most impressive” founders he had met in recent years.

Levene said Hawthroe had a “clear vision,” “deep industry expertise” and knew the challenges firsthand.

Regarding Augmentum’s investment in the capital markets, Levene said the opportunity is “significant.”

He said:

“Fundamentally, when you invest in capital markets assets, you rely much more on the incumbents because, ultimately, they will be the end customers in many respects.

“We have a long-standing thesis that the institutional foreign exchange market is inefficient in many respects and lacks digitalization.

‘I think if you look across the industry, there’s still a long way to go in the capital markets. We can select many asset classes that continue to suffer from a lack of transparency and digitalisation.”

According to him, the market is now “much more receptive” to offerings like LoopFX than it was five years ago.

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