London would remain the pre-eminent financial hub beyond Brexit: Lord Mayor of the City of London

October 24, 2018 07:11 pm | Updated 07:13 pm IST - BENGALURU

Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman Charles Bowman

Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman Charles Bowman

Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman Charles Bowman, is an international ambassador for the UK’s financial and professional services sector. Mr. Bowman, who recently visited India with a delegation of fintech companies, said that the acceleration in financial technology would play a significant role in developing the Indian economy, including overcoming the challenge of the unbanked population. He said both the countries have so much to gain from working together on financial technologies and other areas of financial services. Edited excerpts :

What kind of partnerships do you aim to forge as part of your visit to India?

I have brought with me a delegation of 11 wonderful fintech companies. “My cricket team,” as I call them, they're all... scoring runs everywhere we go. But I come with five objectives.

The first of which is to provide some reassurance that London would remain the pre-eminent [financial] hub beyond Brexit. Secondly, it's around advancing... extraordinarily strong ties between India and the UK built out of foundations that have gone back for many years. And it will progress forward using the sort of commonality of culture and creative spirit.

Thirdly, it relates to using those ties to advance, harness, leverage bilateral trade, investment and business to business opportunities. And, fourthly, both specifically to that is around the promotion of innovation.

London is a pre-eminent centre of a excellence probably the global hub for fintech. And one of the things we're keen to do [while] we're here is to really showcase what London has to offer as a centre of excellence for fintech and encourage the interoperability, the collaboration between our country and your country, as it relates to the development in financial services through technology. We are using the framework that was agreed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Theresa May back in April, which was the ‘UK-India Tech Partnership’...and we are an example of that.

How do you perceive India’s fintech sector and what role do you see it playing in developing Indian economy?

I see very significant [role], the sector itself currently is worth about $33 billion and KPMG forecasted that it will be at $73 billion by 2020, a huge acceleration. You look at it in terms of your own global leaders that relates to the payments... and the 1.1 billion registered biometric identities through Aadhaar. That's an extraordinary statistic.

I also see the criticality of fintech to help with the financial inclusion agenda, it's already helped. But with 40% of the population still unbanked, the role of fintech can play and will play, is very important. And if we look forward, the SME and small business community are in large part, the sort of lifeblood of any successful economy.

To formalise an element of that 40%, that is currently not banked that will be running small, medium enterprise businesses is a huge opportunity for the country. Not only socially, in terms of developing cohesion, purpose and security and stability, but also in terms of the economic purpose for the country.

As part of the ‘UK-India Tech Partnership’ what are the problems that you aim to solve?

I don’t actually look at them as problems [but as] opportunities. And if you look into the various levels of where the sector is government to government, regulation to regulation, business to business, people to people, those are probably the four tiers that you can focus on.

Government to government has a greater engagement in this moment of time. We're expecting that to continue... through an economic financial dialogue. Regulation to regulation I think, is a real opportunity. The UK created the first regulatory sandbox, it is absolutely world class. And the FCA [the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK ] announced earlier this year, it was going to internationalize the regulatory sandbox.

And I think that's an area of great opportunity for us to work closely with India as it seeks to develop its own sandbox...The beauty of that is it provides for the businesses to quickly establish themselves and access each other's markets. And that means your market access is what the globe is after at this moment in time. And that's really a critical role that London can play and will play.

What impact do you see due to Brexit on India-UK business relations?

London is an absolute global hub. We are not complacent and arrogant about it. But we're quite confident we will find the right arrangement with Europe. It is in Europe's interest, the globe's interest and UK’s interest. Thereafter there are all sorts of opportunities.

I mentioned mutual market access. London in the UK has been the outspoken advocate of free trade for thousand plus years…We are already developing propositions. Our own international regulatory strategy group has come up with a wonderful proposal [for] mutual market access...If we can begin to imply that sort of thinking into free trade agreements in the world beyond and then that's going to be exciting for all concerned and I know the UK and we will play a part in that.

The India-UK free trade agreement has been on the anvil for a long time. What is the status on that and would Britain offer easier and more visas?

We need free trade agreements, they take time but there is intent and that's the important point that I would make in relation to it. You mentioned immigration, I am conscious that there have been some concerns in the Indian community in relation to it. UK government recently announced a new approach to immigration that will mean that workers from India are treated in exactly the same way as the rest of the world including the European Union.

But let's not forget UK visas granted to Indian nationals continue to experience significant growth and India receives more UK work visas than the rest of the world combined.

Over 60,000 [work] visas [were issued] last year. We need to continue to do what we do well, and as I often say, the City of London in any event in terms of our financial and professional services sector [and] as outspoken advocates of free trade is nothing without our people.

The trade between UK and India which was 19.4 billion pounds in 2011 touched only 18 billion pounds in 2017. Do you see it improving significantly in future?

I see great opportunity for both countries and the growth we've seen in recent times, part of the reason why I'm here is to look at ways in which we can increase bilateral trade [and] investment opportunity and I am quite confident that would happen. When I asked the [Indian] high commissioner based in London, what the opportunities were? He said, “the sky is the limit” and I agree with him.

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