EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
At the moment we are in the honeymoon period of the new Labour administration and its clear focus is on macroeconomic growth . Thus in the short term , FinTech will probably get little attention from Nos 10 or 11 Downing Street . The Financial Conduct Authority is in the new government ’ s crosshairs but their focus is on the competency of regulation rather than significant changes to detailed rules .
FinTech players would probably rather be left alone for a while but there is a risk they will be paraded as examples of enabling Labour ’ s growth agenda . During campaigning Keir Starmer has stated that he has no problem with people getting rich as a result of their efforts so founders and investors will hope that there is no change in tax incentives . On the downside , he also stated that he believed that AI would remove the need for coding skills as part of the general education curriculum and so there is a risk that general IT skills will not be developed in the general populace in preference for simpler and cheaper arts funding .
Although the chancellor has already started to drive the relaxation of planning rules for housing and onshore wind farms FinTech and other IT players will also want to see support for improving UK network infrastructure and data centre capacity .
The report from the Post Office Horizon enquiry will land in the new government ’ s in tray in the coming months – it will be an interesting test to see whether attempts are made to better regulate complex IT systems development and operation or whether there will just be an effort to pay off all the subpostmasters and close the books .
There is also the possibility that Mike Lynch will become involved with future UK IT investment and accounting regulation after being cleared of fraud over the sale of Autonomy to HP . �
RUPERT BROWN , THE CTO AT EVIDOLOGY SYSTEMS www . intelligentfin . tech
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