Your say 💬 : Suggestions for UK Government to Improve/Aid the FinTech sector

Last week, leading FinTech firms, including :monzo:, met with Simon Kirby (Economic Secretary to the Treasury / ‘City Minister’) to discuss how the UK’s world-leading FinTech sector can build on its previous success and take advantage of the opportunities ahead.

Now @paul, :monzo: co-founder and deputy CEO, is inviting the :monzo: community to provide suggestions :thought_balloon: for UK :gb: Government to improve/aid the Fin :fish:Tech sector:

Feel free to post your thoughts below. :+1:

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I think something that would aid the sector is educating the populace on finance. I wish I’d learned from an earlier age how important it was to keep proper control of my money. Even knowing how the industry works. This could be incorporated into the curriculum at various points.
Admittedly, listening to my father would have been a starting point as the benefit of hindsight has shown me he was right.

Improving internet access across the UK would also be a key point. There’s a surprising amount of people out there without access to any form of usable internet still. They’ll be stuck with the old system unless they can get connected.

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Apart from improving internet access and speeds (i.e. bringing Infinity to smaller towns instead of providing even faster speeds to towns that already have it) they could do with improving mobile access.

It is crazy that even in a small commuter town an hour out from central London we have trouble getting 3G let alone 4G. It is impossible to access the internet or mobile banking apps or emails on less than 3G.

Even on the main A road to Stansted airport you may get a signal between laybys but no signal where the layby is. When working as a rep I would come out of a client and not be able to connect my tablet to the internet and have to drive to another nearby town to get a signal. These are the things that hold back business and if we want mobile banking then FinTech companies need to press for improvements in our phone network and support the calls for national mobile roaming.

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I have that problem in my town. About an hour from London. On o2 you can’t use your phone for data after 7am as it just doesn’t work. The network is overloaded. Sometimes I can pick up 4G but I have to be standing on the railway bridge.
O2 believe their network is great because I have a strong 3G signal. The people I speak either don’t understand that full bars doesn’t equate to good data or they just don’t care. Probably both.

You’re right though, I should have included mobile internet.

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The mobile companies coverage maps are a joke as they are over optimistic guesstimates rather than measured out on the ground perhaps by a van with measuring equipment. When I moved town I had a real row with Three who told me I could get a signal when I couldn’t and had to walk out to the edge of my town to where there were open fields to get a signal.

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/me makes a mental note to get free pay as you go sims for the main networks to check if they actually work.

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Good point but not just BT please. We don’t want any one company to have a monopoly of anything. They should also sort out their stupendous history of terrible customer service and increase the size of the support team before increasing their reach, otherwise they’d be spreading their support team too thin.

I’d like to see more from Virgin Media and a lot more from Hyperoptic.

I feel this is starting to go off topic from what Paul and Saveen are asking of us, but good internet connectivity is relevant to the support of fintech services.

  • A large part of the problem is directly controlled, maintained and staffed by the government - HMRC! By sorting them out with a modern IT infrastructure instead of relying a lot on paperwork and complex online forms and they’d solve a lot of financial problems, not to mention save us all a lot stress and effort.

  • Begin moving towards a cashless society, as is happening in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. This would help us keep track of finances and as bonus drastically reduce the worries of getting mugged.

  • The government should start fining financial institutions that haven’t made significant technological advancements, not just polishing the turd with a fancy interface, in at least 3 years. They should be given notice obviously before this comes into effect. Guidelines for what constitutes as significant advancement should be drawn up and reviewed regularly with banks and other financial institutions tested against them by the FCA.

  • Enforce clarity and speedy updates of credit reporting between credit reference agencies, financial institutions and consumers.

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I’d love a bit of Hyperoptic action. I’ve queried a couple of times if they’ll do residential roll out in future rather than just flats. They’re not ruling it out but it’s not in the near future. Tempted to try and get my entire road signed up but that will be hard with no guarantee that they’ll actually install it. I like to think they’d do it if the 100+ houses in my road did put their names down.

If I could get Virgin I’d do it but their prices are a joke and they’re inconsistent.

I would say HMRC are definitely making roads in that direction. I hope the end plan is to use banking APIs where I just link up my bank accounts to my HMRC account and my form is filled in. Then I just need to say that looks right to me or make changes. I’m sure people will have privacy worries but being able to link my self assessment account to my live banking data would make my life so much easier.

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As I interpret from their website, they’re in the frame of mind that if there’s enough interest in an area, then all properties within that area will be connected and invited to switch from their current ISP.

Best get chatting to your neighbours then :wink:

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I’ve had a chat with a couple. They’re interested but I don’t know if they’ve signed up.