Last year was a tight environment for VC funding globally, with total global fintech investment dropping from $196.6 billion to a six-year low of $113.7 billion, according to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech H2’23 report.
The report’s authors explain that “Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, the high interest rate environment, and the barren exit environment across regions saw fintech investors holding onto their cash throughout much of the year”.
It isn’t all doom and gloom. Taking a wider view of the funding ecosystem, Dealroom reports that the UK remains at the centre of the European venture capital market, and that its investor pool is raising 20 times more than it was 20 years ago.
The UK’s startup ecosystem also ranks third globally in terms of funds raised, with London securing top spot as the number-one-funded tech ecosystem in Europe.
While some sectors have felt the chill of reduced cash flow, others have shown gains, such as electric mobility, EV battery and autonomous mobility, which were the top funded UK startup segments in 2023.
Climate tech also accounted for 29% of all UK VC investment in 2023, and while fintech was knocked off the top spot in 2023, it has regained its lead this year.
Proptech, too, is experiencing growth. While funding in 2023 was down from a high in 2021, this is in line with other sectors, and according to a CRETI report, “it reflects a broader market correction and a return to pre-pandemic investment levels”.
The KPMG report indicates that the investment in the global proptech sector added up to $13.4 billion, and other sources say that investment in the UK’s proptech sector is growing. As of 2023, it was valued at more than £14bn, with forecasts indicating that it will reach a valuation of around £71bn by 2032.
The scope of the sector is huge. A company such as Airbnb may be what springs to mind when you think of property technology, but UK property firms are increasingly implementing proptech products such as data analysis solutions and AI-driven software, as well as virtual house tour platforms, smart thermostats, locks and appliances and keyless entry systems.
With more than 800 proptech companies operating in the market, the big players include rental platforms which make up 21% of UK proptech companies––think Rentify and RentalStep.
Buyers are catered to by 22% of UK companies, via companies such as Land Bay and Realyse, and another 27% of the market is made up by property management software, including acasa and AskPorter.
The future looks positive too. According to Unissu, a proptech and REtech marketplace, the nation is well placed. “The UK leads the way in many sub-sectors of global proptech. A good example of this is geospatial data innovation; Geovation, a government-backed accelerator programme specialising in this area has already nurtured companies like LandInsight, Flock, and Skyscape, all of whom are riding high on the global innovation curve”, it says.
Growth also means jobs, and this is a sector that requires software developers and engineers, data scientists and AI experts, among other key talent. If that’s you, and you are looking for a new opportunity––in proptech or any other sector–– then you can browse the Tech Funding News Job Board for suitable roles.
It’s packed with thousands of jobs all across the UK, like the three below.
Fintech Plaid is seeking a Compliance Analyst in London. In this role, you’ll be responsible for supporting Plaid’s ecosystem risk management activities from security, regulatory, and reputational perspectives.
You’ll work closely with Go-to-Market (GTM), Compliance, Security Engineering, Legal, Customer Support, and Financial Access teams to ensure trust in the platform and protect the ecosystem.
Ripple offers crypto solutions for financial institutions, businesses, governments and developers and needs a Senior Software Engineer to build and provide platform features for compute, authentication, service discovery and calls, observability and redundancy, and to deploy and maintain Ripple’s multi-region, multi-provider service platforms.
Additionally you’ll develop tools for automation, monitoring, and instrumentation to reduce operational friction and increase engineering efficiency.
In Bristol, Aviva needs a Data Engineering Lead with a proven track record in data engineering. You will manage a data development team who are responsible for delivering IT data solutions across Aviva.
Demand for data continues to grow across the organisation, and you will manage development projects through the full project life cycle with specific focus on ETL/data store (data lake/warehouse) in an Amazon Web Services environment.
Want to see more? Explore the Tech Funding News Job Board to find your next opportunity
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