When the fintech company ClearBank opened the doors of its new office in the City of London’s Broadgate Tower, it made no secret of how important its decision about its headquarters was.
The opening was a grand affair, attended by City Minister Lucy Rigby, and it served as a statement on the company’s belief that it was positioned in the best place in the world to operate a fintech company.
In this exclusive interview with UKTN, Emma Hagan, UK chief executive officer of ClearBank, discusses why she remains so confident in London’s fintech ecosystem, assesses the progress the UK is making in key fintech policy and sheds light on the inner workings of her industry.
How do you view London as a place to operate a fintech in 2026?
London remains one of the most exciting places in the world to work in fintech. Its combination of financial expertise, access to capital, experienced regulators and ambitious technology businesses is almost unrivalled.
You can be meeting with a global bank, a fintech founder, a policymaker and an investor within a square mile on the same day, and that exchange of ideas is difficult to replicate.
Moving into our new headquarters at Broadgate Tower allowed us to reflect on how far we have come, but it was also a statement about where we see our future lying. We are proud to be a UK-founded bank and are focused on building a global business from the heart of the City.
However, I do not think we can be complacent. Other markets are moving quickly, and fintechs will naturally build where they feel supported. London must show that strong regulation and ambitious innovation can coexist to ensure that the UK front of the queue for fintech businesses to not only start, but scale successfully.
How do you feel about the progress of implementing stablecoins into the British economy?
I am encouraged by the progress made so far. The UK has established one of the world’s most comprehensive regulatory frameworks for stablecoins, providing much-needed clarity on the respective roles of the Bank of England and FCA. That certainty is valuable in itself, as firms are far more likely to invest and innovate when the rules of the road are clear.
The Bank of England’s move away from complex individual holding limits was a welcome example of regulators listening to industry feedback and adapting the framework accordingly.
There are still areas that could be refined over time, particularly the backing asset requirements, but these feel more like questions of calibration than fundamental flaws in the regime.
Most importantly, regulation should continue to reflect the actual risk of the business model. Not every issuer operates in the same way. A bank using deposits to fund lending presents a very different risk profile from an institution holding client funds at a central bank.
As the market develops, there is an opportunity to build greater proportionality into the framework while maintaining the same high standards of safety and resilience.
Overall, I believe the UK now has a workable foundation on which a stablecoin market can develop. Stablecoins have the potential to make payments faster, more efficient and more programmable, particularly in cross-border use cases.
The challenge for policymakers is not whether to regulate them, but to ensure the framework evolves in a way that enables innovation while preserving trust and financial stability.
What other fintech innovations are you most excited about?
I am excited by the recent push in the UK and across Europe to support home-grown the technology and banking infrastructure.
For a long time, we have accepted that many of the platforms we rely on will be provided by large US technology companies.
Payments are a good example, with much of the market still dependent on a small number of global card networks. Now, we are beginning to ask whether there should be credible, home-grown alternatives.
That does not mean trying to recreate an existing business with a British flag attached to it.
The interesting opportunity is to use innovations such as open banking, real-time payments and account-to-account services to create something different, innovative and designed around the needs of consumers and businesses today.
What gives me confidence is that UK fintech has done this before. The financial crisis created space for challengers to rethink banking, payments and financial infrastructure, and supportive regulation helped those businesses grow.
The current shift in the UK’s relationship with the US could create a similar opening and I am excited to see how these innovations will give customers more choice and strengthen competition across the industry.
What’s something about your industry outsiders don’t know about?
Most people don’t realise quite how much work goes into making a payment feel uneventful. As a customer, you press a button and expect the money to arrive.
Behind that simple action is a complicated network of banks, payment schemes, technology systems, compliance checks and operational processes, and they all have to work together securely in real time.
One of the things I have always found fascinating about the industry is that some of its most important work is almost invisible.
People naturally associate fintech with apps and customer-facing products, but much of the innovation is happening within the underlying infrastructure: how payments clear, how businesses access banking services and how financial institutions manage security and resilience.
There is also an enormous amount of human judgment involved in assessing risk, protecting customers and adapting to unexpected events that never gets full recognition.
The complexity shocks many of my friends when I explain it to them. Yet, in many ways, this shows the success our industry has had. Consumers trust that their money is safe and payments will work without paying too much attention to the systems that help to power them.
