The business professional and financial services sector is one of the region’s key areas of strength that creates and sustains high value jobs and businesses.
Business, Professional & Financial Services in our area
The Greater Birmingham and Solihull area has a strong and well-established history in Business, Professional and Financial services (BPFS), a youthful, diverse and expanding workforce, and a host of incubators and innovation centres. GBSLEP’s vision focuses on driving technology-led innovation, drawing on our centres of excellence in higher education institutions.
BPFS
£27.8bn of the West Midlands Combined Authority’s (WMCA) GVA is attributed to the BPFS sector, which is 26.5% of the whole economy. This makes BPFS the largest sector in the WMCA area and the West Midlands as the UK’s largest regional banking and professional services cluster.
Birmingham is the only full-service UK offering outside London, with cutting-edge city centre office space in new developments across the region.
Our Impact
- Launching SuperTech - the UK’s first dedicated ‘ProfTech’ supercluster creating a private-public partnership.
- Publishing West Midlands PropTech Strategic Opportunity Review. For the Executive Summary, click here
- Helping spearhead the West Midlands presence on the Innovate Finance FinTech National Network.
- Launching the ‘Innovation in BPFS’ fund with University of Birmingham for businesses to apply for grants to drive innovation across the BPFS sector.
- Collaborating with BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Bruntwood SciTech on the Serendip Fintech Challenge Incubator to fast-track innovative ideas that will revolutionise the banking and financial sector.
Our Policies
West Midlands Local Industrial Strategy
West Midlands Combined Authority Plan For Growth document can be viewed here.
SuperTech
The new ProfTech cluster identity – was launched in January 2021. Specifically, the cluster industry leadership group represents the initial priority sub-sectors of FinTech, LawTech and PropTech. For more information on SuperTech cluster, see www.supertechwm.com
If you are a BPFS business and would like bespoke business support, please visit the GBSLEP Growth Hub's Website.
To hear more about the work GBSLEP is doing for the sector, please contact hello@gbslep.co.uk