This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to exit the European Union (EU), i.e. 'Brexit' on the financial services (FS) sector.
This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to exit the European Union (EU), i.e. 'Brexit' on the financial services (FS) sector. In addition to factors affecting FS as a whole, it incorporates perspectives specific to five segments within the sector, namely, retail banking, corporate banking, investment banking, asset management and FinTech.
The paper draws on the views of ACCA's members working in the FS sector around the world. The intention is to provide a point-of-view from the perspective of accounting and finance professionals within financial services organisations around the world. These individuals are typically at the heart of the decision making processes (both planning and implementation) that shape their organisation's response to Brexit.
Therefore, this is a bottom-up view that acts as a 'temperature gauge' to capture the mood of professionals at the front-line, to complement a policy level top-down view. Additionally, the paper is informed by interviews conducted for this paper with six professionals working within or advising financial services organisations.
Finally the paper also references existing research and some high-level observations particularly where they relate to regulatory considerations. This is for the sake of completeness and context, and this paper is not intending to provide a detailed technical opinion on these matters. This paper is primarily a view of the 'state-of-play' as obtained via the survey of ACCA FS members around the world.