The value of financial services is growing faster than the value of the whole economy, a report by asset management and asset allocation firm Accenture has found.
It shows the financial sector is now worth more than €20 trillion.
The latest Accenture figures, released this week, show financial services are now worth an average of more than twice the value as the whole of the economy, the third-largest single category in terms of value in the economy.
The value of assets and assets managed, the value-added value of a service, is an important measure of an organisation’s health and wellbeing.
The report also shows that the value added value of services increased by 3.3pc between the third quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2019.
The growth in financial services value-add was driven by the rise in asset management services such as wealth management and financial planning.
The financial sector value-adjusted for value added in the first half of 2019 was €3.2 trillion, up from €3 trillion in the third period of the previous year.
The Accenture report also showed that the size of the financial services sector has grown from €20.3 trillion to €28.3 billion since 2014.
The size of financial markets has also grown, to €26.4 trillion in 2019, from €17.6 trillion in 2014.
In the first five months of 2019, there were 10.4 million financial services firms in the UK, up 11.5pc on the same period last year.
The total size of all financial services companies is estimated to be more than 6.5 times larger than the UK economy.
Accenture’s research, published on Wednesday, found that the UK has the second-largest financial services market in the world after the US.
It found that in 2019 the value contributed by financial services was worth €21.6tn, up 9.1pc on last year’s figure.
This was due to an increase in the number of financial service firms, and the expansion of financial technology and their impact on financial services.
In 2019, the UK had one of the largest financial services markets in Europe, accounting for 8.7pc of total financial assets.
The US had the second largest market, with 5.3%.
Other leading economies include the US, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
The UK’s financial services assets are worth more per person than the whole EU.
In 2018, the total value of UK financial assets was worth £12,000.
In 2019, this had risen to £13,000, with the value per person in the country increasing by 2.7%.
In 2019 the UK was one of only six countries in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) to have a net-zero tax rate for all income groups.
The ACCENT study also found that financial services contributed to the growth of the UK’s economy, with its growth rate growing by 3pc during the first three quarters of 2019 to an annual growth rate of 7.5%.
In 2018 the UK added almost 2,000 jobs in financial and insurance services.
The number of companies employing UK workers increased by 9,600 to 2,500.
In 2017, the number working in financial service services rose by almost 10,000 to 1,300.
