Barcelona, ​​the fourth most attractive European city for fintech

● The Catalan capital is behind London, Berlin and Paris, and ahead of Manchester

● The Barcelona Stock Exchange will host the Fintech Barcelona Tech City Hub from 2021

Barcelona is the fourth most attractive European city for technology companies in the financial sector, the so-called fintech, just behind London, Berlin and Paris, and ahead of Manchester and Madrid. This is confirmed by the European Fintech Occupier Outlook 2020, recently developed by the real estate consultancy Savills.

The study, which ranks the most attractive cities to attract investment from this company profile, considers the combination of different elements, such as financial services infrastructure, demographic fundamentals, talent, innovation, affordable prices. and attractive business environments. It should be noted that Barcelona has attracted 182 million euros of fintech venture capital in the last five years, more than double those raised by Madrid, although it is traditionally where the majority of the state’s financial fabric is concentrated.

The Catalan capital gets a score of 75.1 and is still far from London, which is prominent in the first position (100 points), and attracts more venture capital investment in the financial technology or fintech sector than any other ecosystem due to the presence of the vast majority of the world’s financial services, access to the professional talent of the technological and financial sector, and to an absolutely favorable regulatory environment, according to the real estate consultancy.

From Savills also emphasize that the strong growth prospects of technological employment and the working age population of Barcelona are a key factor for the attraction of fintech, in combination with the competitive labor cost, so hire a software engineer in Barcelona is on average more than 10,000 euros a year cheaper than in the capital of the United Kingdom, the ratio between the price of housing and the income received by professionals in the sector is almost half, and office rents account for less than a third of the cost of an office in London.

Finally, in this sense, the Barcelona Stock Exchange will host the Hub Fintech Barcelona Tech City from next year, a center specializing in technologies applied to the financial sector that will allow start-ups in the sector to approach the stock market financing.