New role: Former chancellor Lord Hammond
Former chancellor Lord Hammond has been lined up to join the advisory board of a new £1billion fund that will invest in fast-growing UK fintech companies, Sky News reports.
The Fintech Growth Fund will seek to raise funds from institutional backers and will have no links to the Government.
Barclays, the London Stock Exchange and Mastercard are among the investors who have been approached to provide initial seed funding to launch the initiative.
Alastair Lukies, a long-serving government fintech ambassador, and Phil Vidler, a former Treasury official who heads the FinTech Alliance industry group, are other names linked to the fund.
A government-sponsored review of the UK fintech industry in 2021 urged the creation of pools of capital to fund tech businesses.