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With over 300 years of financial success

Edinburgh - a leading centre for asset management and fintech

Scotland's offer

Scotland is a leading financial and professional services (FPS) centre with a long history of excellence in the sector - assets under management reached £480bn
Edinburgh is the UK’s second-largest centre for investment management, with major asset managers having a presence
It boasts a growing fintech sector, with over 250 fintechs based in Scotland
Scotland has a skilled workforce delivering specialist services, with over 150,000 FPS jobs and ~£18bn worth of FPS exports

300+ years of financial services

Edinburgh, one of the UK’s leading hubs for finance, enjoys a strong reputation worldwide, as a longstanding and resilient financial centre, with deep expertise.

Scotland is home to over 2,000 financial services businesses and offers one of the UK’s largest financial workforces outside London, with more than 150,000 professionals.

Banking and asset management

Edinburgh's established history of banking means that the city is home to the headquarters of major international banks. It is also a significant European centre of asset management and asset servicing, and is home to one of world’s largest asset managers – abrdn – with more than £550bn assets under management.

Globally renowned Baillie Gifford is also based in the city, holding over £200bn in assets under management and managing money for more than half of the world’s 20 biggest pension funds.

BlackRock is the world's largest fund manager and employs hundreds of people in its Edinburgh office in functions including portfolio management, client operations, and risk analytics. Other well-known asset managers with a presence in Edinburgh include Aegon Asset Management, Amova Asset Management, Cazenove Capital (Schroders), Columbia Threadneedle Investments, First Sentier Investors, Liontrust Asset Management, M&G, Quilter Cheviot, and Rathbones.

Sustainable investment

Edinburgh, and Scotland more widely, is at the forefront of sustainable investment – bringing together pools of capital under management with innovative approaches to investment in ESG-compatible propositions and products. With five top 200 universities, a skilled workforce, and lower operating costs than London, Scotland offers a competitive environment for green finance growth. Scotland is well-positioned for the net zero transition, with offshore wind capability, the Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme (FLOWMIS), and clean energy expertise.

Tech

Edinburgh is also a thriving fintech hub. In 2025, fintechs in Scotland received over £1bn in funding supporting their growth and development. Scotland’s fintech ecosystem has doubled since 2021, with over 250 fintechs across payments, regtech, insurtech and other sectors. Scotland’s ecosystem—supported by FinTech Scotland and DLT Centre of Excellence—is strengthened by an accessible regulatory environment. Scotland is a fast growing, well supported fintech hub with growing UK and international reach.

£1bn+ Funding received by fintechs in 2025

In 2025, the University of Edinburgh was chosen to house the UK AI Factory Antenna (UKAIFA), an initiative to promote uptake of AI by start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, large industrial companies, and the public sector. Further, Edinburgh houses a number of innovative AI firms. Legal AI specialist Wordsmith AI was valued at over $100m in early 2025, just 18 months after it was founded.

250+ Fintechs across payments, regtech, insurtech and other sectors

Other companies based in Edinburgh who have gone on to success in AI include the "lawtech" firm Valla (which has developed an AI-based legal advice platform) and the fast-growing AI consultancy Tomoro, which provides generative AI and autonomous agent solutions to clients such as Fidelity International and Virgin Atlantic.

Fintech

Asset management

Banking

Insurance

Scotland is a major insurance centre. Scottish Widows, Scotland's oldest insurer, has been headquartered in the city since it was founded in 1815. Edinburgh is also home to the UK head office of the Dutch insurance and pensions company Aegon. Other leading companies with operations in Edinburgh include the insurers Royal London and Standard Life Assurance; the pensions, insurance, and risk professional services provider Aon; pensions administrator Aptia; insurance brokers and risk advisers such as Gallagher, James Hallam, JLT, Lycetts, and Marsh; pensions, investments, and benefits advisers such as Hymans Robertson; and occupational pension scheme trusteeship and governance services provider Independent Governance Group.

Related professional services

58,000 Financial and professional services jobs in Edinburgh

Each of the "big four" accounting firms - Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC - has a presence in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is also home to Audit Scotland, the auditor for over 200 public bodies across Scotland. ICAS, the world's oldest professional body for Chartered Accountants (founded 1854), is headquartered in Edinburgh, with over 20,000 members worldwide. In addition, Edinburgh has established strengths in management consultancy and legal services.

£370m Foreign direct investment in financial services between 2021 and 2025

An attractive prospect for investors, foreign direct investment in financial and professional services of £370m in Edinburgh between 2021-25 resulted in over 2,500 financial services jobs in the city.

At the end of January 2025, the Lord Mayor and Policy Chairman visited Scotland to mark the City of London Corporation and Scottish Government’s annual Burns celebrations and signed an updated Partnership Agreement with the First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney.

The updated agreement built on the collaboration commitment established in the 2024 agreement, to create a programme of work for 2025 that sets out concrete joint initiatives designed to deliver positive, tangible outcomes for Scotland’s FPS sector and the broader UK economy. Its scope has been streamlined to focus resources on delivering tangible outcomes in the following four priority areas: Investment, Green and Sustainable Finance, Fintech, Data, and AI, and Promotion and Communications.

Finance for a sustainable future

The Global City sustainable finance hub

Fintech success stories

Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh hosts one of the largest fintech clusters in Europe, made up of over 250 firms. Out of these 250, 76 are international fintech companies that have decided to make Edinburgh their home.

A new partnership in summer 2026 between two fintechs, Legado and Amiqus, is set to simplify regulated client onboarding for financial services companies, as the sector faces growing pressure to implement digital infrastructure to meet compliance requirements. The two companies were founded in Edinburgh and first connected through FinTech Scotland.

The partnership combines Amiqus’s reusable digital identity and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) capabilities with Legado’s regulated communications and electronic signature platform. The result is seamless, connected, compliance-driven client workflows — from verifying identity biometrics to collecting, signing and evidencing documents. Legado’s LegadoSign product will be fully integrated into the Amiqus platform.

Saving on bills and reducing carbon emissions

Edinburgh-based fintech company Snugg’s mission is to help accelerate the UK’s transition to net zero carbon emissions by helping people make their homes more energy efficient. Through the harnessing of tech and data, Snugg assesses the energy efficiency of a house and based off its findings, creates a personalised, financial plan to help the homeowner make the changes needed to make their home more energy efficient, saving them bills in the long run and helping reduce carbon emissions.

The plan estimates upfront costs of any installations required as well as showing grants and financial options that the homeowner may be able to access and approved local installers who work nearby. Set up in 2022, ever since then Snugg has been on an upwards trajectory. In 2023 it won a place on the EY Fintech growth programme and in 2024, won nearly £2m in funds from the UK government to help them develop their services.

Enabling collective innovation through the financial sector

FinTech Scotland was founded in 2018 as a joint initiative by the University of Edinburgh, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC and Scottish Enterprise. Its mission is to secure Scotland’s place as a top 5 global fintech centre by encouraging financial innovation, collaboration and inclusion.

Its purpose lies in its convening power. The organisation acts as a strategic enabler, bringing together the financial services sector, entrepreneurs, investors, consumer groups, universities and many more to develop and enable collective innovation through the financial sector.

One of FinTech Scotland’s initiatives has been the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL). This is a research and innovation programme that encourages fintech firms to help shape and evolve the future regulatory landscape for the UK financial services sector. FRIL creates an environment for participants to engage and share perspectives

Partner story: abrdn

Partner story: Burness Paull LLP

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