Bristol is one of the United Kingdom’s most dynamic financial hot spots. The city and its wider region — often discussed alongside nearby Bath — are home to more than 90 fintech firms and a community of around 61,000 financial services professionals, establishing it as one of the country’s largest hubs outside London. Altogether, the city’s fintech arm contributes nearly £400 million to the UK economy.
Spanning from payments, cloudbanking and crowdfunding to credit access and AI-powered pensions, the following companies represent the best of Bristol’s fintech landscape.
Top Fintech Companies in Bristol to Know
- Hargreaves Lansdown
- Moneyhub
- Pismo
- ClearBank
- VOLT Open Banking
Top Fintech Companies in Bristol
Investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown provides retail investors with access to stocks, funds, pensions and ISAs. Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Bristol, the company combines online trading technology with advisory services, managing over £140 billion in assets for more than 1.9 million clients. Hargreaves Lansdown is known for its user-friendly platform, and customer-focused approach to long-term wealth management.
Moneyhub helps banks, pension providers, wealth managers and insurers turn their complex financial data into clear, personalized customer experiences. Its API-first platform combines open banking data, AI-driven categorization and payment initiation to support everything from smarter lending decisions to improved financial wellbeing. FCA-regulated and ISO 27001 certified, Moneyhub has more than 150 million users, and works with prominent partners like HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group.
Loqbox develops credit-building products designed to help financially underserved consumers improve their credit scores and build their savings. It works by lending new users $240 at the start of the year, held in their Loqbox account. Each month, the user deposits $20, while Loqbox reports to all three credit bureaus of your timely payments. By the end of the year, the loan is paid off and a new savings account is created.
Penny operates an AI-powered mobile app that helps users find, consolidate and manage multiple pension pots in one place. Founded in 2019, the startup partners with major financial institutions, including HSBC and Vanguard, to simplify long-term retirement planning. To date, Penny has tracked down more than $500 million in lost pensions for its users.
Volt.io’s platform enables secure, account-to-account payments without cards. The company is working toward a global “network of networks” that connects domestic, real-time payment systems into a single integration that would mainstream digital payments directly from users’ bank accounts. By settling payments instantly, Volt.io helps merchants reduce fraud, chargebacks and payment delays.
Flexys develops cloud-native debt-management and collections software used by utilities, banks and government agencies. Its platform, Control+, automates workflows, supports multi-channel customer engagement and integrates real-time analytics. Organizations using Flexys report collecting up to three times more debt, and have seen lending activity grow by as much as 80 percent after implementing the platform, according to the company website.
Payaca is an operating system designed to help cleantech companies scale their renewable-energy projects, such as solar panels, heat pumps, battery storage and EV chargers. The company’s all-in-one platform handles quoting, compliance, job scheduling, field dispatch, customer portals and payments between homeowners and installers, whether they be a small, local family business or national energy suppliers.
Fundsurfer is a crowdfunding platform that connects investors to businesses looking to raise capital. The startup offers equity, debt, rewards and donation-based funding campaigns, supporting hundreds of startups and small-and-medium-sized enterprises across the country. Since its founding in 2014, Fundsurfer has helped nearly 400 businesses raise more than £46 million.
Bunch offers software that helps split the expenses amongst people in shared living arrangements. Founded in 2017, it consolidates bills from multiple providers — including energy, water and internet — into a single monthly subscription and automates cost-sharing for housemates. Its product targets students, renters and young professionals navigating increasingly complex household finances.
Through its investor-voting ProxySphere platform, Tumelo allows users to see which companies their money is invested in and voice opinions on social, environmental and governance issues. Founded in 2018, the company positions itself as a “tech for good” fintech bridging finance and civic participation. Tumelo works with asset managers, pension providers and retail investors to increase transparency and engagement in capital markets.
Pismo operates a cloud-native core banking and payments platform used by financial institutions globally, with a European hub based in Bristol. Acquired by Visa for $1 billion in 2023, the company provides modern infrastructure for card issuing, digital banking and real-time payments. Its Bristol presence anchors Visa’s push into next-generation, API-first banking systems.
Ultimate Finance Group is a specialist lender offering asset-based and working-capital solutions to businesses outside mainstream bank lending. Combining over 20 years of experience with digital platforms, the company provides invoice finance, asset finance, bridging loans, trade and structured finance, as well as construction and recruitment funding. Ultimate Finance also provides tailored solutions to small-and-medium-sized enterprises that fall outside mainstream bank lending models, helping them manage cash flow, invest in growth, acquire assets and tackle complex financial hurdles.
ClearBank is the UK’s first new clearing bank in more than 250 years. In addition to moving funds, the company also provides embedded banking and real-time payment infrastructure for fintechs, crypto platforms and financial institutions without traditional lending. Clearbank has been named one of Deloitte’s Fast 50 companies for four consecutive years, claiming the top spot in 2021.
