Warsaw in top ten fintech cities - Savills

The ranking is topped by London, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Manchester, but the Polish capital nonetheless has a more favourable environment for fintechs to expand than Munich, Copenhagen and Milan, Budapest came 14th in the ranking, followed by Prague (15th) and Bucharest (18th).

Poland can be seen as the top hotspot in Central Europe for fintech firms. In addition to its labour costs, its key strengths also include strong its highly skilled IT employment growth prospects over the next ten years. Warsaw is a major university city not only in Poland, but also in European terms. It has almost 220,000 students, of whom more than 10 pct are foreign nationals. Business and administration are the most popular fields of study, followed by IT. Fintech companies can also expand in Poland thanks to the availability of high quality office space and competitive rental rates compared to Western Europe. The Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalisation of the banking sector and Poland is certainly among the countries that are likely to benefit from it the most,.
Jarosław Pilch, the head of tenant representation in the office agency at Savills Poland

The pandemic has accelerated the digitalisation of the banking sector, while the demand from fintech firms for space is likely to prove resilient coming out of the lockdown, argues Savills. This is mainly due to “the structural changes that have taken place under the lockdown, with the temporary closure of most business premises, including retail banks, forcing businesses and consumers to rapidly adapt to new circumstances in order to survive,” reads the report.

Savills points out that the location of workspace for early stage fintech companies is especially important in order to benefit from the proximity to finance clusters, customers and competitors, often establishing themselves in incubator space or flexible offices but quickly moving to traditional offices to suit their diverse talent recruitment plans,

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the world how quickly change can happen and it has turbo-charged the digitalisation of the traditional banking and finance sector in key European countries. The GFC fostered entrepreneurship which, coupled with the rise of controversy around the big banks, saw the entry of challenger banks and a whole array of start-ups. I am confident that this sector will again emerge stronger in the aftermath of the Covid crisis.
Matthew Fitzgerald, the cross border tenant advisory director at Savills