British financial services exports have struggled to recover from the twin hits of COVID-19 and Brexit and are lingering at levels last seen in 2006 when adjusted for inflation, new data showed on Thursday (27 January).
Britain exported 14.5 billion pounds of financial services in the third quarter of last year, according to new inflation-adjusted figures from the Office for National Statistics.
While up slightly from 14.1 billion pounds in the second quarter, which had been the lowest reading in 15 years, the data pointed to tough times for exporters of financial services.
Exports of financial services to the European Union totalled 5.1 billion pounds in current prices in the third quarter, just ahead of exports of 4.4 billion pounds to the United States.
In 2019 – when financial services trade with the EU was still unrestricted – quarterly exports to the EU were around 1 billion pounds higher.
“Financial services exports to EU are down around 10% compared to non-EU exports since 2019, but at least part of the fall is probably due to COVID-19 rather than…
