Barclays goes after innovation and disruption with new fintech arm

Barclays UK Ventures will work closely with third parties, whether through partnerships or by taking equity stakes in fintech and other non-financial technology companies.

Banking giant Barclays has launched a new unit focusing on developing new business lines including fintech within Barclays UK.

The new innovation arm - Barclays UK Ventures - is headed up by Ben Davey. He was formerly Barclays’ Group Head of Strategy and will also join Barclays UK’s Executive Committee.

Barclays UK Ventures will both invest in outside firms and develop its own opportunities within Barclays. The goal is help to grow Barclays UK.

The firm said these endeavours will then grown the ventures in house as well as through commercial partnerships and venture investments.

It adds that whilst working closely with the rest of Barclays UK it will also be semi-autonomous and pursue innovative and disruptive themes.

Ashok Vaswani, Barclays UK CEO, said: “We live in a very exciting time for our industry where the deployment of new technology is making new business models and partnerships possible for the first time.”

 Ben Davey, CEO of Barclays UK Ventures, says the unit will focus on incubating ideas and accelerating them into meaningful new business lines.

“We intend to drive this initiative by building a strong team of technologists, developers and entrepreneurs within Barclays UK Ventures, mandated to operate independently of, but in partnership with, our core operations.”

“Our ability to support this development through targeted commercial partnerships and equity stakes in strategic technology partners will also help ensure we deliver best in class solutions to our customers, whilst helping our partners develop and grow.”