A new report out today from TheCityUK forecasts that UK financial and related professional services will have generated a record trade surplus of £61bn in 2013.
Key Facts about UK Financial and Related Professional Services reports that the surplus in financial and related professional services trade is up nearly 10% in 2013, contributing strongly to the UK recovery. For the first time, the trade surplus for the sector has risen above the UK’s 2008 pre-recession peak of £58.7bn.
The new figures reveal that the sector’s trade surplus is bigger than the combined surplus of all other net exporting industries in the UK and is playing a key role in offsetting the UK’s goods trade deficit totalling more than £100bn. The value of sector’s exports at £83bn, is more than three times the £26bn spent by tourists visiting the UK.
The UK is now the world’s leading exporter of financial services - the value of the UK’s trade surplus in financial services is double that of the next largest country trade surpluses recorded by Switzerland, the US and Luxembourg.
To put the £61bn in context, the trade surplus contributed by financial and related professional services could pay for building more than 100 new hospitals (comparison: the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham opened in 2010 at a cost £545m).
The report further shows that productivity of the sector is strong right across the UK:
- Industry output at 12.6% is above the 7.4% contribution to UK employment, indicating that productivity levels for financial and related professional services are well above the average for the UK economy.
- The average worker in the financial and professional services sector contributes £83,000 to the economy, compared with a £46,000 UK average for other sectors. In all UK regions, the contribution to GDP per financial and related professional services worker is higher than £57,000.
- The report also reveals the positive impact of a strong financial services workforce on UK regions, with those geographical areas that have a higher share of GDP coming from financial and related professional services typically seeing faster track growth.
You can view the report in full by following this link.
