Brexit exodus: 7,500 UK finance jobs and £1.2trn in assets move to Europe

Banks and firms preparing for Brexit have relocated more than 7,500 finance jobs and more than a trillion pounds in assets from the UK to Europe, according to a new survey.

Ahead of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU on 31 December, EY’s Brexit tracker reveals that more than 400 of the jobs have been announced in the last quarter.

As the transition period ends City firms are preparing to speed up the “Brexit exodus”, says The Times. Predictions on Brexit’s impact on the UK’s financial services sector have “varied considerably”, the paper adds, with projected job losses “as high as 75,000 under a worst-case scenario in the long term”.

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Omar Ali, UK financial services managing partner at EY, says there could be a “flurry of further staff and operational announcements” in the coming weeks.

He added: “The clock is running down, and with the possibility of a second Covid-19 spike threatening cross-border movement in the final three months of the transition period, firms must now ensure that as a minimum they will be operational and can serve clients on the 1 January 2021.”

EY’s Brexit Tracker, which monitors statements from the biggest financial firms in Britain, says companies have been hiring for more than 2,800 new roles in Europe since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, assets worth more than £1.2trn belonging to EU customers have also been moved from London to the bloc.

With the transition period coming to an end, Sky News says financial companies including banks, insurers and asset managers have been “opening new hubs or expanding existing sites in Europe”.

EY says Dublin remains the most popular destination for new hubs, followed by Luxembourg, Frankfurt and Paris.

While banks are preparing for a full-blown Brexit in January, the number of jobs and amount of assets is still a “fraction” of what is held by Britain’s financial sector, Reuters adds.