Sponsor: Invest in Northern Ireland
Website: http://www.investni.com/
About this sponsor
Northern Ireland’s success as a location for financial services firms is primarily down to its abundance of well educated and skilled people with a reputation for applying their ‘can-do’ attitude to deliver exceptional results. Quality of talent is coupled with competitive operating costs (among the lowest in Western Europe) and high levels of collaboration between industry, academia and government to create a uniquely hospitable and supportive environment for the sector. Northern Ireland has excellent credentials in financial technology and is among the top global locations for companies seeking strategic nearshore solutions for software development and technical support services. In addition to multinational firms such as Citi, NYSE Euronext and the Allstate Corporation, the well established cluster includes a number of innovative high growth companies including Cybersource, First Derivatives, Optitrade and Kainos. Middle and back office support functions have also seen significant investment by global companies with fund administrators, law firms, and insurance companies locating centres in the region to deliver fund accounting, legal process outsourcing (LPO), compliance, risk management and actuarial services for US and EMEA operations. The region has a rich heritage of industry focused R&D and several globally recognised IT and telecoms related research centres including The Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and the Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC) at the University of Ulster (UU). These two centres have recently joined with five major firms in the region in a partnership to promote research collaboration, skills development and entrepreneurship and to develop Northern Ireland’s position as a global centre of excellence for capital markets engineering. Invest Northern Ireland provides strategic direction for the international financial services sector in Northern Ireland and has primary responsibility for economic development in the region. It is at the forefront of the drive to further increase and diversify the region’s financial services capability, and offers a flexible efficient and comprehensive service to businesses, including a range of financial and other incentives aimed at accelerating growth, maximising profitability and facilitating recruitment, training and R&D.