The Government promotes a financial cluster so that Catalonia regains economic leadership

BarcelonaThe Government is promoting a cluster to bring together the financial services sector in Catalonia, which has 650 companies, employs 104,738 workers and has a turnover of almost 48.2 billion euros annually. These are the main figures that the Minister of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, announced this Wednesday at an event at the Barcelona Stock Exchange, where she presented the project that aims to associate the agents of the sector.

Romero has appealed to public-private collaboration for this project, which must generate investment in Catalonia and "must go ahead so that Catalonia recovers its economic leadership." The Minister has encouraged the hundred businessmen present at the event to join the initiative and has reiterated that the public sector needs the private sector to "take a giant step." "We will not do anything alone, we need to conspire with you," she said. The idea of the financial cluster is part of the Catalan Government's Catalunya Lidera plan.

The initiative was launched by the previous government, when Natàlia Mas was the Minister of Economy, by mapping this sector in Catalonia, which now allows the cluster to be promoted. The Government's intention is for the cluster, under the name Barcelona Finance Cluster, to reach fifty members by the end of 2025 and the threshold of 90 in five years. The project aims to bring together companies from the different segments of the financial services value chain: insurance companies and mutual insurance companies, banking, payment systems, hundreds of research and development companies. fintech, among others. The initiative will be channelled through the association of entities Barcelona European Financial Centre and will have the collaboration of the Department of Economy and Finance.

'Fintech' and 'insurtech'

All of this is reflected in international projects such as Finance Montreal in Canada and Finance Innovation in France. According to Romero, in the French case the cluster has been able to launch 740 projects and mobilize more than 2.8 billion euros. After interviewing nearly seventy agents in the sector and consulting more than a hundred companies, the Government has designed an action plan that revolves around 7 major strategic objectives and 22 actions. Romero also highlighted that since 2017 the number of companies in the financial services sector has increased by more than 200, and that the growth in the field of the fintech and the insuretech, in which companies have tripled in size. More than 75% of the capital raised by these companies has been in the last seven years.