Surprisingly a lot says The Economist and in particular: -

1. Advanced manufacturing
2. Materials of the Future
3. Life Sciences
4. Financial Services
5. Technology including AI, Fintech, Insurtech and Legaltech

I usually write about insurance, insurtechs and innovation. The Economist frames this in the wider world of the UK and its competitive position in the world i.e. how Britain's abiity to focus on growth, its own strengths and the constant challenges of reconciling the often conflicting goals of growth, budgeting, national debt and voter perceptions.

I've added Financial Services as a UK strength.

Advanced manufacturing

Rolls Royce is a shining example its ‘Ultra-Fan- technology powering wide-bodied aircraft around the world. Its strategy is to re-enter the larger market for single-aisle aircraft. RR is powering the advance of small nuclear reactors a vital part of the world’s need to move from fossil to green technologies and reduce carbon and the harmful effects of global warming.

Its alumni spread the innovation spirit including Itxaso Ariza, a former chief engineer in its aerospace division, and now at Tokamak Energy, a British firm working on nuclear fusion.

Materials of the Future

Two scientists in the University of Manchester discovered graphene in 2010- carbon just one atom thick. Space Forge, a Welsh startup backed by NATO plans to be the first company to manufacture semiconductors in orbit (low gravity and cold temperatures make space ideal for a chip factory).

Life Sciences

GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca are two of the world's leading pharma companies the latter investing heavily in genomics, oncology and artificial intelligence (AI). 

Britain is “well ahead of most of the US” in training scientists who understand biology and computation, says Chris Gibson, boss of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, an American drug-discovery firm. 

Recursion recently merged with Exscientia, its British rival and the first firm to bring AI-designed molecules into clinical trials.

AlphaFold, can predict three-dimensional protein structures and won Hassabis and John Jumper of DeepMind, half of the Nobel prize for chemistry last year. DeepMind is now an affiliate of Alphabet of course whilst it still has a large operation on the UK. 

Financial Services

Britain is an outward facing country. It's position on the extreme west of the European continent has always given it and its people an independent streak.

London's global financial strength started as a result of the nation's exploration  and exansion overseas, the opening trading stations and the need to insure explorer ships and cargoes. The coffee houses of London were the places investors, insurers and traders met and from which Lloyds of London grew. The British Empire grew reached its apogee in the early 20th Century and today London's position in the middle time zone between The Americas and Asia plus its financial services innovation and leverage of technology still give it a competitive strength.

Wall Street may have dented its position and European and Asian rivals seek to chip away at its market share but London is still a core British success story.

Technology

The hype and momentum are generally with US Tech Giants, the AI Labs OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind. AI innovator Anthropic is French.

The UK does have deep strength in machine learning and AI. Wayve raised over $1bn—the largest-ever investment in a European AI firm—worked out that the best approach to autonomous driving is to have an ai learn human driving patterns on its own with self-driving vehicles running in the US, UK, Germany and Japan. Wayve’s Co-founder and CEO says the plan "is to license its technology, first to car companies and then robotics manufacturers. Nissan will be the first taker, with Wayve’s AI due to be landing in its cars in 2027 to support driver assistance.

Tesla, he acknowledges, is one of the few companies building intelligence along with the vehicle. But for other manufacturers and operators, he believes a broad platform is needed. With embedded AI, Kendall believes there will be a trillion-dollar company – and that Wayve could claim that title."

Graduates of Palantir, an American data firm that employs a quarter of its staff in London, go on to found their own startups. One is Arondite, using ai as the “connective tissue” between disparate defence systems. Both Wayve and Arondite are based near King’s Cross—the nascent tech hub in London that DeepMind still calls home.

Britain is also combining technology with its globally renowned services, sector particularly the banking, legal and insurance companies based in The City of London. We must not forget other financial centres like Edinburgh in Scoland- another reason we should invest in infrastructure like rail. Online meetings are  not suficient and relationships are built on personal trust and contact.

Revolut is a flourishing global challenger bank though strangely still seeking a banking licence from the UK regulators. UK customers can still bank with Revolut however and this challenger bank is way ahead in embedding insurance into its services.

Monzo and Starling are two other British banks challenging the incumbent big banks.

Monzo's Phoebe Chibuzo Hugh; Director and Head of Insarance, co-incidentally posted on LinkedIn today:-

" Four and a half million customers ago, I joined Monzo Bank.
That was November 2023. We had 8.5 million customers.

Now it’s August 2025, and we’ve just passed 13 million 💥 

All in under two years.
Almost entirely in one country.
In an industry built on paperwork, regulation, and trust.

And two-thirds of that growth?

Still people texting their mates:
“You should try Monzo.” 

We talk a lot about product–market fit.
But what does it mean to keep compounding
at a million new users a quarter
once you’re already in 1 in 5 UK wallets?

And while doing that:
📈 we passed £1 billion in revenue,
🧡 became profitable, and
🌱 welcomed 650,000 under-16s, whose first bank is Monzo

I opened my first bank account in a branch with carpet tiles, a biro, and a man called Alan.
These kids will grow up with spend notifications before they can legally spend.

It’s easy to normalise growth like this when you’re inside it.
But from the outside, it’s rare.
And - if I’m honest - kind of magical ✨ 

And if this is what the compounding curve looks like now -
you kind of want to stick around for the next chapter."

All in under two years. Almost entirely in one country.
In an industry built on paperwork, regulation, and trust.

That should give confidence to the regulated legal, banking, and insurance Markets both as Britain leads the world (outside the US) in Insurtech and Legaltech combining creativity with coding for real innovation. 

Not least, the UK is world-leading in video gaming.

Yet there is a cloud on the horizon- making the UK a preferred place to do business for entrepreneurs, current and new ventures. Plus giving them access to funding to get through the early bootstrapping stages to that of financial viability.

Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets, Hargreaves Lansdown: ‘’London has struggled to compete with super-star valuations on Wall Street and has been facing an exodus of listed firms leaving for pastures new. The City needs a leg-up and the Financial Conduct Authority is attempting to provide support by making it cheaper and easier for companies to raise funding in London. Companies have long bemoaned the difficulties of raising money in a tangle of red tape, which this shake up is designed to cut through."

The Government and the FCA both aim to implement reform and recently there have been decisions by major companies to stay listed in London. That may lead to start-ups staying in the UK rather than selling up or moving to New York. 

When we walk and attend events around the City of London and surrounding areas you can't but be struck by the mix of nationalities amongst investors, innovators and enterprises. The positive outlook and the joy of being in London. Whilst we must do better as a United Kingdom, as individuals and Government the outlook is positive.

Neither the last Conservative Government nor the current Labour government balanced the goals of growth with delivering public services without spending too much and adding to national debt. A curse of most advanced nations.

Britain has, to an extent, become a country where too many envy those with wealth and seek the easy way out of ‘soaking the rich’ for tax revenues without realizing they already contribute the most.  Incentivising entrepreneurs and companies to stay in the UK is part of global competition.   There are some encouraging signs that after a year in government the Prime Minister, His Ministers of State and the Civil Service will get the balance right.

Unnecessary regulation and delayed investments in the UK's infrastructure are another brake on progress and growth but, as with the case of Monzo, not unsurmountable.

Slough Trading Estate is the Data Centre Capital of Europe but to open new data centres waits impatiently for new electricity connections to the National Grid. That is slowed by bureaucratic planning rules, a bottleneck for other connection applications to the National Grid around the UK. That can be put right but it needs both government support , action and new investment. 

Again, it is part of the government strategy, but it has to learn how to pull the right levers and overcome populist resistance ( no pylons near my back garden but we do need them so choose elsewhere and not here!).

The Economist sums up below.

"Above all, halting the exodus will require a shift in the national mindset. Britain thinks too small. The government talks up growth but does little to bring down crippling industrial energy costs. Entrepreneurs face what Lady Stowell, who recently led a review on scaling startups, calls “a spaghetti of schemes” to pick through while “drowning in an alphabet soup” of regulators. And for all their flair, many British innovators aim merely to grow large enough to be bought—rather than to build truly world-beating companies. If Britain is to realise its potential, it must first learn to see its own worth".

Britain is still one of the great trading nations of the world, still the sixth largest economy, and as I have described above a world leader in vital sectors. For centuries Britain often led the way. Thomas Newcomen and James Watt created the steam engine. Edward Jenner pioneered the vaccine. Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program.

Britain remains a place where ideas spark—in this lies its potential for revival. It is home to four of the world’s top universities. One, Cambridge, sits in the centre of the densest innovation cluster on Earth, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Global Innovation Index.

The future is there to be grasped and we all have a role to play.

Further Reading

What’s Britain good at? The Economist

The economics of superintelligence The Economist

Insurance Needs a New Business Model Insurtech World

Race for AGI by LLM vendors- will it imperil safety, compliance and insurers?