Luxembourg holds most fintech per capita in Europe

According to rankings, the grand duchy has Europe’s fourth-best finance startup ecosystem.

Based on the results of a recent McKinsey study of 29 European nations, the UK and Sweden “stand out for their superior fintech ecosystem performance,” closely followed by Malta and Luxembourg.

The ranking focused “on three key aspects of Europe’s fintech sector: founding, funding, and scaling–that is, fintechs’ ability to set up in the first place, the ease with which they can access capital, and how well they can grow and thrive,” the consulting firm said last week.

Luxembourg finished fourth overall, although it outperformed the other four countries in two of the sub-indices. The grand duchy came in second in terms of deals per million people and first in terms of “fintechs founded, per million capita 2021.”

Luxembourg ranked fourth in the category of “workforce (fintech jobs) as a share of the total workforce,” but fell to twelfth position in the category of “fintech funding per capita.” It also had no unicorns that were publicly known. The grand duchy was ranked 4.8 on average as a result.

The United States would have come in fifth position overall in the European rankings, just behind Luxembourg and ahead of Switzerland if the US had been included.