From Brexit to Berne: Financial services enter a new era of global cooperation
2026 will be a year for collaborating with international partners to tackle shared challenges, reduce cross-border financing barriers, and promote investment, says Dame Susan Langley
Henry Ford once said that “coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, but working together is success”. As global ambassador for the UK’s financial and professional services sector, my goal for 2026 is to ensure we’re not only coming together with our international partners, but truly working together to tackle joint challenges and reach our shared goals.
In his first interview of 2026, the Prime Minister said that – nearly a decade on from the Brexit vote – our relations with the EU are in “the best position they’ve been in ten years”. As I said when the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, visited the City during his state visit in December, in the current geopolitical and economic environment, we really do need a pragmatic approach to our shared challenges.
The FPS industry – which I am proud to represent as Lady Mayor – will be essential to this mission, with private capital acting as a critical enabler for innovation in areas like defence, clean energy, fintech and biotech.
Building on the agreements reached at the EU-UK Summit in May – and trade deals with the likes of South Korea, India and the US – as well as maintaining healthy competition, we must work collaboratively with other financial centres, redoubling our efforts to maximise the flow of capital – both financial and human – and promote and enable investment in key sectors in both directions.
We must also actively work to reduce barriers for cross-border financing, avoid restrictions for investment in strategic sectors, and explore new forms of regulatory cooperation. For instance, the updated Capital Requirements Directive could block non-EU banks from lending into the EU unless they set up local branches. In these testing geopolitical times, the EU and the UK should not be scaling down their investment into each other’s economies.
Strategic partnerships
Delivering mutual access in financial services between two developed regulatory systems is possible – take the Berne Financial Services Agreement (BFSA), which came into force on the first day of 2026. It establishes a mutual recognition framework for financial services that allows cross-border market access with reduced friction, but still preserves regulatory independence for both countries.
London and Zurich are consistently ranked as Europe’s largest and most significant financial centres and this agreement represents a huge step forward in regulatory cooperation between us – something I discussed with the Swiss Ambassador, Dominique Paravicini, before the New Year.
Over the course of the year, I’ll be travelling to key markets to explore further opportunities for cooperation with likeminded partners and highlight London’s many strengths as a destination for business and investment: a strategic time zone, deep liquidity pools, a robust legal framework, diverse talent pool, and more besides.
Next week, I’ll attend the World Economic Forum at Davos – a chance to engage with international investors to promote foreign direct investment and capital flows into the UK. My programme of international visits will also take me to destinations including the US, China, India, Australia and Japan. And we will welcome key stakeholders to a range of events at Mansion House: the UK FPS sector’s embassy in the City.
While others turn inwards, the UK and its partners must relentlessly reach outwards to defend our shared values, champion open, fair, rules-based trade and deepen the exchanges of people, ideas and capital, upon which we all prosper. In 2026, we should resolve to not only come together, but to truly work together for success.
Dame Susan Langley is Lady Mayor of Canada