A Day in the Life of DIT’s Investment Services Team (IST) – London Tech Week

Gareth King | 03 Sep 2018 | UK and Ireland Perspective

abstract image of St Paul's, London

IST support international companies entering the UK and setting up operations. As part of the team I predominantly support SME’s, start-ups and tech businesses based in the Americas.

This summer, I had the opportunity to attend the 2018 London Tech Week. The conference is a festival of networking, events and high-profile speakers, focusing on the creativity, innovation and talent the UK tech industry has to offer, and attracts around 55,000 attendees.

The event was opened by Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan and represented all growing industries in the fast-moving world of tech from fintech, mobile app development to artificial intelligence.

During the event, I worked closely with a Latin American delegation including representatives from Chile who have created an app to help organisations make their services more accessible to visually impaired people. For them, TechXLR8 was the most relevant part of the conference.

TechXLR8 is an anchor event of London Tech week, where the focus is connecting future tech with business strategy. Its focus is on how technology can help improve our lives and how we do business. This part of London Tech Week itself garners 300 exhibitors and 15,000 visitors of its own.

This flagship event gave my delegation the opportunity to engage with the UK business environment and meet useful contacts, and I was able to spend time with them to talk through the support services provided by the UK Department of International Trade for their product and company.

Getting to spend time in person allowed me to speak with them on the specific challenges they face setting up their business in another country. One such issue was setting up a bank account, I was able to talk them through the, sometimes quite lengthy, process of doing this and offer tailored solutions.

While the UK business community remains in flux over political and economic debate on our future with our closest neighbours in Europe, London Tech Week showed the ambition and creativity within UK businesses is very much alive and well. London and the UK, has maintained itself at the epicentre of global tech advancement and is still a vital market for innovative, forward- thinking companies to do business.

 

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of the IST, EY, OCO Global or DIT.