In her first Mansion House speech as Chancellor, Reeves says the government will publish the first ever Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy in the Spring to deliver long-term certainty and cement the sector’s place at the heart of the government’s 10-year industrial strategy. This will involve five priority growth opportunities: fintech, sustainable finance, asset management and wholesale services, insurance and reinsurance, and capital markets. A Call for Evidence will be published alongside the announcement to ensure that industry voices are at the heart of designing the new Strategy. Elsewhere, Reeves says the government has written to technology and telecom firms demanding that they go "further and faster" in tackling fraud on their platforms. APP fraud has soared in recent years, with UK losses of more than $500 million in 2023. To tackle this, last month regulators rolled out new rules for the banking industry that will see the vast majority of money lost to APP frauds reimbursed to victims. However, UK banks have long been campaigning for big tech, social media and telcos to take more responsibility for fraud that originates from their platforms. According to UK Finance, 76% of APP fraud originates online and another 16% in the telco sector. The government has written to the tech and telco sectors calling for greater action, with an update on progress requested by March 2025 ahead of an expanded fraud strategy. Meanwhile, Reeves confirmed that the government will publish the National Payments Vision - including "decisive action to progress Open Banking and support fintechs - that has been in the pipeline for nearly a year and establish the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (Pisces), a bespoke regulated market for private company shares. In addition, a pilot to deliver a Digital Gilt Instrument using distributed ledger technology will go ahead. Kelly Mathieson, chief business development officer, Digital Asset, welcomed the news, saying: "Rachel Reeves is right to recognise that the UK must modernise the technology underpinning the 2.5 trillion GBP gilt market to make sure it’s not left behind...Connecting these assets to a digital infrastructure demonstrates that tokenizing gilts can enhance collateral mobility, improve liquidity, and increase transactional efficiency."