Irish Eyes on London

When Ireland’s Minister of State at the Department of Finance,  Robert Troy, rang the bell to open trading at the London Stock Exchange in November last year – the first Irish minister to do so – the tickers lit up a beautiful deep shade of shamrock green.

It wasn’t a stunt. But it was a very fortuitous coincidence. The luck of the Irish perhaps.

Troy was heading a delegation of fintech founders and representatives from Enterprise Ireland (Europe’s third most active VC investor in fintech) to London, just as chipmaker and AI bellwether Nvidia’s knockout results lifted prices across the board. 

The LSE isn’t Nvidia’s primary listing – that’s the US NASDAQ – but it is the market that 42 Irish companies with a combined market cap of €210billion have chosen to go public on. Around half are dual listed with the London and Dublin exchanges, giving them ‘a unique strategic positioning’, according to LSE CEO Julia Hoggett, who admits she has a soft spot for the Emerald Isle.

“It’s very much the place where I feel at home,” she says. “It matters personally to me that we do everything we can to support Enterprise Ireland through the LSE.”

A pro-active investor

Operating as a ‘fund of funds’, the Irish government’s trade and innovation agency has been responsible for driving more than €1billion of VC investment into Ireland-backed fintechs over the past five years; companies like ID-Pal, which recently upgraded its award-winning SaaS identification verification and screening engine that doesn’t require access to customer data for KYC. Its most recent enhancements raise the ante on injection attacks – a fast-growing type of AI-driven fraud that involves hijacking and manipulating images during the ID verification flow, bypassing selfie and document checks.

Founder and CEO Colum Lyons was keen to stress just how important Enterprise Ireland had been to his company’s global expansion.

“The DNA of the Irish is to be helpful,” he says. “That definitely goes for the people at Enterprise Ireland, who were our first backers – they wrote the first cheque – and, in the last three to four years, as we have scaled into new markets, they’ve been at our side the whole time.”

With just over €8million in investment from multiple rounds now under its belt, 30 per cent of ID-Pal’s revenue is generated from UK clients while a strategic partnership with Salesforce is driving growth in the States. The company’s solutions currently support more than 7,000 identity documents and 200 verified address data sources in 200 countries.

“To be successful, you need to get beyond Ireland,” says Lyons.  

While 17 of the world’s top 20 banks have a base there, alongside 400 financial services firms, Enterprise Ireland’s Executive Director Kevin Sherry agrees that most fintechs who dream big will need to look offshore.

“Our jewel in the crown is our overseas offices to help Irish companies gain a foothold in foreign markets,” says Sherry. “Global offices are the eyes and ears for us while providing an introductory mechanism for businesses.”

There are Enterprise Ireland representatives in 42 bases across 26 countries. The UK team of 30 includes specialists with a particular focus on financial services and others with deep expertise in related technologies, of which cybersecurity is a major segment, all supported by an advisory panel made up of CTOs and CIOs

“We do that to be relevant to industry on both sides: the one that’s seeking innovation and the Irish industry looking to enter the market,” says Anna-Marie Turley, Head of Fintech, Financial Services & Cybersecurity at Enterprise Ireland. 

The crucial role the agency plays as a super-networker is reflected in its newest strategy: Start, Compete, Scale and Connect. 

“That last one for us, as an organisation, is key,” says Sherry. “We have lots of feedback from CEOs and entrepreneurs who tell us we play a hugely important role as a connector for them in Ireland and globally.”

He doesn’t see the agency’s job as pitting Ireland against other states for investment and jobs. Rather, it’s ‘growing the cake’ for everyone. 

“It’s not about the Irish coming to the UK and redirecting investment to Ireland; we come with a view to partnership, investment and job creation in both countries,” he says: “A great example of that is Version 1.” 

A mature technology company, headquartered in Dublin with offices around the world, Version 1 specialises in large-scale AI-driven transformation projects. It is investing £40million into AI-related hubs across six UK cities during the course of 2026/27, creating hundreds of local jobs in London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Belfast. 

Like ID-Pal, Version 1 realised early on that international expansion was a no-brainer. And, like ID-Pal, the US is an important market.

“Expansion in the US is a critical aim for Version 1,” says CEO Roop Singh.

Entries and exits

While the size of the prize across the Pond is eyewatering for Irish founders, they’re meeting many leaders rowing the other way these days. America’s unpredictable environment is likely behind a big leap in dollar investment into Ireland in 2025 – up 37 per cent year on year in the first half. Most recently, US-based Payoneer acquired Dublin fintech start-up Boundless in January 2026. Many LSE-listed Irish companies have significant US backing.

And, if a founder is looking to move on, acquisition by a foreign investor is a good route out.

“The vast majority of exits we see are trade sales and acquisitions by major internationals with a propensity for the US,” says Sherry. 

With its own seed fund, Enterprise Ireland helps crank-start companies and supports applied research in technology hubs grouped around universities involved in commercial projects that require a long runway. 

But it’s often in that tricky transition between startup, scaleup, acquisition and exit  – by whatever route they choose or is chosen for them – that founders need most help, says the agency’s Turley.

“There’s an increasing dialogue around how you scale in financial services and help them through the riskiest stages,” she says. 

Colum Lyons has just gone through one of them: ID-Pal’s first acquisition in December of London-based regtech Northrow for an undisclosed sum. Northrow’s portfolio of financial services clients includes Equifax and Hargreaves Lansdown, while ID-Pal works with multiple government departments and FS firms. The deal means it can now offer clients ‘native, end-to-end KYB checks, enabling firms to verify businesses at onboarding and to continuously monitor changes in company structure, directors or status’.

Others in the Enterprise Ireland fintech cohort, including Fenergo and Clear Strategy, will be adding to their UK headcount this year, too, deepening the relationship between two of the highest ranked fintech hubs in Europe.

Much like Kevin Sherry, the LSE’s Julia Hoggett doesn’t see it as a competition. In all cases, the role of the market operator is the same, she says.

“Stock exchanges are conveners. Our role is to bring [investors and companies] together; to get companies to grow, stay here and scale here.

“Irish companies listing on our market represent substantial value. Everything we can do to support capital to support you, we will do.”