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Introduction
Derry’s Economy has shifted significantly towards knowledge sector activity in the last decade. Sectors achieving international success include; technology manufacturing, software development and digital media, business processes in technology and financial services and a growing life sciences sector. Retailing and tourism have also demonstrated significant growth in terms of increased demand by retailers to locate in the City as well as a rise in visitor numbers. |
Financial Systems and Business Processes
The region and city hosts a service based financial services cluster including HML (Mortgage Servicing), Axa (domestic mortgage servicing) and Firstsource. In addition, companies such as Singularity provide bespoke business process software to FS companies and Allstate NI provides ICT and business processes to the American insurance giants. These two companies in particular highlight Derry’s capability to provide financial systems and technology to the FS industry by linking with London, Dublin and the US.
The success of recent customer service-based investments has provided opportunities for companies to develop their operations, moving towards higher value, more technical activity. Communication needs are fully met by the high capacity secure bandwidth permitted by the direct international telecommunications link. The readily available property offering to the FS sector is of a high specification and competitive pricing. The city’s airport also ensures direct connections to London and Dublin to assist with international business connectivity.
The University of Ulster at Magee and the nearby Coleraine campus, Letterkenny IT and NW Regional College have thousands of students studying various computing subjects with well over 1000 qualifications awarded in IT related disciplines every year. Over 250 of these are at graduate level. Larger numbers still are studying and graduating in business and finance related disciplines across these subjects with 50 graduating law students in the city. This provides skills proposition for further FS investment.
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