Why a Long Sales Cycle Might Be FinTech's Real Moat

Jan de Vries · 2026-11-09

Any FinTech founder raising money in the UK this year has seen the numbers. According to KPMG's Pulse of FinTech, investment fell to roughly $2.3 billion in the first half of 2026, down about two-thirds from the same period last year and the lowest since the report began in 2016. Deal count hit a ten-year low. The capital still moving is going to AI, and within AI it's going to wherever results show up fastest. Alongside the numbers runs a story: AI has collapsed the sales cycle. Products that used to take a year to sell now close much faster. Founders who can't keep up should question whether they're building the right thing, or building it in the right country. If you're selling into regulated financial services, the story reads a little differently. Worse, believing the first version of it is one of the fastest ways to put a good company out of business. The long sales cycle isn't a problem here. It's one of the few strengths in this market that other industries simply can't copy. ### What a sale actually looks like Here's what selling AI to a mortgage network, a wealth manager, or an advice firm really involves. It means integrations into systems that were never built with an innovative AI provider in mind. It means lengthy security reviews and several boards and committees, each running on its own calendar. It takes multiple internal sponsors who need to be won over separately, and who don't always agree with each other. You also need trust in the system, trust in the output, and the certifications to prove it, from the usual ISOs through to the new AI equivalent, ISO/IEC 42001. In the UK, procurement hasn't sped up. Regulated firms are accountable to the FCA for what their systems decide, and in compliance much of the work is straight-through: a file review or a financial promotions check is either right or it's a regulatory problem. A heavily regulated product with many integrations, which has to clear several boards and sponsors, moves as slowly as it always has. Founders arriving with consumer expectations miss this. They hear about the fastest sales cycle in AI without noticing that the companies telling that story are B2C, or B2B businesses that behave like B2C. The lesson travels. The conditions don't. ### Surprise is what kills a startup, not the cycle A long cycle only turns dangerous when it's a surprise. If a founder expects deals to close in weeks and sizes their next round, their hiring plan, and their investor conversations around that timeline, the business can be in real trouble by month nine, with nothing closed and no fault in the product. If the cycle is a known quantity from day one, it's just a parameter to design around. Designing around it means a few unglamorous things: - Size rounds so the money lasts through more than one full cycle. - Hire people who have sold into regulated institutions before and know a fourth meeting with the risk committee is normal, not a warning sign. - Set investor expectations before the term sheet, not after the first missed quarter. - Get the certifications done early, because the security review will ask for them either way. Our investors describe the length of our sales cycle as a moat, and they're right. The entrants it protects against are the naive ones, and in this market that's usually people from inside the industry. They have strong product knowledge and a real grasp of the problem, yet no experience of how running a startup works. They build something credible, start selling, and run out of money before the first contract lands. The technology can be copied. The domain knowledge is widely held. Being set up to wait is the hardest thing to copy, because it isn't a feature you can ship. It's a decision you make long before the first deal closes.