As Brexit trade talks between the UK and the EU come to a head, only just over half of UK firms say they are prepared for Britain leaving the European Union on 1 January 2021 - whether there is a deal or not - according to research.

After questioning 400 UK firms, company spending management FinTech Soldo found that only 52 per cent of them consider themselves “completely” or “very prepared” for Brexit.

Overall, larger companies feel more confident in their ability to “absorb any shock”, found Soldo, with 66 per cent of companies with 501-2,000 staff saying they felt “completely” or “very prepared”.

This compared to 51 per cent of those with 51-500 employees and 46 per cent with 1-50 employees.

Only a small majority of financial services and IT/enterprise tech companies feel confident about Brexit, with just 54 per cent and 58 per cent respectively saying they felt completely or very prepared for 1 January.

But this is relatively high compared to other sectors. Only 38 per cent of marketing and advertising agencies, 41 per cent of retailers and 35 per cent of non-profits felt completely or very prepared for leaving.

Mariano Dima, president and board director at Soldo, said: “Perhaps understandably, much of the recent media focus on Brexit has been on stockpiling, shortages and the price of imported goods increasing overnight, pushing inflation to levels more usually associated with struggling economies in less developed countries.

“The impact on the UK’s thriving FinTech scene may be less visible, but it is no less costly and just as unnecessary.”

Dima said: “At Soldo, we started planning for Brexit in 2017. We’ve spent serious sums preparing for it, most of it in the EU.

“With the guidance of the Irish Development Agency we established a company in Ireland, created a parallel financial services division in Ireland, obtained an Irish e-money licence and have appointed a team to run the operation in Dublin.”

He said: “After spending all this time, money and effort, we can now continue to do what we did before Brexit, service customers throughout the EU, but instead of creating jobs in the UK we've created them in the EU.”

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