Recently, the LHC has found several anomalies in exclusive semileptonic $b\to s\ell^+\ell^-$ decays, which can be analysed through a global analysis of the relevant decay modes. After a discussion of the hadronic uncertainties entering the theoretical predictions, we present the interpretation of the data in terms of generic new physics scenarios and we discuss model-independent fits of the corresponding Wilson coefficients to the data. In some cases, the best fit point is preferred over the Standard Model by a global significance of 4$\sigma$ or more. Based on these results, the discrimination between high-scale new physics and low-energy QCD effects as well as the study of lepton-flavour universality violation are discussed.