FIRST Financial wealth is no guarantee of a city’s status as a fintech hub. You might call this the rise of nontraditional finance.
Singapore’s fintech ecosystem is among the best in the region.
Singapore crowned as APAC’s fintech leader SINGAPORE
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ingapore led its Asia-Pacific peers as a world leader for fintech and took fourth place amongst cities globally, according to the inaugural Global Fintech Index City Rankings 2020 report by ranking analytics company Findexable. The San Francisco Bay Area edged past more than 400 cities worldwide to take the top spot, followed by London and New York. Bangalore
and Mumbai in India were the only other Asian cities in the top 10, finishing in 7th and 10th place, respectively. Meanwhile, Hong Kong finished just one point shy of the top 10, at 11th place. Singapore as a country and as a city was evaluated based on the size of its fintech ecosystem and supporting structures like coworking spaces and accelerators;
the growth of fintechs in relation to the number of unicorns, events, and international collaboration, as well as the size of investments and their website ranking; and finally, the fintech environment in the country, which is measured through the ease of doing business in the city as well as the regulator environment, amongst other factors. “The rankings are evidence of a worldwide de-coupling between the financial strength and the commercial domination of traditional financial centres. Financial wealth is no guarantee of a city’s status as a fintech hub. You might call this the rise of nontraditional finance,” noted Simon Hardie, CEO of Findexable. The study further noted that winning fintech hubs’ all carry a couple of common features. “Fintech-friendly regulations incentivise entrepreneurship and encourage investment. A strong talent pool is also key to fintech success together with an ecosystem where people can connect easily.”
Where the funding is going in ASEAN, 2018-2019
Source: PwC, UOB, SFA
THE CHARTIST: SINGAPORE FINTECHS NAB 51% OF FUNDING IN ASEAN IN 9M 2019 Singapore’s financial technology (fintech) firms attracted the lion’s share of fintech funding in Southeast Asia at 51% of the $1.14b (S$1.54b) funds garnered by the region’s countries by end-Q3 2019, a report by United Overseas Bank (UOB), aPwC, and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) revealed. Amongst SEA countries, Singapore exhbited the most variety in terms of solutions focus. Payment solutions companies garnered a quarter of the deals throughout the first nine months of 2019, whilst the highest amount of funding went to Insurtech solutions, driven by two deals, Singapore Life at $110.3m (S$150.39m) and CXA Group at $25m (S$34.09m).
Proportion of total investment deals by fintech category in 2019
ASEAN continues to draw funding
Source: PwC, UOB, SFA
Source: PwC, UOB, SFA
ASIAN BANKING AND FINANCE | MARCH 2020 7
