Hong Kong FinTech funding landscape is dominated by a small number of large deals

In the first half of 2017, 87% of the total investment in Hong Kong FinTech companies went to one large deal

  • Total FinTech investments in Hong Kong have increased year on year since 2014 after shooting up by $141.4m in 2015. This steep growth in total investments is however due to three large deals closed since 2014; Futu Securities received $60m in 2015, WeLab raised $160m in a Series B deal in 2016 and Futu Securities raised another $145m Series C investment in H1 2017.
  • Discounting the deals valued above $50m investments in Hong Kong FinTech Sector fell by 53.4% in 2016, falling below the total investment in this bracket in 2014. Despite this H1 2017 has already seen 69.9% of investment in deals valued under $50m in 2016 committed to FinTech companies in Hong Kong, suggesting that investments in smaller deals may pick up this year.
  • The number of deals have remained reasonably consistent since 2014, with a slight increase in 2016. H1 2017 is on track to maintain this consistency.

More than 50% of deals closed between 2014 and H1 2017 went to the three subsectors; Payments & Remittances, Data & Analytics and Institutional Investments and Trading

  • The Payments & Remittances Sector received the largest share of deals since 2014. The biggest deal to a Payments & Remittances company in this period went to Point of Sale developer ibox mPOS which raised $1.3m in November 2015.
  • 27% of deals went to the InsurTech, WealthTech, Marketplace Lending and Real Estate subsectors.
  • While Institutional Investments & Trading companies only received 17% of the total deals for the 2014- H1 2017 period, one of the highest raising companies based in Hong Kong falls into this subsector. Futu Securities has raised a total of $215.5m across three deals since 2014.

The Top 10 most active FinTech Investors participated in more than half of all deals to FinTech companies based in Hong Kong since 2014

  • 53.0% of deals to FinTech companies based in Hong Kong were from the top 10 investors.
  • Four of the top 10 investors; Cyberport Hong Kong, Supercharger, Nova Founders Capital and Bigcolors, are based in Hong Kong. Of the remaining investors, two are based in China and the remaining four are based in the USA.
  • 4% of investments to FinTech companies in Hong Kong were made by the four accelerators and incubators in the top 10; FinTech Innovation Lab, Cyberport Hong Kong, SuperCharger and 500 Start-ups.

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