Large deals drive FinTech investment in Singapore to over $5.3bn since 2014

Nearly one in six FinTech deals in Singapore so far this year were valued at $50m or more

  • The Singaporean FinTech landscape has witnessed a shift between 2014 and Q3 2019 from investors predominantly backing smaller deals, towards participating in later-stage transactions.
  • Back in 2014, all deals in the country were valued below $10m, with 76.2% of these deals being valued at less than $1m. However this has dropped significantly with deals below $10m accounting for only 55.3% of FinTech deals in the country in the first three quarters of 2019 and deals below $1m dropping by 65.6 percentage points (pp) to just 10.6% during the period.
  • The proportion of FinTech deals in Singapore valued above $50m has increased by 14.9 pp, from no deals of this magnitiude in 2014, to 14.9% of deals in the first nine months of 2019 being in the size range.
  • Average deal size has increased 63-fold from $641k in 2014 to $40.4m in the first nine months of this year as we see investment in Singaporean FinTech companies increase at a higher rate than volume of deals completed.

Over $2.5bn has been raised in the first three quarters of the year so far

  • FinTech companies in Singapore have raised over $5.3bn across 315 transactions since 2014. Investment grew at a CAGR of 193.4% between 2014 and 2018, and this growth has continued into 2019 with investment hitting a record of over $2.5bn in the first three quarters of the year.
  • The record investment in 2019 so far has been driven by Sea Limited’s $1.4bn post-IPO-equity round in Q1 2019 which accounts for 25% of total funding since 2014 alone and is the largest deal in Singapore to date. Even upon exclusion of this record deal, nearly $1.2bn has been raised in the region in the first three quarters of 2019 setting investment on track for a new record for total funding to be set this year.
  • Deal activity is also set to reach a new record this year with 96.9% of last year’s record total of transactions having already been completed, with one quarter of 2019 still to go.

One in five FinTech deals in Singapore have been completed by Payments & Remittances companies

  • FinTech deal activity in Singapore since 2014 has been widely distributed among all subsectors, however Payments & Remittances companies have attracted the largest share over the period with 21.3% of total transactions.
  • Deal activity in the Payments & Remittances space can be put down to the drive towards a cashless society which is especially prominent in the Asia and Oceanic regions, and the necessity to keep up with the rapidly changing payments landscape.
  • WealthTech companies also attracted a healthy share of deal activity with 13.3% of deals completed being within this subsector. This is unsurprising as the WealthTech sector aims to capitalise on Singapore’s tech savvy, millennial population and disrupt traditional legacy banking systems.
  • The other category consists of companies in Blockchain, Institutional Investments & Trading, Cryptocurrencies and Funding Platforms subsectors. The largest deal in this category was raised by Quoine, a bitcoin trading platform which raised $105m in its ICO in Q4 2017.

Nearly $900m has been raised across Singapore’s top 10 FinTech transactions in Q3 2019

  • The top 10 transactions in Singapore have collectively raised nearly $900m last quarter, which is equal to 16.3% of the total capital raised across the region since 2014, and 34.6% of capital raised in 2019.
  • The largest round of the period went to Mapletree Industrial Trust, a Real Estate investment trust. The company raised $290.6m in a Post-IPO-equity round where the capital will be used to partially fund its joint purchase of a North American data centre portfolio.
  • Capital allocation for the top 10 was dominated by Real Estate deals which make up four of the transactions. The rest of the capital was evenly spread across subsectors with Infrastructure & Enterprise Software, InsurTech, Marketplace Lending, Payments & Remittances, RegTech and WealthTech companies accounting for one deal each.

The data for this research was taken from the FinTech Global database. More in-depth data and analytics on investments and companies across all FinTech sectors and regions around the world are available to subscribers of FinTech Global. ©2019 FinTech Global

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