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Total investments into peer-to-peer lenders, payment services
companies and Internet insurers globally rose to $19.1 billion,
60 percent more than in 2014, data from KPMG and CB Insights
showed.
In Asia, investments rose at a much faster pace, led by mammoth
funding rounds for fintech companies in China and India, and
with billions of consumers in the region using their mobile
phones for everything from buying insurance to paying for goods,
the trend is expected to continue.
China, where investments surged to $2.7 billion, attracted
nearly three times the investments seen in Britain over the
2014-2015 period, the data showed.
"Naturally, because growth in the region is quite high, you
should expect to see continued investment," said Zennon Kapron,
founder of Shanghai-based financial industry research firm
Kapronasia.
India and China have large populations and a high adoption rate
of new technologies, making them fertile ground for fintech
companies looking to disrupt traditional players such as banks,
insurance companies and credit card operators.
India, where nearly two-fifths of its 1.27 billion people have
no bank accounts and only 252 million have Internet access, is
seen as a promising growth market for firms looking to leverage
technology to connect financial services and products,
particularly through mobile phones.
"The rising number of people getting used to smartphones and new
technologies in India will result in more funds flowing into the
fintech solutions providers in the near-term at least," said
Harish HV, an India-based partner at advisory firm Grant
Thornton.
In China, online lending platform Lufax and internet insurer
Zhong An Online Property and Casualty Insurance now rank as the
world's top two fintech companies by valuation.
Lufax closed a $1.2 billion funding round in January, while
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's finance arm, Ant Financial Services
Group, is looking to raise up to $3 billion, setting the stage
for another blockbuster year in 2016 in the region.
India's mobile payments services firm One97 Communications came
in sixth among global fintech giants, underscoring the potential
value investors place on such firms in the region.
"There's a lot of interest in this segment," Harish said.
(Additional reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee in MUMBAI; Editing by
Miral Fahmy)
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