Singapore fintech funding nearly quadrupled to US$453m in first six months of 2019

The number of deals surged 55% to 48.

Singapore trails only behind China and India to rank as the third largest fintech market by funds in Asia Pacific with a massive haul of US$453m in the first six months of the year from US$118m in the same period last year, according to Accenture which analysed data from CB Insights. The figure represents a near four-fold increase from US$118m in the same period last year.

The number of deals in the country jumped 55% to 48 from 31 over the same period. 

Insurtechs accounted for the lion's share of fintech funding during the half-year period, at around 28% followed by those in payments (27%) and lending (25%).

Five of the top 10 deals ever in Singapore took place in the first half of 2019, including the US$100m cloud company Deskera closed in May, the US$80m financial products marketplace GoBear in May and the US$45m funding round raised by rewards and cashback platform ShopBack in April.

Also read: Singapore nabbed Asia's fintech crown from Hong Kong in 2017

In a similar development, fundraising in Hong Kong jumped nearly seven-fold in the first six months of 2019 after a slow first half of the year in 2018, with startups in the city raking in US$152m from US$23m last year, led by the US$100m credit line that asset management firm FinEX Asia secured in June and the US$30m that insurtech OneDegree closed in May. The number of deals doubled to 12 from six a year earlier.

“Increased activity in many markets is a good indicator of the level of confidence many investors have in the fintech industry,” Piyush Singh, a managing director at Accenture who leads its Financial Services practice in Asia-Pacific and Africa said in a statement.

Globally, fintech investment dropped 29% to US$22b from US$31.2b due to a lack of blockbuster deals such as Ant Financial's US$14b fundraising in May. The value of deals in the U.S. in the first half of 2019 jumped 60% to US$12.7b, even though the number of transactions was virtually unchanged from the first half of 2018 (564 vs. 563). Fintech investment in the U.K. nearly doubled to approximately US$2.6b, and the number of deals jumped 25% to 263.