FT Partners Publishes Q3 2020 FinTech Insights
FinTech financing volume in Q3 2020 of $12.0 billion was the third largest quarterly volume ever. A number of large financing rounds are impacting the strong financing volume; so far in 2020 there have been 74 financing rounds of $100 million or more, with 29 occurring in Q3. The IPO market remains very active as well, with 22 global FinTech IPOs in 2020, 15 of them occurring in Q3 alone. Like FinTech financing activity, FinTech M&A volume in Q3 2020 was the third highest ever at $66.8 billion. COVID-19 had a greater impact on M&A activity compared to financing activity, but the Q3 2020 M&A activity levels signify a snapback to pre-COVID levels. FinTech M&A activity in 2020 has also had a huge uptick in the number of mergers with special purpose acquisition companies or “SPACs” – there have been 9 SPAC deals announced or closed just within in the first three quarters of 2020, compared to only 2 in all of 2019. FT Partners’ FinTech Insights Reports are published on a quarterly basis, along with a comprehensive year-end FinTech Almanac. All information included in the reports is sourced from FT Partners’ Proprietary Transaction Database, which is compiled by the FT Partners Research Team through primary research and data analysis.
Recent VIP Video Conferences
Stablecoins - The Fabric of a New Global Payments Infrastructure
On September 24, 2020, FT Partners hosted a live VIP video conference call focused on the rapid rise of stablecoins and the massive potential implications for the global financial infrastructure. The panel featured leaders in the digital asset space from Circle, Compound, Digital Currency Group and Visa. Panelists provided perspective on fundamental value propositions for programmable currencies, regulatory trends, new markets like Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and the aggregate transformative impact for businesses and individuals globally.
Following the broader session, Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, provided further insights on the role of Circle Platform Services as an accelerant to the adoption of stablecoins and perspectives on USDC, the fastest-growing regulated stablecoin.
Healthcare Payments - Consumerization and Digitization Create a Massive FinTech Opportunity
On September 15, 2020, FT Partners and QED Investors jointly unveiled an in-depth industry research report on Healthcare Payments during a live panel discussion with CEOs and executives. Hosted by Greg Smith of FT Partners and Matt Risley of QED, the panel features executives from BillingTree, Cedar, Flywire, FraudScope, and Salucro.
The FinTech Arms Dealers — Thriving by Providing Digital Solutions to Financial Institutions
On August 13, 2020, FT Partners hosted a VIP Video Conference featuring CEOs of market leaders including OakNorth, Fenergo, Feedzai, Open Lending, and Amount, who have all been partnering with financial institutions and helping to support them through the COVID-19 crisis.
FT Partners Proprietary FinTech Research
Financial Technology Partners regularly publishes detailed research highlighting key trends driving market activity across the FinTech Landscape. Our research and analysis has been featured on Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and the Financial Times and is regularly viewed by CEOs and industry leaders. FT Partners' unique insight into FinTech is a direct result of successfully executing hundreds of transactions combined with over 17 years of exclusive focus on the FinTech sector. Follow FT Partners on Twitter and LinkedIn for real time updates, and subscribe to FT Partners' Monthly FinTech Market Analysis for the industry's most comprehensive and detailed updates on the FinTech sector.
Each report published by FT Partners contains an in depth review of a unique area of the FinTech marketplace and is highly valuable and topical to CEOs, board members, investors and key stakeholders across the FinTech landscape. Each report is continually updated by the FT Partners Research Team with the latest information, facts and metrics to provide our readers with the most up-to-date and comprehensive subject matter. The latest version of each report is provided below along with a brief overview of the report contents.
CEO Monthly Market Update & Analysis Reports
FT Partners provides the broadest and most specialized coverage of FinTech with our comprehensive monthly sector-specific reports. Our depth of research and insight is unmatched in the industry and these reports are widely recognized and reviewed by top CEO's and investors in the market. Each monthly report includes sector-specific public company comparables, recent financing and M&A transactions and upcoming industry conferences and events. The latest month’s reports are available below. Subscribe to receive the latest reports every month.
October 2020
Regularly Updated Reports
Selected Transaction Profiles
FT Partners frequently publishes detailed profiles on significant financing, IPO, and M&A transactions in the FinTech space. See below for a selection of our latest reports.
Proprietary Real-Time Infographics
FT Partners regularly publishes infographics highlighting global FinTech transaction activity covering both financings and M&A. This deal activity is derived from our proprietary transaction database. Available infographics include:
View Weekly FinTech Deal Stats
View Monthly FinTech Deal Stats
U.S. FinTech IPO Analysis
An in-depth analysis of U.S. FinTech IPOs over the past decade including yearly breakdowns by capital raised and FinTech sector, rankings of the largest IPOs by capital raised, best and worst performing and most recent FinTech IPO transactions, insight into pending IPOs, spin-offs and companies acquired while on file for an IPO and details on the most active investors in FinTech IPOs and list of the most well funded private FinTech companies.
Quarterly FinTech Insights and Annual FinTech Almanac — Comprehensive FinTech Financing, M&A and IPO data
FT Partners’ FinTech Insights Reports are published on a quarterly basis, along with a comprehensive year-end FinTech Almanac. All information included in the reports is sourced from FT Partners’ Proprietary Transaction Database, which is compiled by the FT Partners Research Team through primary research and data analysis. The reports feature M&A, financing and IPO statistics and trends as well as breakdowns by FinTech vertical, geography, investor-type and much more. Be sure to check back for quarterly updates and additions. All recent reports can be viewed or downloaded for free.
Quarterly InsurTech Insights and Annual InsurTech Almanac — Comprehensive InsurTech Financing, M&A and IPO data
FT Partners’ InsurTech Insights and Almanac reports analyze financing and M&A data in the InsurTech sector. The reports include recent and historical financing volume and deal count totals, largest financing rounds, most active investors, M&A trends and more. All information included in the reports is sourced from FT Partners’ Proprietary Transaction Database, which is compiled by the FT Partners Research Team through primary research and data analysis. Be sure to check back for quarterly updates and additions. All recent reports can be viewed or downloaded for free.
Exclusive Executive Interviews
Joanne Dewar
CEO
GPS is an award-winning proprietary API-based software platform powering leading next generation payments and banking innovators.
Ilya Bodner
Founder & CEO
Bold Penguin operates the largest commercial insurance exchange powering over 100,000 quote starts every month.
Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck
Founder & CEO
ProducePay is building the largest farmer-first commerce network by providing growers with access to growth capital, data, and value-add business partners.
Selected FT Partners FinTech Research
Healthcare Payments: Consumerization and Digitization Create a Massive FinTech Opportunity
The healthcare industry, which accounts for 18% of GDP in the United States, is transforming as the industry adapts to more widespread adoption of digital technologies and confronts the challenges of ever rising costs and the pressures it puts on patients, hospitals and physicians (“providers”), insurance companies (“payers”), the government, and other participants. Similar to other areas of financial services, technology is only becoming more important to the delivery of financial services related to healthcare, resulting in the emergence of a Healthcare Payments ecosystem. Innovative business models and new technologies are eliminating inefficiencies within the current system, and challenging incumbents and traditional models. The 280+ page report features a detailed overview of the U.S. healthcare industry, an analysis of key trends affecting the market, a comprehensive industry landscape, recent financing and M&A activity in the space, profiles of more than 50 key Healthcare Payments / Healthcare IT companies, as well as exclusive interviews with more than 20 industry leaders and executives.
Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on FinTech
The rapid decline in both economic activity and the broad stock market averages, along with the lingering uncertainty around the timing of the return to “normal” economic activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, will undoubtedly negatively impact FinTech financing and M&A activity. Relative to many other areas of the economy, FinTech should hold up well, as many FinTech businesses operate in a largely digital environment or are helping financial institutions and enterprises improve their operations by providing mission critical services. Moreover, the secular trends driving growth in FinTech businesses are likely to remain intact (and perhaps accelerate) as the coronavirus impact recedes. Key discussion topics of the report include: An overview of the pandemic’s impact on FinTech, public and private markets, and the broader economy; A wealth of proprietary data quantifying the impact on consumer spending and small businesses; Highlights of recent investor activity in the FinTech space.
FinTech Meets Alternative Investments: Innovation in a Burgeoning Asset Class
Demand for alternative assets remains strong as investors and plan sponsors seek asset diversification, higher yields, and uncorrelated returns. As a result, alternatives are a clear bright spot in the asset management industry. Despite significant headwinds, successful alternative asset managers are growing while many traditional asset managers have or are considering moving into the space. A similar trend is playing out among investment service providers -- traditional servicers are expanding their capabilities to include alternatives. As demand grows for alternative assets, a new FinTech ecosystem is developing to help investors, investment managers, and service providers to access new asset classes and manage their investments and operations with new data, software, and platforms.
The Rise of Challenger Banks: Are the Apps Taking Over?
The banking sector is experiencing a major shift globally, as Challenger Banks are becoming increasingly formidable competitors to traditional banks and have begun to capture significant market share. Furthermore, the lines between banks and other consumer financial services providers are blurring, with several alternative lenders and robo-advisors beginning to offer banking products to their customers. E-commerce / internet giants are also jumping into the fray with Google and Amazon, among others, beginning to offer banking products. In response to the emergence of Challenger Banks, a number of incumbent banks have launched their own FinTech brands, and traditional financial institutions will likely turn to FinTech solution providers in order to defend their turfs.
FinTech in Africa: Leapfrogging Legacy Straight to Mobile
FinTech is rapidly spreading into Africa. As mobile proliferation and internet penetration continue to accelerate, financial services in many African markets are bypassing traditional banking infrastructure in favor of tech-enabled solutions such as mobile payments, mobile banking and digital lending. With a large, rapidly-growing population and several of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Africa represents a large and attractive market opportunity for FinTech companies given its relatively underdeveloped financial services ecosystem.
Brazil’s Emerging FinTech Ecosystem: A Fertile Environment for Disruption and Innovation
Brazil is in the midst of a FinTech revolution as the confluence of a number of forces has created a very fertile environment for innovation and disruption across various financial, technology and business services. With the world’s fifth largest population, the ninth largest economy and a government encouraging greater competition for a highly concentrated banking ecosystem, Brazil represents a very attractive market and a huge growth opportunity for technology-driven financial solutions across Payments, Banking, Lending, Insurance, Wealth Management, and other sectors.
Klarna: An Online Payments and POS Lending Leader
Founded in 2005, Stockholm-based Klarna is now one of the most valuable privately-held global payment companies with 3,500 employees, LTM revenue (as of March 31, 2020) of $832 million and a recent valuation of $10.7 billion. Klarna began as an alternative payment method in Northern Europe, which enabled users to pay for online purchases following delivery of goods; today, Klarna works with 205,000 merchants to offer multiple payment solutions to more than 90 million users in 17 countries across Europe and North America. The report includes a detailed company and financial overview on Klarna, as well as profiles on other players in the space, Affirm and PayPayl Credit.
2019 InsurTech CEO Interview Compilation
Over the course of 2019, FT Partners published numerous, exclusive CEO interviews with InsurTech start-ups innovating along the insurance value chain. The report features all 11 interviews from 2019 along with new, year-end updates from the CEOs.
Beyond the Credit Score: What’s Next in Consumer Credit Management
Today, while many companies offer free credit scores, few offer free credit monitoring, and even fewer offer key insights about what impacts consumers' credit worthiness. After getting access to their credit scores, consumers are often at a loss of what to do and are largely left on their own to make important credit decisions. This contrasts with the asset side of consumers' balance sheets where financial advisors and, increasingly, robo advisors are using data and analytics to alleviate consumers of the burden of making investment decisions for their specific goals. Consequently, we expect financial service providers to move beyond offering free access to credit information and move towards providing complete credit lifecycle management solutions that not only enable consumers to understand their credit profile, but also directly help them improve their scores and leverage their position in order to obtain the most optimal credit products at any given moment in time.
Prepare for the InsurTech Wave: Overview of Key Insurance Technology Trends
This in-depth report looks at the major waves of innovation and disruption that are beginning to radically alter the insurance industry. The insurance industry, unlike many other areas of financial services, has not yet been substantially disrupted by new technologies and transformative business models. However, the industry now appears to be at a key inflection point as many different constituents in the FinTech ecosystem have their sights squarely set on insurance as the next great opportunity.
Auto FinTech – The Emerging FinTech Ecosystem Surrounding the Auto Industry
As the automotive industry continues to innovate, consumers and businesses will expect the financial services and processes surrounding this massive industry to modernize and adapt as well. Similarly, as new advances change the way consumers and businesses use cars, both traditional financial services and FinTech companies can distinguish themselves by offering new, innovative solutions.
WealthTech: The Digitization of Wealth Management
This report is an in-depth examination of the dramatic changes sweeping across the wealth management industry. The traditional investment management and registered investment advisor (“RIA”) industries are facing numerous threats, and while firms in the industry recognize the need to respond, technology-driven innovation is not a core expertise of most RIAs and investment managers. Consequently, there has been a groundswell of FinTech companies bringing digital capabilities to the traditional wealth management industries. Collectively, we label this segment of FinTech as WealthTech.
Global Money Transfer - Emerging Trends and Challenges
A focus on key trends in the Global Money Transfer industry including the emergence of "International Payment Specialists" as a distinct and fast growing industry segment attracting significant interest from strategic buyers and financial investors and the disruption of the traditional "Consumer Remittance Providers" by new, emerging / fast growing entrants leading with mobile and other technology-based solutions
Are the Robots Taking Over? The Emergence of Automated Digital Wealth Management Solutions
Comprehensive overview of key industry trends driving innovation in the wealth management space and how the industry is reacting to the emergence of Robo Advisors and other Digital Wealth Management providers
Transaction Security - At the Nexus of E-Commerce, Payment Market Structure Complexity and Fraud
In-depth discussion of the key trends driving card-not-present transactions and the subsequent increase in demand for smart transaction security solutions; includes a detailed review of the various transaction security technologies and solutions available for merchants and issuers
Innovations in Capital Markets Technology - Focusing on Open Source Communication Networks, Unstructured Data Analytics and Intelligent Search
Innovation in capital markets is surging once again due to increasingly cheaper cloud computing / storage power, greater bandwidth, multiple new sources of valuable investment data (including social media) and competitive forces leading to the constant search for alpha – along with renewed private equity and venture capital interest
Apple Unveils ApplePay - Comprehensive Overview and Implications
Comprehensive overview of ApplePay including its fit within the payments ecosystem and how it compares to other mobile payment schemes
PayPal Spin-off Overview - Detailed Transaction Overview and Analysis
Analysis of the events leading up to PayPal's spin-off from eBay as well as an overview of PayPal's financial performance, acquisitions and competitors
LendingClub IPO: Post Quiet Period Review
Detailed overview of LendingClub's IPO including its funding history, business operations, financial performance, public company comparables and relevant industry transactions
First Data IPO: Post Quiet Period Review
Detailed overview of First Data's IPO including its funding history, business operations, financial performance, public company comparables and relevant industry transactions.
OnDeck IPO: Post Quiet Period Review
Detailed overview of OnDeck's IPO including its funding history, business operations, financial performance, public company comparables and relevant industry transactions.
Square IPO Profile - Detailed Transaction Overview and Analysis
Detailed overview of Square's IPO including its funding history, business operations, financial performance, public company comparables and relevant industry transactions