During the 2018 Singapore FinTech Association-Asian Development Bank FinTech Night, UOB FinTech whitepaper highlights:
The six core markets of ASEAN or ASEAN-6 (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) witnessed an active FinTech funding scene in 2018.
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Investors poured in US$458 million of funds in the first 10 months of 2018. This is a 25 per cent increase over full year 2017 and 19 times from five years ago.
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FinTech firms in Singapore continued to attract the most funding within ASEAN (48.5 per cent). The country achieved a record high of US$222 million in FinTech funding in the first 10 months of 2018.
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Currently, Singapore houses 43 per cent of all FinTech firms in ASEAN-6, up from 39 per cent in 2017.
Financial inclusion picks up pace in ASEAN with more investments in support of the development of alternative lending FinTech firms
- Alternative lending FinTech firms received the lion’s share of funding in the first 10 months of 2018 at 58 per cent of all FinTech funding in ASEAN-6.
- Alternative lending providers make up the third largest category (10 per cent) of FinTech firms in ASEAN.
Empowering Malaysian fnancial institutions
Banking tech – technological solutions that enable banks to enhance their service offerings – led FinTech funding in Malaysia at 85 per cent of funds raised, as at October 2018. This was also the case in 2017, when banking tech led funding volumes at 49 per cent of investments.
Malaysia-based Jirnexu, with a solution that automates marketing, sales and delivery of banking and insurance products for banks, has raised a total funding round of US$17 million this year.
Malaysian banks are embracing FinTech firms as partners and co-creators by setting up innovation labs and sandboxes to explore collaboration opportunities.
The payments sector has also seen new developments, with the launch of JomPAY to SMEs in May 2018 and the expected launch of DuitNow in December 2018, which enables fund transfers through personal identifiers such as a mobile phone number or passport number.
