FinTech continues to attract significant M&A activity and investment in 2021 with 35 UK transactions to date, and was the largest area of emerging tech with $920 million invested across 29 deals in Q2 2021.
We see the next phase for FinTech is significant M&A activity driven by well-funded traditional financial services looking to kick start their digital services offerings and FinTech companies as growth strategy. Recent examples of this include.
- Klarna, (B2C FinTech), acquired multiple FinTech start-ups to build out its shopping ecosystem, including HERO (a social shopping platform), APPRL (an end-to-end influencer marketing software) and Stocard (a digital wallet and shopping app).
- Atom Bank, (B2C/B2B) FinTech bank, announcing a £300 million lending partnership with Funding Circle (a small business loan platform) for its SME clients.
- JPMorgan Chase (acquiring Nutmeg (a ‘robo-advisor’) and launching a digital consumer bank in the U.K. as part of its global digital wealth strategy.
- Starling, a FinTech bank acquired Fleet Mortgages (a buy-to-let mortgage lender) to expand its lending and mortgage services.
FinTech of course covers a very broad area, including Business to Consumer (B2C) companies, like Klarna, Business to Business (B2B) like Square, and of course FinTech banks that tend to offer both B2C & B2B services like Revolut, Starling or Monzo.
We (M&A Deal Platform) are of course a FinTech, specifically a Corporate Finance FinTech. Perhaps a CorpFinTech?
Corporate Finance is an area yet to see the same level of innovation as banking or consumer finance – something we are out change! Keep an eye out for our future article on Corporate Finance how it’s been reimagined by FinTech.
Another FinTech area we are tracking is FinTech Accounting, driven by cloud accounting software like Xero, Sage, FreeAgent & Quicken, innovations in Open Banking combined with easy-to-use finance and business tools suggests further changes to accountants’ revenue streams and busines models. We plan an article on FinTech Accounting shortly.
