Singapore leads Asean in fintech investment and deals for 9M 2024: report
Thailand rises to second place for the period, surpassing last year’s runner-up Indonesia
SINGAPORE bagged US$745 million in fintech investment in the first nine months of 2024, with the sum making up more than half the fintech funding going into Asean.
The Republic has cornered the lion’s share of regional funding every year since 2015, making this the 10th straight year it has done so, said the Fintech in Asean 2024 report: A decade of innovation.
The report surveying the evolution of Asean fintech from 2015 to 2024 was launched on Wednesday (Nov 6) by UOB, PwC and the Singapore Fintech Association.
Singapore was also in pole position in the number of the region’s fintech deals secured over the nine-month period, having scored 62 per cent of them.
Since 2015, Singapore has housed the most fintech unicorns, which are startup companies that raise a billion dollars in funding; it hosts six such companies, said the report.
Among Singapore’s notable fintech unicorns are Advance Intelligence Group – the parent company of artificial-intelligence, financial-service platform Atome – and cross-border payments firm Nium.
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Thailand rose to second place for Asean fintech investments secured during the period, surpassing last year’s runner-up for the corresponding period, Indonesia.
The kingdom pulled in US$341 million or 24 per cent of Asean’s fintech funding, backed by the closing of two deals, each of which involved more than US$100 million in funding: One was a US$195 million deal with fintech payments firm Ascend Money, and the other, a US$140 million deal with financial blockchain firm GuildFi.
Together, Singapore and Thailand commanded 76 per cent of fintech funding and nearly 68 per cent of the deals across Asean in the nine-month period. Between them, these two markets clinched the region’s only four mega deals.
Two were for seed and early-stage investments, bringing the share of Asean funding snagged by young fintech companies to around 60 per cent.
Asean fintech sector “continues to show promise”
Asean’s total fintech investment stood at US$1.41 billion for the first three quarters of the year, making up four per cent of global fintech funding.
While this was a dip of under 1 per cent on year from the amount secured in the first nine months of 2023, the region’s fintech funding has shown relative resilience – given that globally, fintech funding fell 28 per cent on year over the same period.
Regional fintech funding has grown more than 10 times from the level in 2015’s corresponding nine-month period, faster than the growth in such funding globally.
The bulk of Asean’s fintech funding lies in seed and early-stage investments, signalling investors’ willingness to “bet on innovation” for the promise of future returns, the report said.
Investments in seed and early-stage firms rose to around 62 per cent in 2024, from around 49 per cent in 2023.
The share of investments into late-stage firms, however, fell on-year to 38 per cent in the first nine months of 2024, from 52 per cent in the corresponding year-ago period.
Remarking that Asean’s fintech sector “continues to show promise”, UOB managing director and group head for channels and digitalisation Janet Young said that improving macroeconomic conditions and the emergence of advanced technologies will further support its growth.
September’s Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut could revive venture capital interest. Average deal size rose 8 per cent on year to US$14.2 million in the nine months, from US$13.8 million, noted the report.
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