Fintech is hot, hot, hot

I was flicking through the Economist this week and was surprised to see a big quarterly special all about Fintech.  Wow, this stuff is hot, hot, hot.  That’s what the magazine makes clear:

From payments to wealth management, from peer-to-peer lending to crowdfunding, a new generation of startups is taking aim at the heart of the industry—and a pot of revenues that Goldman Sachs estimates is worth $4.7 trillion. Like other disrupters from Silicon Valley, “fintech” firms are growing fast. They attracted $12 billion of investment in 2014, up from $4 billion the year before.  

The magazine probes these areas in depth, citing Lending Club, Venmo and others on my list as disruptors and concludes that: “the bigger effect from the fintech revolution will be to force flabby incumbents to cut costs and improve the quality of their service. That will change finance as profoundly as any regulator has”.

In other words, the industry does not disappear, just the big, fat, lazy players.  I agree.

By coincidence, this article hit my radar the same day as the great guys over at Finovate were running their annual West Coast bash.  In preparation for this, Jim Bruene posted a list of Unicorns – start-up firms founded since 2000 that have achieved over $1 billion valuations – and notes that the list has tripled over the preceding year, from just 11 companies in 2014 to 35 in 2015.  Simlar to other lists, a third of these are in lending and credit markets and a third in payments – that’s where the action si ffolks.

With a big thank you to Jim for compiling this, here’s the names of the biggest Fintech firms around:

1. Lufax (Lending)

2. LendingClub (Lending)

3. Square (Payments)

4. Zillow (Real estate)

5. Zenefits (Insurance)

6. Stripe (Payments)

7. Powa Technologies (Payments)

8. Klarna (Payments)

9. Xero (Accounting)

10. CommonBond (Lending)

10. CreditKarma (Credit Reports)

10. Oscar (Insurance)

10. One97 (Payments)

14. Prosper (Lending)

15. Dataminr (Analytics)

16. Zuora (Payments)

16. FinancialForce (Accounting)

16. LifeLock (Credit Reports)

16. Adyen (Payments)

20. iZettle (Payments)

21. SoFI (Lending)

21. Housing.com (Real estate)

21. Qufenqi (Lending)

21. Revel Systems (Payments)

25. On Deck (Lending)

26. FundingCircle (Lending)

26. Jimubox (Lending)

26. Kofax (Doc mgmt)

26. TransferWise (Payments)

26. Trusteer (Security)

26. Mozido (Payments)

32. Avant (Lending)

32. IEX Group (Investing)

32. RenRenDai (Lending)

32. Coinbase (Bitcoin)

32. ClimateCorp (Insurance)

Semi-unicorns

Wonga (Lending)
Wealthfront (Investing)
Rong360 (Lending)
Betterment (Investing)
Braintree (Payments)
Q2 (Banking)
WorldRemit (Payments)
Taulia (Payments)
Radius (Marketing)
Oportun (Progreso Financiero) (Lending)
Circle Internet Finance (Bitcoin)
AnJuke (Real estate)
Kabbage (Lending)
EzBob (Lending)
FangDD (Real estate)
VivaReal (Real estate)
Motif Investing (Investing)
Snowball Finance (Investing)
PolicyBazaar (Insurance)
Credorax (Payments)
Cardlytics (Marketing)
Zopa (Lending)
CAN Capital (Lending)
Receivables Exchange (Lending)
Affirm (Lending)
Ayadsi (Analytics)
21 Inc (Bitcoin)
Bill.com (Payments)
FreeCharge (Payments)
U51 (Lending)
Financial Software Systems (Risk Mgmt)
Strategic Funding Source (Lending)
Ping Identity (Security)
 

————
Source: Compiled by Finovate, 8 May 2015