Corporate VC investment in fintech for 2018 of $23.1 billion nearly doubled the previous high of $11.6 billion seen in 2016, with the number of corporate fintech deals growing for the eighth successive year. Increasing corporate participation highlights fintech going mainstream as well as a competitive response to the emerging threat of Fintech companies that have scaled, with both traditional financial institutions and a broad range of companies outside of the financial services industry participating through investments and acquisitions, including some of the world’s largest technology companies and payment platforms.
The growing maturity of the sector has also led some more advanced fintechs to make their own investments as part of their drive to expand either geographically or on a product basis and in some cases, partnering with/taking investment from financial services incumbents. There is expanding interest in partnering with fintechs to provide services, in addition to increasing interest from corporates with homegrown fintech offerings to provide B2B services to corporate clients and other financial institutions (e.g. Open banking, regtech, cyber, etc.).
