KPMG by now has a classic Fintech ranking publication – The Fintech100 Report which is in its 5^th year. This year it is in collaboration with H2 Ventures Australia’s early stage VC (full report here). The reason I looked closer into their Wealth & Brokerage section (14 companies) is not because I agree with their ranking criteria or their categorization criteria. I am more interested with those in the emerging categories and those that have managed to be included for the second at least time. I am interested in outliers and underdogs.

Robinhood has made it in the Ten top list along with several giants in the “Multi” category like Ant Financial, JDcom, Du Xiaoman Financial, and Sofi (categorized in “Lending” which IHMO should have been “multi”).

Half of the wealth & brokerage FinTechs are in the Top 50 and the rest are in the Emerging 50. Asia (China/Japan/Korea) have 5 out of the 14 and Europe 4 out of the 14. The UK has given birth to 3 out of these 4 Fintechs. Only Robinhood is from the US and Wealthsimple in Canada.

From the 14 companies categorized as “Wealth” only two had made the KPMG 100Fintech report last year: Robinhood and OurCrowd from Isreal. Only one company amongst these is blockchain powered, Quoine from Japan, 29^th in the list.

Noteworthy facts about the 14 Wealth Fintechs

• In May, Robinhood (ranked 8th) surpassed its rival E-Trade with 5 million brokerage accounts and $150 billion in transaction volume.
• 51 Credit Card (ranked 12th) from China as of the end of 2017, had 81 million users across all apps and managed approximately 106.3 million credit cards, helping users complete a total of $15.6 billion in repayment transactions.
• Wealthsimple (ranked 25^th in 2018 and 29^th in 2017) out of Canada has over $1Billion In AUM and has recently expanded in the US and the UK.
• QUOINE (ranked 29th) out of Japan is the first global cryptocurrency exchange to be officially licensed by the Japan Financial Service Authority. It currently processes annual transactions worth over $50 billion. Qryptos and Quoinex, are among the most advanced in the world.
• OurCrowd (ranked 32^nd in 2018 and 25^th in 2017) out of Israel is currently backing 150 startups across the globe and have helped 20 startups successfully exit. The company now has offices in 7 countries and earlier this year hit a major milestone surpassing US$1 billion in AUM and an accredited pool of 10,000 investors.
• Neyber (ranked 35th) from the UK has provided over US$90 million salary-deducted loans in partnership with employers since 2015. Last month Neyber partnered with robo-advisor Smarterly to launch investment portal SmarterCare for business loans which will offer an investment ISA to employees allowing them to invest directly from their salary at no cost to their employer.
• Folio (ranked 44th) out of Japan – not to be confused with FolioInstituional, the Fintech for advisors from the US – is an online security brokerage service in Japan, specializing in thematic investing. The platform is a DIY for managing assets through a robo-advisor, but also for designing thematic portfolios (70 themes currently.

Emerging Wealth Fintechs

• Meet Cleo out of the UK, the AI assistant for financial management targeting millennials, with over 600,000 active users across the UK, US & Canada.
• DAYLI Financial Group is a B2B Korean Fintech that has become a Fintech venture studio involved also in blockchain. DAYLI owns, CoinOne a large Korean crypto exchange, launched the ICON ecosystem out of Zug. They also design proprietary technologic with AI capabilities for financial management.
• Dreams is a Swedish neo-bank with $100mil AUM that uses behavioral science for their saving, spending and lending services, in addition to their community management UX.
• Liwwa is out of Jordan and focused on a niche P2P lending sector serving the MENA region. It is a marketplace for fixed-income investors and SMEs. The company uses a lease-to-own model and offers a Sharia-compliant investment opportunity.
• Tide is a UK mobile first bank for SMEs only. Not sure why it is not in the neobank category. Since launching in 2017, Tide has acquired nearly 40,000 small business customers and surpassed 1B pounds of transactions in March of this year.
• Tiger Brokers is a Chinese online brokerage that allows Chinese investors at home and abroad, to trade stocks in the U.S, Hong Kong and mainland China market via the stock connect scheme between Hong Kong and mainland stock exchanges. After 3yrs it’s mobile app accumulated trading volume reached $150 billion. Earlier this year the company became an official strategic partner of NASDAQ data to distribute its US stock market data to the Chinese online world.
• Wallet.ng is a Nigerian Fintech with over 5,000 users. Their mobile app allows users to make payments, transfer funds, pay bills and withdraw from ATMs – all using their phone number. Last month alone they processed N234 million across just 17,000 transactions and have seen an average of 78% month-on-month growth in transaction volume and value since January 2018.

Efi Pylarinou is the founder of Efi Pylarinou Advisory and a Fintech/Blockchain influencer.

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