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FINTECH: Who wants to be a billionaire?

Financial services is being shaken up by a wave of technology-driven disrupters. But amid fears of a bubble, there are also doubts about the valuations of many of these new challengers. Peter Wilson follows the ups and downs of the fintech boom

FS Focus Dec 19 image Cover StoryWhen a list of the world’s ‘unicorns’ – or most successful start-ups valued at $1bn+ – was recently released it seemed to be a triumph for fintech. CB Insights, a leading source of data on private firms, found that technology-based financial services had produced the single biggest ‘herd’ of unicorns, ahead of famously fast-growing industries such as ecommerce and artificial intelligence.

Fintech provided 12% of the 393 privately held start-ups that qualified for unicorn status, including the payment platform Stripe ($22.5bn), German digital bank N26 ($3.5bn) and San Francisco-based Plaid Technologies ($2.65bn).