Exhibits No. 1 and 2: Brexit. The U.S. Presidential election. It’s all their fault that funding for fintechs continued to fall in the third quarter. (We’d also add that the exuberance in the first part of 2015 was making some investors nervous.)
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s look at some of the details: funding for payments companies dropped and fewer unicorns came to market, denting the numbers.
According to data from KPMG and CB Insights, the total number of deals fell to 178 last quarter from 356 in the same period a year earlier and 414 in 2Q 2016. The shift in funding was even more dramatic: $2.9 billion in the last quarter, less than half as much as the $6.5 billion raised in 3Q 2015 and less than one-third the $9.4 billion in 2Q 2015. Caveat: the second quarter was skewed because Alibaba poured $4.5 billion into its Ant Financial unit.
Some other tidbits from The Pulse of Fintech, Q3 2016:
- North America recovering: VC-backed fintech companies raised $900 million in the 3Q 2016. “While 2016 is not expected to compare to (the 2015) peak, the region is expected to match, if not exceed, the $5.3 billion of investment seen in 2014.”
- Blockchain, robo advisors looking doubtful: “Over the next year, investors will make more rational assessments of where the main use cases associated with fintech are and how long it will be before they are implementable. Investors may give similar scrutiny to robo advisory investments.
- Seed activity picked up in North America but the share of Series A dipped.
- Europe slammed post-Brexit. The number of deals and dollars raised fell by half to 38 and $200 million in the third quarter.
- Asia was the only region to post gains. “Already, funding in the first 3 quarters of 2016 is almost even with all funding in 2015. By the end of Q4’16, Asia will have had a record-breaking year of fintech investment.”