Despite a well-developed electronic payment infrastructure, cash remains a dominant payment instrument in Singapore with 58.7% of transaction volume made at POS terminals in 2017, according to leading data and analytics company GlobalData.
In addition, more than 75% of transactions made at hawkers and wet markets are carried out in cash. This can be primarily attributed to the limited acceptance of electronic payments among small-sized merchants such as street vendors, food stalls and hawkers due to the high cost associated with POS terminals.
Singapore has for a long time been at the forefront of the payments innovation. Acceleration of electronic payments in the country has been one of the key objectives of the government’s Smart Nation Vision and in this regard, the country has invested substantially in building long-term infrastructure for cashless payments. Overall, the POS terminal penetration (number of POS terminals per thousand inhabitants) in Singapore stands at 35, compared to its Asian peers: Australia (39), Hong Kong (22), Japan (18), China (21), Indonesia (4) and India (2). In Singapore, card-based payments accounted for 32.8% of total payment transaction volume in 2017, increasing from 24% in 2013.
Singapore has a very high concentration of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). According to the Department of Statistics, Singapore, there were 220,100 business enterprises in the country in 2017, with 99% of them being SMEs. To encourage adoption of electronic payments among SMEs in particular, the government along with other payment participants is increasingly considering QR-based payments as a viable alternative for cash.
Kartik Challa, Payments Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The economic rationale for QR codes is stemmed from the difficulty banks had in persuading smaller merchants to begin accepting payment cards. The QR-code based payment acceptance eliminates the need for a significant expenditure, as merchants can now either display a printed QR code on their stall or download the merchant app on their mobile phones to accept electronic payments.”
In November 2017, the Singapore Payments Council announced the development of a common standard for Singapore Quick Response Code (SG QR) payments, designed to work across all schemes, e-wallets and banks. Unlike the existing NETS QR system, which focuses on domestic market, the new system will accept electronic payments through both domestic and international payments. The SG QR, developed by an industry taskforce co-led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Infocomm Media Development Authority, will be deployed throughout 2018. Furthermore, as part of the process, the existing NETS QR will also be integrated into the new system and will be replaced with SG QR at all merchant locations.
Singapore's banks have also agreed to update their mobile payment apps/wallets to support SG QR. To expand the scope for SG QR, the Association of Banks in Singapore agreed to bring in banking P2P service –PayNow under the purview of SG QR. All seven participating banks of PayNow service, Citibank Singapore, DBS Bank, HSBC, Maybank, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and United Overseas Bank – enable their customers to transfer funds via SG QR.
Challa concludes: “The SG QR system is an important milestone, and to win over merchants, payment solution providers need to support the large number of e-wallets, offer quick payment settlement process and pricing benefits. Similarly, incentivizing consumers is a key factor to pique consumers’ interest in the new payment system. With the SG QR making a good headway, cash payments in Singapore are likely to soon become passé. Once again Singapore is at the forefront of innovation in payments, and other markets in Asia and globally are likely to follow the suit.”
(Source: GlobalData)
With the ongoing spat between the United States and China, which seems to be only getting uglier, Katina Hristova explores the history of trade wars and the lessons that they teach us.
Trade wars date back to, well, the beginning or international trade. From British King William of Orange putting steep tariffs on French wine in 1689 to encourage the British to drink their own alcohol, through to the Boston Tea Party protest when the Sons of Liberty organisation protested the Tea Act of May 10 1773, which allowed the British East India company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying any taxes – 17th and 18th century saw their fair share of trade related arguments on an international level.
Boston Tea Party/Credit:Wikimedia Commons
Trade wars were by no means rare in the late 19th century. One of the most infamous examples of a trade conflict that closely relates to Donald Trump’s sense of self-defeating protectionism is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (formally United States Tariff Act of 1930) which raised the US already high tariffs and along with similar measures around the globe helped torpedo world trade and, as economists argue, exacerbated the Great Depression. As a response to US’ protectionism, nations across the globe began striking each other with an-eye-for-an-eye tariffs – countries in Europe put taxes on American goods, which, understandably, slowed trade between the US and Europe. As we all know, the Depression had an impact on virtually every country in the world – resulting in drastic declines in output, widespread unemployment and acute deflation. Even though most countries began to recover between 1932 and 1933, the world was hit by World War II shortly after that. In 1947, once the war was over, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established - in an attempt to regulate international trade, strengthen economic development and hopefully, avoid a second global trade war after the one from the 1930s.
Schoolchildren line up for free issue of soup and a slice of bread in the Depression/Credit:Flickr
Another more recent analogy from the past that could be applied to the current conflict between two of world’s leading economies, is the so-called ‘Chicken War’ of 1963. The duel between the US and the Common Market began when European countries, feeling endangered by US’ new methods of factory farming, imposed tariffs on US chicken imports. For American poultry farmers, the Common Market tariffs virtually meant that they will lose their rich export market in West Germany and other European regions. Their retaliation? Tariffs targeting European potato farmers, Volkswagen campers and French cognac. 55 years later, as the Financial Times reports, the ‘chicken tax’ on light trucks is still in place, predominantly paid by Asian manufacturers, and has resulted in enduring distortions.
President Trump may claim that ‘trade wars are good’ and that ‘winning them is easy’, but history seems to indicate otherwise. In fact, a closer look at previous examples of trade conflicts seems to suggest that there are very few winners in this kind of fight.
For now, all we can do is wait and see if Trump’s extreme protectionism and China’s responses to it will destroy the post-World War II trading system and result in a global trade war; hoping that it won’t.
China has been beating its currently forecast growth rate. According to official data, China's economy grew at an annual pace of 6.8% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2017.
Over the past year China has seen national economic growth that is unparalleled and unprecedented worldwide. This week Finance Monthly set out to hear Your Thoughts on the following: Is China's economic growth rate on the rise? How resilient can Chinese business maintain current growth? Will consumer demand continue to fuel its growth spurt?
Olivier Desbarres, Managing Director, 4xGlobal Research:
With mounting concerns about the impact of potential protectionist measures on global trade and growth there has been much focus on GDP data releases for the first quarter of the year. China accounted for nearly 30% of world growth last year so Q1 numbers had top billing even if doubts remain as to the reliability of Chinese GDP data.
Chinese GDP growth remained stable in Q1 2018 at 6.8% year-on-year, in line with growth in the previous 10-quarters but marginally higher than analysts’ consensus forecasts and quite a bit faster than the government’s 6.5% target for the full-year of 2018.
The stability of Chinese growth has done little to alleviate concerns that this pace of growth may not be sustainable, given the changes in the underlying driver of growth, or even advisable going forward.
In recent years, aggressive bank lending to households, companies and local government has funded rapid investment growth, including in large infrastructural projects and the property market, and driven overall Chinese growth. Property development investment growth continues to rise at above 10% yoy.
This has led to a sharp rise in public and private sector debt as well as environmental pollution. The government has responded with a raft of measures, including a crackdown on the shadow banking sector, a tightening of real estate companies’ access to credit, a tightening of the approval of local infrastructure projects and pollution controls. These measures may in the medium-term help reduce or at least stabilise debt levels, channel funds to a manufacturing sector which has seen a rapid growth slowdown (to around 6% yoy) and reduce environmental damage. Property sales growth, a leading indicator of property investment, has indeed slowed to around 3.5% yoy.
However, near-term there are concerns that these deleveraging and environmental measures could put pressure on Chinese growth at a time when net trade’s contribution to overall Chinese growth is potentially under threat. For starters, the structural shift in China has seen buoyant consumer demand and imports curb the trade surplus. Moreover, if the war of words between the US and China over import tariffs escalates into a full-blown war China’s trade surplus could erode further and household consumption run into headwinds.
The transition from one economic model to another is challenging for any government and China’s leadership has so far avoided a potentially destabilising rapid fall in GDP growth. The increasing focus on high valued-added exports, consumption and broader quality of life indicators is unlikely to go in reverse. However, this transition may not always been smooth as policy-makers deal with the overhang from years of excessive lending and investment. This could well result in slower yet more balanced and sustainable economic growth in coming years.
David Shepherd, Visiting professor in Global Macroeconomics, Imperial College Business School:
Recent figures for Chinese GDP growth suggest the economy is expanding roughly in line with Government targets, with growth at 6.85% compared to the stated 6.5% target. Moving forward, the question is whether this kind of rate can be sustained or whether we can expect to see lower or perhaps even higher growth over the coming months and years?
The outstanding growth performance of the Chinese economy over the last 20 years stems from a successful programme of industrialisation based on market reforms, capital investment and a drive for higher exports. But that was in the past, and it is unlikely that these factors alone can be relied upon to sustain future growth, partly because of a change in the political environment in the United States, which has become increasingly antagonistic towards the Chinese trade surplus, but mainly because of purely economic factors related to high market penetration and the rise of competing low-cost producers in Asia and elsewhere. While exports and capital investment will always be important for China, if further high growth is to be sustained it will have to come either from higher domestic consumption or increased government spending.
The share of government spending in the Chinese economy is currently only 14% of GDP and the Chinese economy would undoubtedly benefit greatly from increased expenditure on health, education and other public services. While this could in principle be a significant engine for growth, in practice there are significant constraints on the ability and willingness of the government to finance increased spending, not least because of an already high fiscal deficit. The implication is that if high growth is to be sustained in the future it will almost certainly require a move towards higher consumption.
In contrast to the United States and the United Kingdom, where consumption has increased significantly over the last 20 years and now accounts for almost 70% of GDP, in China consumption spending has if anything been falling and currently accounts for only 40% of GDP. For the US and the UK, consumption is arguably too high and both economies would benefit from lower consumption and increased capital investment and exports.
In China, the opposite re-balancing is required, and the relevant consideration is how a sustainable increase in domestic consumption can be achieved. Consumption typically rises when real wages rise and when households choose to save less, but in China, saving rates are high and the share of labour income in national income has been falling. The challenge for policy makers is to find the best way to change these conditions, to reduce saving and boost wages at the expense of profits and other business incomes, all in a context of considerable uncertainty about the economic environment. It is now almost nine years since the current economic expansion began and, if history is any guide, the next recession is not too far down the road. But how that would affect China’s growth performance is another story!
Alastair Johnson, CEO and Founder, Nuggets:
Napoleon once referred to China as the ‘sleeping giant’. It’s looking, certainly in terms of its economy, like the giant is finally rearing its head. China’s unprecedented and unparallelled growth in the e-commerce sector trumps that of other nations, boasting a 35% rise in the past year (with a market twice the size of that of the rest of the world).
There is a great deal of focus, not only in online retail commerce in and of itself, but in the bridges built to link it to peripheral services. China dominates the O2O (online-to-offline) model, strengthening the connection between strictly digital commerce and brick-and-mortar merchants. Instead of displacing traditional commerce, the nation’s retail industry is instead evolving by combining physical stores with increasingly innovative online solutions.
Development of applications such as WeChat and Alipay have lead to a seamless user experience, whereby individuals can simply access stores and make purchases from within the app. It integrates with some of the biggest players in ecommerce, including the behemoths that are Alibaba, JD.com and ULE.
Worth considering on the telecommunications front is China’s plan to bootstrap a new network for 5G (versus simply building atop existing ones). Given that 80% of online purchases are done on mobile (versus under half in the rest of the world), this development will only serve to further strengthen the connection between mobile devices and e-commerce.
It’s hard to see the trend dying down anytime soon. Businesses appear to have grasped the importance of user experience, and identified the lifeblood of the industry: consumer demand. New wealth in the nation is fuelling purchasing power. To maintain this hugely successful uptrend, companies in the sector should continue to foster an ecosystem of interconnectivity, both with retailers and tech companies. Smartphone manufacturers anticipate that their growth in 2018 will be slow in China, due to saturation and slow upgrade cycles. Brands will need to look to Western markets for continued development.
Jehan Chu, Chief Strategy Officer, Caspian:
China's rise is not only measured by its achievements, but also by its insatiable appetite to develop new industries. Despite the ban on ICO's and cryptocurrency exchange trading in China, there has been a surge in interest and development in Blockchain technology - the underlying rails of crypto.
From new startups like Nervos (blockchain protocol) and veterans like Neo (US$5bil coin market cap tech) to institutions like Tencent (Blockchain as a Service) and Ping An (internal infrastructure projects), China is leading the world in developing efficient solutions using Blockchain technology. In addition, increased restrictions inside of China have spurred ambitious Chinese developers and entrepreneurs to decamp to crypto-friendly cities like Singapore and San Francisco, creating expert and cultural diaspora networks that span the globe but lead back to China.
Looking forward, it is clear that the sheer volume of engineering talent combined with its seamless adoption and endless ambition to build the new Internet on top of blockchain will keep China at the forefront of technology for decades to come.
We would also love to hear more of Your Thoughts on this, so feel free to comment below and tell us what you think!
Bangalore-based software company Ezetap has developed a platform that makes it easy to pay anywhere with any device you like. It has created software allowing a merchant with a smartphone to accept any type of payment and see that money moved seamlessly into their own bank account.
Henny Woon Loong is the Chief Trust Officer for Wealth Planning in DBS Private Banking. He has oversight of all existing trust client relationships, as well as trust policies, documentation, pricing, product development and business acceptance. Henny heads the Wealth Planning team in Singapore, which provides personal trust, estate planning and liquidity planning services to clients of DBS Private Banking and DBS Treasures Private Bank. Here he tells Finance Monthly more about it.
What more can you tell us about DSB Private Banking – what are the company’s history, mission and values?
DBS Private Bank is a unit of DBS Bank, a leading financial services group in Asia, headquartered and listed in Singapore. The bank's capital position, as well as "AA-" and "Aa1" credit ratings, are among the highest in Asia-Pacific. We’ve been named the Safest Bank in Asia for seven consecutive years by Global Finance.
Our deep knowledge of the region, complemented by an extensive Asian network across 18 markets, and an open architecture platform, allow us to offer innovative Asia-centric solutions and services to meet the needs of our clients, both at a personal and corporate level. Our recent acquisition of Société Générale’s and ANZ’s private banking businesses in Asia, has significantly increased the scale of our wealth management business globally and expanded our suite of products and services to better serve our clients’ needs.
In DBS, we take a holistic approach to private banking. Growing our clients’ wealth is important. But so is protecting that wealth when our clients transfer their wealth to the next generation. This is what we call Wealth Planning.
What are the different types of Trusts in Singapore, and how can they be beneficial? What are the best options for protecting assets and wealth from political, social, economic or personal uncertainty? How can tax liabilities in Singapore be planned for and dealt with efficiently to mitigate their impact?
Singapore is a reputable international trust centre. Trust companies here are licensed and supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”). The judiciary in Singapore is highly respected and the industry is supported by legal, tax, and financial services firms, both home-grown and international. Our trust law, built on well-established English legal principles, was modernised in 2004. In Singapore, discretionary trusts with investment powers reserved to settlors are very common. These trusts may be revocable or irrevocable, depending on the clients’ objectives.
To provide a conducive environment to foster the growth of wealth management, qualifying trusts administered in Singapore are able to utilise a number of tax incentive schemes. Before these schemes sunset on 31st March 2019, MAS will conduct a review to assess their usefulness and relevance.
What are the typical challenges that clients approach you with in relation to the management of their finance and trust planning? What challenges are often faced where trusts are concerned?
Trusts are a core element of many wealth plans. Families have used trusts for centuries to preserve their wealth and make long-term financial provisions for their heirs. This basic need for succession planning has not gone away, and indeed may be even more critical in today’s dynamic environment.
5 or 10 years ago, perhaps the single biggest concern for many clients about using trusts was the loss of control. What has changed since is a heightened awareness of tax amongst our clients. As you know, the financial world is today characterised by increasing transparency, encapsulated in the now-familiar alphabet soup of FATCA, CRS and AEOI.
What makes DBS Private Banking’s Wealth Planning departments unique?
Wealth planning is more than simply a conversation about trusts. Indeed in some cases, a trust is not necessary or even advisable. It all depends on each client’s circumstances and objectives. To take an example, trusts may not work for some European clients and alternative structures such as insurance may be more appropriate. In DBS, the wealth planners are not the sales force for our trust company; our job is not to sell trusts. We are very clear that our role is to make sure that our clients get the right advice.
So our wealth planners engage our clients on wider issues that may affect intergenerational transfers of wealth. We are working with many clients to set up single family offices, primarily to ensure there is continuing professional management of their investments after their lifetime. We also find an increasing number of clients who want to make charitable and philanthropic objectives as a key family value, maybe even the key family value, that they want to instil in their descendants. Our clients are also keen to address foreign taxes that apply to their overseas investments, as well as family members who move outside their home country. At the end of the day, every client has different needs and objectives.
Website: https://www.dbs.com
Email: hennyliow@dbs.com
Here John Milliken, Chief Operating Officer at Infomedia, delves into the statistics and facts of online, mobile and digital payments, how they differ between regions, and why.
According to a report by UNCTAD - the United Nations body on international trade and development - online, mobile and digital currency payment systems are set to overtake credit and debit cards as the most popular ways to pay in e-commerce worldwide by 2019. The research suggests that the share of credit and debit cards in global payments will drop to 46% by 2019 from the 51% forecasted three years ago.
Last year, China’s mobile revenue hit $5.5 trillion, a figure that is 50 times more than the size of America’s $112 billion market, according to consulting firm iResearch. Similarly, in the last year alone, Japan’s e-commerce market was valued at $89 billion, with half of that coming from mobile.
By comparison, in the UK and US, many brands, from retailers to publishers, continue to struggle to deliver a mobile experience that enables a convenient and simple payment method and encourages consumers to spend. As a result, despite the fact that mobile devices have consistently driven the highest levels of engagement compared to any other platform, it continues to experience the lowest conversion rates.
So, what is it the East is doing differently to the West that has caused mobile revenue to sky rocket?
The Asian Mobile Market
The Asian technology industry - particularly mobile - has pulled ahead of what we’ve seen in the West. China and Japan, like many other developing markets, have not followed the pattern of the West in going from physical shops to PC to laptop to smartphone. Instead many consumers are going straight to smartphones without previously owning a fixed internet connection.
According to Zenith’s Mobile Advertising Forecasts for 2017, mobile accounts for 73% of time spent using the internet globally, however in the UK this figure is just 57%. By comparison, in China, internet users reached 668 million in June 2015, and 549 million of those users (almost 90%) access the internet primarily via their mobile devices. In other words, the number of internet users in China is more than twice the population of the US and almost the population of Europe, and most of those individuals are walking around with a smartphone.
With these figures in mind, it’s clear that mobile is prevalent in China - it’s a way of life, not just a medium of communication. On mobile, consumers talk, text, shop, order food, hail taxis, book travel, pay for products and services, deposit money into their bank or transfer money, amongst other things. Most Chinese companies have recognised this, and build their advertising and marketing, customer communication, shopping, purchasing, and even their payment programmes around mobile. In fact, about half of all e-commerce in China happens on mobile, compared to just over a fifth in the US and around a third in the UK.
As a result, rather than focusing on card payments, merchants and mobile operators in China and Japan have worked together to develop truly frictionless mobile payment processes. In China in particular, much of this is driven by mobile payment services via social messaging service WeChat and AliPay, its paypal equivalent. In fact, Alipay recently signed with Starbucks to enable e-payment at all 2,800 Starbucks locations, while at a KFC, diners can pay via Alipay using facial recognition technology. In Japan however, DCB is the most popular payment method accounting for more than 50% of all ‘online’ transactions - a number that has risen consistently over the past five years as more consumers move away from card payments.
It is clear there is an opportunity for brands to deliver the same conversion rates on mobile seen in Japan and China if they are able to adapt to behavioural change. And although the Chinese market appears to be different to the West, it has actually just reached the predicted next stage for all markets quicker. By acknowledging that consumers want the quickest and easiest payment processes, we can also deliver an experience that is frictionless and encourages customers to convert from browsing to spending on mobile. In summary, it is only when brands begin to deliver and offer a mobile first experience that they too, will be able to maximise on the mobile opportunity.
For our October front cover story, Finance Monthly reached out to Joseph Pacini - the CEO and Co-Founder of XIO Group. He is responsible for the strategy and management of the global multibillion alternative investments and research. Headquartered in London, XIO Group also has operations in China, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States.
XIO Group’s strategy is to identify and invest in market-leading and high-preforming businesses located across Europe and North America, and to help these companies in capitalizing on untapped opportunities in fast-growing markets, especially those in Asia. Here Joseph tells us more about it.
What have been the alternative investment trends in Hong Kong and globally in the past twelve months.
What we have seen is that there has been a tremendous amount of competition in the market for high-quality assets. To differentiate ourselves from our competitors, we have sought to uncover untapped opportunities and proprietary deals, in order to generate substantial returns for our investors.
What were XIO Group’s beginnings?
I had known Athene Li for many years from Asia and from when I was Head of Alternative Investments at BlackRock. Initially, we were planning to work together under the BlackRock Alternatives team, but after a variety of personal/firm decisions, we decided that it would be a great opportunity to set up our own firm with a specific strategy to invest in market-leading businesses and take them to Asia.
What considerations do you look at when identifying a business to invest in?
When we look at businesses, we want to have a market leader that is already dominant in their home market, but may not have achieved that globalization to the degree that they want. We then assist the company and help them grow. We can help them grow in many regions, whether that’s in North America, Europe or Asia. However, our particular expertise is in growth into China.
What challenges would you say you and XIO encounter on a regular basis? How are these resolved?
The challenges that we and XIO face on a regular basis are connected to the intense competition on the market. There’s also a misconception that we focus solely on Chinese companies, which couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, we do not invest in China at all; our growth opportunities are bringing companies from the West into global high-growth markets – and specifically China.
How does your experience in alternative investments inform your decision-making strategy at XIO Group?
Having worked at large firms previously, such as Bain Capital, JP Morgan and Blackrock, I understood how large institutional players assess and go after certain markets for alternative investments, so this has given me a great foundation. However, I think running your own firm is very different, as you are an entrepreneur as well and it forces you to be “scrappy”. Effectively, you fight harder when it is your own firm because you own your destiny – whether it be success or failure.
As CEO, how do you ensure you are directing the company in the correct direction? How do you advise your team to make the correct decisions for the company?
I would simply state that as CEO, my job is to set broad goals and principals, and then allow my team to work within our framework to achieve those objectives. For example, looking at where we want to diversify our business, how we want to grow our platform, the types of businesses we look for and how we build out our portfolio – these are the strategic areas I focus on. For other decisions, we allow that to be done more on a deal team basis. I look to give our colleagues the knowledge and responsibility, as well as opportunity to bring forward their ideas on what a good investment platform would be. With that also comes the accountability.
What does a typical day look like for you? What daily challenges do you encounter and how do you overcome them?
I tend to be travelling for 2 weeks of the month but my days are similar. I start with calls to Asia for the first few hours, then I deal with meetings in the UK and in the afternoon, and then I deal with calls back to the USA. My time is divided between approximately a third spent on client type of items, a third on existing portfolios and a third on new and potential investment opportunities.
The main challenge as a CEO is how to prioritise. You have to take in a lot of information and really prioritise what’s the most important thing that only you can deal with at that time and then delegate the remaining tasks to others.
What are your strategic goals and vision for XIO’s future?
Our goal is to continue to grow out our platform, at first in private equity. Our long-term objectives are related to eventually diversifying into other alternative assets classes, similarly to how I have done it at other firms and overtime, really build a diversified alternative investments platform.
About XIO
XIO Group is a global multi-billion dollar alternative investments firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. XIO Group’s strategy is to identify and invest in market-leading and high-performing businesses located across Europe and North America and to partner with management to help these companies in capitalizing on untapped opportunities in fast growing markets, particularly those in Asia. XIO Group has operations in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Hong Kong, Mainland China and the United States of America.
About Joseph Pacini
Joseph Pacini is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of XIO Group. Prior to XIO Group, Joseph was Managing Director and Head of BlackRock Alternative Investors (BAI) for Asia Pacific. Based in Hong Kong, Mr. Pacini was responsible for developing client-focused alternative investment strategies as well as the continued growth of BlackRock’s USD $24 billion alternatives platform and product offering in Asia.
Prior to joining BlackRock in 2012, Joseph was the Head of JP Morgan Alternative Investments Group in Asia. In that capacity, Mr. Pacini’s responsibilities included the business development, origination, due diligence and structuring of hedge fund, private equity, real estate and direct deal opportunities for its USD$10 billion platform.
Before moving to Asia, Mr. Pacini was a member of the JP Morgan Private Bank Alternative Investments Due Diligence Team based in New York. Prior to joining JP Morgan in 2003, Joseph was an Analyst at the private equity firm Bain Capital, LLC. in London, England.
Joseph received a Bachelor of Science in International Business from Brigham Young University where he graduated with University Honours.
Website: http://www.xiogroup.com
According to the Pulse of FinTech, the quarterly global report on FinTech VC trends published jointly by KPMG International and CB Insights, Asia’s FinTech funding has risen to US$2.6b in the first quarter of 2016. Following a significant pullback in funding in Q4’15, mega-rounds lifted quarterly investment into VC-backed FinTech companies by over 150%.
Global investment in private FinTech companies is said to have totalled US$5.7 billion in Q1’16, with US$4.9 billion specifically invested in VC-backed FinTech companies across 218 deals, a 96% jump in comparison to the same quarter last year. The fact that three mega-rounds accounted for 54% of VC FinTech investment in Q1’16 has resulted in the increase in funding. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, VC-backed FinTech deal activity rose 22% in Q1’16.
Warren Mead, Global Co-Leader of FinTech, KPMG International said: “Global VC investment into the technology sector may be experiencing a bit of a pause, however FinTech, propelled by some very large mega-rounds, has proven to be an exception to the rule. Investors are putting money into FinTech companies all over the world – from the traditional strongholds of China, the US and the UK – to up and coming FinTech hubs like Singapore, Australia and Ireland.”
“While FinTech startups continue to attract large investment both in the US and abroad, and investors gravitate to areas yet untouched by much tech innovation including insurance, recent events and public market performance suggest that growth-stage FinTech fundraising will be harder to come by moving forward in 2016.” commented Anand Sanwal, CEO at CB Insights.
Lyon Poh, Head of Digital + Innovation, KPMG in Singapore, added: “In Singapore, we have seen a flurry of activities in line with the government’s push for financial institutions to adopt innovative technology. For example, many insurers are building innovation centres and programmes to rapidly identify and adopt FinTech solutions to bring innovation back into their core businesses. This has in turn encouraged more FinTech startups to come to Singapore and use it as a base for developing their propositions, and for fund raising.”
