In the first nine months, 20 financial start-ups were also taken over, shows the paper available to the German Press Agency. For the year as a whole, this would translate into 26 fintech takeovers, a decrease compared to the record figure of 31 in 2019.
“The Corona crisis led to a lot of uncertainty among companies, especially at the beginning of the year,” said Sven Meyer, fintech expert at PwC. The wave of takeovers has flattened out. Since digitization has gained in importance with the corona crisis, it is likely to be a temporary effect.
There had been a number of takeovers in the past few years as many fintechs swallowed up competitors. In addition, banks, IT companies and insurers bought financial start-ups or participated in them in order to bring fresh ideas into their own company under the pressure of digitization. At the same time, numerous young financial companies had to give up because their ideas did not prevail.
Financial start-ups want to use intuitive technology to make transfers, savings, loans or insurance faster and more convenient. They were quickly traded as a threat to banks. Recently, however, it became apparent that only a few prevail – typical for a young industry.
The most successful fintechs include interest portals, through which investors can compare the conditions of many banks and invest money more lucratively. Some investment robots, which automatically invest wealth on the stock exchange, and smartphone banks have also grown strongly. The Berlin online bank N26 collected 92 million euros from investors in a financing round in May.
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