AMTD: Five Asian Fintech companies have been selected to receive investment

The AMTD Singapore Solidarity Fund has awarded five Asian Fintech companies with funding – a total of $8.4 million. In a statement released on September 14, 2020, The AMTD announced it has chosen to invest in Fintech platforms spanning across artificial intelligence, SME financing solutions, insuretech, cross-border payment platform, and card payment solutions. Fintech platforms are Funding Societies, Active.ai, Cardup, Transwap, and PolicyPal.

The money belongs to AMTD Asean Solidarity Fund Group which has an initial capital of S$50 million dedicated to supporting FinTechs registered on the API Exchange Platform in the region during the Covid-19, according to Finance Magnates.

Calvin Choi, Chairman and CEO of AMTD Group said “AMTD is proud to support the Fintech community in Singapore, witnessing the resilience and embracing opportunities in its Fintech and innovation sectors. AMTD will leverage Singapore’s deep talent pool, its multidimensional capital market, and bring in AMTD’s global connectivity and our SpiderNet ecosystem to anchor and support the long-term development and sustainability of the local FinTech ecosystem”, according to Finance Magnates.

Moreover, Supriya Sen, Independent Director and Chairperson of the Investment Committee at AFIN added in the statement “We are very pleased that the Solidarity Fund has already received more than 40 applications from FinTech and innovation companies, encompassing a wide range of use cases in payments, InsureTech, WealthTech, RegTech, credit scoring, Chatbot, SME lending, and digital assets across different ASEAN countries with Singapore as a regional hub”. In addition, Supriya Sen said, “We went through a rigorous process of selection, out of which these 5 FinTech companies have been chosen for the first batch of proposed investments.”

While securing financial support for Fintech, AMTD will offer these companies open access to its one-stop digital platform and SpiderNet ecosystem to empower entrepreneurs and maximize the user experience and digital offering to Asian consumers and SMEs, states FinTech news.

Back to August 13, 2020, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the new three-year plan with $182.1 million aiming to boost support for large-scale innovation projects and scale up FinTech skillsets in the City-state, according to ZDNet. The MAS plan has a special focus on Artificial Intelligence (Al). The authority has signed 33 FinTech Co-operation Agreements with international counterparts including Australia, Canada, China, and the United Kingdom.

Singapore is one of the world’s top four financial centres. The country’s financial technology landscape continues to grow. As of September 2019, Singapore was named the home to 45% of FinTech companies in ASEAN, according to UOB Group.