Where top US banks are investing in fintech – CB Insights

Written by FinTech Futures
14th August 2017

Since 2012, the top ten US banks (by assets under management) have participated in 72 rounds totaling $3.6 billion to 56 fintech companies, according to CB Insights.

The research company says that while investment activity dropped on a quarterly basis in Q1 2017, four of the last five quarters have seen over $1 billion invested into fintech start-ups in the US backed by venture capital firms.

Highlights:

Ranked by the number of unique portfolio companies, the cohort’s three most active investors are Citi, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Citi (including Citi Ventures) participated in 30 rounds to 22 companies, Goldman Sachs in 31 rounds to 25 companies, and JP Morgan Chase in 14 rounds to 13 companies.
Goldman Sachs is focusing on payments, investing in six companies in the space. From 2012 to date, it participated in eight financing rounds totaling about $570 million. This includes funding Vietnam-based MoMo, a mobile wallet and banking services provider for the unbanked segment – MoMo raised nearly $34 million in two rounds with participation from Standard Chartered and Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs was also the only one from the list above to invest in real estate fintech companies, namely Cadre and Better Mortgage.
All ten banks have blockchain investments. Eight of the ten became part of blockchain consortium R3 (although Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have since left R3).
Bank of America features only six fintech companies in its portfolio (even though it is the second largest bank by assets on the list). It was the only member of this cohort to invest in Bill.com, participating in the company’s $38 million Series E.
Kensho, which applies data analytics and machine learning to financial research, saw lots of overlapping interest. Six of the profiled banks took part in its $50 million Series B funding round, which valued the company at $500 million.

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