Singapore has had quite an amazing year with regard to fintech.
The city-state organized the world’s largest fintech event, a number of banks and tech firms opened innovations labs in the country, and the government launched new initiatives and funding schemes to support startups and boost fintech development.
For the new year ahead, we look at the hottest fintech companies in Singapore to keep an eye on in 2017. We eyed established players in Online Wealth Management, Insurtech, Regtech, Big Data, Mobile Payments and Personal Finance.
Dragon Wealth
Founded in 2013, Dragon Wealth is an award-winning startup that offers the world’s first ‘marketing in a box’ designed specifically for financial advisors to connect more easily and more conveniently with new and current investors.
Dragon Wealth’s technology leverages the latest in social, mobile, analytics and cloud solutions to provide at-a-glance insight on clients’ investment behavior, peer group comparisons, and expert information, enabling relationship managers and their clients to have transparent conversations about clients’ investment needs.
FitSense
FitSense offers an online platform that leverages data analytics to help insurance companies personalize health and life insurance packages for individuals using smartphones and wearable devices.
The platform aggregates health data across multiple wearable touch points and health tracking applications, and normalizes and combines them to create unique scores for its users. These scores are then used to develop insurance policies to suit individual needs in real time. This in turn helps insurance companies reduce claims and accelerate revenue streams.
FitSense uses app and device data to create rich customer profiles that allow insurers to truly personalise insurance products and services. To achieve this, we built a data platform to collect, store, and process data. We then build end-user facing applications.
TransferTo
TransferTo operates a Cross-Border Mobile Payments Network to emerging markets, processing transactions in real-time for duly licensed financial institutions and merchants.
TransferTo offer solutions for businessess providing remittance, push payments and merchant payment services. Thousands of leading companies including Vodafone’s M-Pesa, bKash, Tigo Money, Western Union, Xoom and Paypal, rely on TransferTo’s Mobile Payments solutions to perform digital payments.
Smartkarma
Smartkarma is a curated online platform for investment insight aimed at providing unconflicted and unmatched analysis, transparency, and context into Asian markets and help global institutional investors.
A collaborative marketplace, Smartkarma seeks to disrupt the way market participants create, distribute and consume investment insights by bringing together the world’s premier analysts, academics, data scientists and strategists in one unique ecosystem.
The company provides a customizable platform helping investors optimize research spend and enhance returns. It has recently signed a deal with Societe Generale to serve the bank’s institutional clients.
SoCash
SoCash is a startup that has developed a clever system allowing merchants to become local cash machines. SoCash turns any business into an ATM, allowing users to withdraw cash from a merchant’s till.
The system uses a customer’s bank’s mobile app to let him or her transfer an amount to the merchant’s bank account. Then the user can pick up the amount in cash at that outlet.
SoCash claims to be the first fintech startup to receive backing from the Monetary Authority of Singapore as part of the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation Scheme.
Fastacash
Incorporated in 2012, Fastacash is a social payments startup and one of the most well-funded fintech companies in Southeast Asia, having raised over US$23 million in venture capital so far.
The company provides a global platform that allows users to transfer value (money, airtime, other tokens of value, etc.) along with digital content (photos, videos, audio, messages) through social networks and messaging platforms, enabling secure and cost-effective transactions domestically and internationally.
Fastacash partners with banks, mobile operators, remittance companies, mobile wallets and payment service providers to bring its technology to end-users.
Tookitaki
Tookitaki, a startup specializing in risk and compliance, has created a decision support system, or DSS, a ready-to-use software infrastructure focusing on automated predictive analysis.
The platform gives organizations the ability to analyze complete data sets faster and more easily than before. The company’s goal is to make automated predictive analytics simple and scalable for all types of businesses.
Tookitaki has raised over US$1 million in venture capital and was one of the winners of the MAS Fintech Awards 2016.
CashShield
Established in 2007, CashShield is a transaction fraud detection service that leverages on big data, predictive analysis and machine learning. The technology is able to analyze in real time pertinent variables such as customer purchase behavior, account logins and social media behavior to determine whether a fraudulent transaction is taking place.
CashShield is an award-winning technology and has served major telcos in Europe and the US. Alongside its headquarters in Singapore, the company has offices in Berlin, Germany, and San Jose, California.