Fintech companies focused on wealth management continue to gain popularity over traditional advisors. Also referred to as wealthtechs, these companies are tapping into untapped markets within the wealth management industry and focus on customer’s demands for higher returns and transparent fees.
Today, wealthtech companies are present all around the world, including in East Asia, offering an alternative to traditional wealth management firms and technology-enabled tools. This includes full-service brokerage alternatives, robo-advisors, self-service investment platforms, asset class specific marketplaces, and tools to keep up with the changing dynamics in wealth management.
East Asia is the eastern subregion of Asia, which can be defined in either geographical or ethno-cultural terms. Geographically and geopolitically, the region constitutes China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Mongolia, South Korea and North Korea.
Today, we look at some of the top wealthtech startups in the region:
China
Lufax
Founded in 2011, Lufax is an Internet-based lending and wealth management platform, originally set up by Ping An Group. Consumer lending remains a core part of its operations. In July of 2017, it launched their first product in Singapore, a wealth management platform. Lufax raised US$1.33 billion in its latest funding round in December 2018 and is considering an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong.
Tiger Brokers
Founded in 2014, Tiger Brokers is an online brokerage that allows Chinese investors at home and abroad, to trade stocks in the US, Hong Kong and mainland China markets. Its app, Tiger for US Stocks, is characterized by a Chinese interface and supports multiple features like one-click short selling, personal profit and loss analysis, stock options trading and real-time quotes. Tiger Brokers also has an online community for investors to share information and trading experience.
Wacai
Wacai has developed an all-in-one online personal financial management platform that provides users with wealth management services and credit solutions through an extensive portfolio of mobile apps to meet the evolving lifelong personal financial service needs.. Founded in 2009, Wacai began its business with providing a wide range of free online personal financial services apps, including bookkeeping and credit card bills management.
Lantouzi
Launched in 2014, Lantouzi offers financing services to small and medium business, as well as wealth management products for individual investors. The company’s Internet based financing platform offers high quality, safe, convenient financing services, enabling SMEs to solve the operational needs of financing. In wealth management, the company is engaged as a quality money platform by offering investment bonds through Lantouzi.com.
Qianbaomu
Founded in 2014 in Hangzhou, Qianbaomu is a fintech platform that started its business by providing financial products including wealth services to women, targeting women in big cities with disposable income as its main target group. The company then developed new financial products for its female customers, which contributed to its large user base. It then expanded its product offerings to supply chain assets.
Hong Kong
Quantifeed
Quantifeed provides an automated investment platform that allows banks, brokers and wealth planners to offer their customers a digital investing experience under their own brand. Quantifeed’s software and financial models provide institutions with a configurable solution to suit their wealth management objectives. The platform allows customers to explore, customize, invest and manage portfolios of stocks, bonds, funds and other asset classes.
FinFabrik
Founded in 2016, FinFabrik creates and offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to facilitate trading multiple assets such as equities and cryptoassets. Its suite of solutions includes BrokerFabrik, a platform that enables brokerages to run their entire equity trading business on one platform, and CryptoFabrik, a cryptoassets trading platform for institutions and professionals.
Prive Financial
Founded in 2011, Prive Financial provides a variety of financial services through its award-winning Prive Managers platform, an integrated wealth management, product creation, wealth planning and client relationship management platform that brings the client, advisor and the investment manager into one ecosystem. Prive Financial is a licensed corporation permitted to carry on Type 1 (dealing in securities) regulated activities under the SFO.
Japan
Quoine
Founded in 2014, Quoine provides trading, exchange and next-generation financial services powered by blockchain technology. It was the first global cryptocurrency exchange to be officially licensed by the Japan Financial Service Authority. The company’s existing trading platforms include Qryptos, Quoinex, and Liquid, a new cryptocurrency one-stop trading portal which allows users to access a worldwide network of cryptocurrency exchanges. Currently, Quoine processes annual transactions worth over US$50 billion.
Folio
Founded in 2015, Folio offers an online security brokerage service in Japan specializing in thematic investing. The platform enables users to compile a diversified portfolio, managing their assets through a robo-advisor but also by choosing themes depending on what they are interested in or want to support. Users can customize each folio with up to 100 stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds or choose from over 160 free, pre‐made Ready-to‐Go folios to use as-is or customize.
Money Design
Money Design provides automated investment management and online advisory services. Its main product, called THEO, is a robo-advisor that uses algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) previously only available to professional investors. With THEO, individuals can invest in dozens of world currencies and thousands of different stocks from more than 60 countries.
WealthNavi
WealthNavi offers a platform for asset managers which uses risk management algorithm for asset management advice. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. WealthNavi has raised about US$94 million in funding so far, the latest round being a US$35 million round in November 2018.
South Korea
Dayli Financial Group
Founded in 2015, Dayli Financial Group is one of the leading fintech companies in South Korea, providing solutions based in AI, blockchain, robo-advisor and cryptocurrency mainly. The company is currently working on creating a blockchain ecosystem called ICON that will allow government departments, universities, hospitals, securities, banks and any private company to interact without third-party networks that charge transaction fees or delay the process.
Fount
Founded in 2015, Fount is a robo-advisor startup providing automated, algorithm-based portfolio management services. Its robo-advisor engine, named Bluewhale, calculates the optimum combination of assets by combining financial engineering technology with asset allocation theories. Bluewhale then monitors the financial markets around the globe, allocating assets based on market changes through “dynamic rebalancing.” The company recently launched an AI-powered personal pension service that allows investors to build and manage their pension portfolios through a robo-advisor platform.
AIM
AIM is an AI-powered app for automated investment management. The company has developed a system which works alongside existing investment institutions to allow users in South Korea to make trades and investments via their smartphone. AIM is an investment advisor regulated by the South Korean Financial Supervisory Service.
Doomoolmori
Doomoolmori provides data-driven financial advisor services. Its robo-advisor platform, called Boolio, is an affordable digital asset management service. The company also offers ELS Research, a prediction and analysis tool that analyzes the hundreds of equity linked securities (ELS) that are being sold any given day. The technology evaluates ELS and manages ELS portfolios.
