AMTD Fund Invests $8.4 Million in 5 ASEAN Fintech Companies

The AMTD Singapore Solidarity Fund invested in Funding Societies, Active.ai, Cardup, Transwap, and PolicyPal.

The AMTD Singapore Solidarity Fund has made its first batch of investments, selecting five fintech companies spanning across artificial intelligence, SME financing solutions, insurtech, cross-border payment platform and card payment solutions to inject a total of S$11.5 million (around US$8.4 million).

According to the statement released by the fund this Monday, it has chosen to invest in the following five fintech platforms: Funding Societies, Active.ai, Cardup, Transwap, and PolicyPal.

Funding Societies is an SME digital financing platform based in Southeast Asia. Additionally, Activia.ai is a cloud-based Conversational AI platform, providing the means to automate customer service processes.

Cardup, on the other hand, is a credit card enablement platform and Transwap is a cross-border payments platform for regional businesses. Last on the list is PolicyPal, an InsureTech company.

The Singapore Solidarity Fund is part of the AMTD, Asean Solidarity Fund Group. This fund group had an initial capital of S$50 million and aims to support fintech companies registered on the API Exchange platform in the region, during the coronavirus pandemic.

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AMTD: Supporting Singapore’s Fintech Community

Commenting on the announcement, Calvin Choi, Chairman and CEO of AMTD Group said in the statement: “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 multi-dimensional 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. 

“The Solidarity Fund is a centre of care, centre of support, and an anchor point. We welcome more innovative companies to join APIX and more entrepreneurs to join our ecosystem, together we deliver the best-in-class digital experience to customers from locally to globally.”

The S$11.5 million in investment was distributed to the five fintech companies through a range of investment structures. This includes equities, convertible notes, venture debt, warrants and options.

“We are very pleased that the Solidarity Fund has already received more than 40 applications from FinTech and innovative companies, encompassing a wide range of use cases in payments, InsurTech, WealthTech, RegTech, credit scoring, chatbot, SME lending, and digital assets across different ASEAN countries with Singapore as a regional hub,” added Supriya Sen, Independent Director and Chairperson of the Investment Committee at AFIN in the statement. 

“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. We at AFIN are committed to support the FinTech community in Singapore, and to help them leverage Singapore’s talent pool and robust FinTech ecosystem to drive innovation in financial services in Singapore and the world.”