Falling amounts collected, rising bankruptcy filings and low-cost acquisitions: The first half of the year proved bleak for French banking and insurance startups, the Fintech Observatory said Tuesday.
Since the beginning of the year, the sector has been facing “an increasing number of fintechs that cease their activities or are bought under unfavorable conditions for them and advantageous for buyers,” explains the Observatory in its semi-annual study. , eighth of the name, a trend that started last year.
This is the case, for example, of the young insurance company Luko. After the launch of a safeguard procedure to facilitate the repayment of her debt, she announced on June 15 the total takeover bid for her by the British insurance group Admiral.
What to question “about the viability and sustainability of certain business models in the sector”, continues the Observatory.
Caution
However, the association, which compiles the fintech figures in France, counts 73 fundraisers in the first half, compared to 66 last year during the same period.
But if the figure is higher, the total amount invested is in free fall: it painfully reaches 673 million euros, compared to 1.4 billion euros between January and June 2022.
Most of the operations were carried out in seed (to launch the project) or in series A (at the beginning of the project’s life).
Only one fundraiser reached the symbolic bar of 100 million euros during the first half of the year: the one carried out by the young shoot Ledger, specialized in securing crypto assets.
Six start-ups had passed it last year at the same time.
“Investors are more cautious,” the president of the fintech Observatory, Mikaël Ptachek, summed up to AFP, who also notes a lesser appetite for US funds.
“After being the darling of venture capitalists for some exceptional years, the fintech industry has returned to more familiar ground,” the investment bank Avolta already pointed out in mid-June, in a publication related to European fintechs.
Source: BFM TV
