Singapore’s GoBear raises $17m

Last year, GoBear raised $80 million from the same two investors. GoBear said the fresh round of funds would be used to accelerate its transformation into a more comprehensive financial services platform. Currently, it offers insurance, banking and lending products that can be bought via digital channels in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore.

GoBear launched in 2015 as a joint venture between Aegon, a multinational financial services player with interests in life insurance, pensions, and asset management, and Walvis Participaties, the VC arm of Dutch asset management firm Walvis Group. The company helps customers search, compare and purchase a wide range of financial products from local and regional institutions, with the products often white-labelled such as ‘GoTravel with Chubb'.

GoBear says it has served over 55 million users, and that they have searched for more than 2,000 personal finance products on its platform. It claims to have seen growth in the insurance and lending aspects of the business despite COVID-19 curbing activity in the region generally. 

Earlier in the month, the company acquired AsiaKredit, a Singapore-headquartered consumer-lending platform that launched in 2017. GoBear said the acquisition will allow it to offer its institutional partners the option to lend to GoBear users. AsiaKredit’ primary focus is the Philippines.   

“Our latest fundraise is validation that our investors continue to see our potential for growth and that we’re on track to build a robust financial services platform that Asia really needs. Built on our strong foundation of alternative data, we can better assess and price risk, co-create better products, and ultimately improve financial inclusion,” said GoBear CEO Adrian Chng, in a release. 

In late 2019, GoBear confirmed that its two co-founders - chief commercial officer Marnix Zwart and chief technology officer Ivonne Bojoh - had left the firm.

Financial inclusion through technology in Asia’s emerging markets is a rapidly developing theme. Momentum in this space includes the region’s two biggest ride-hailing start-ups in the region – Singapore-headquartered Grab and Indonesia’s Go-Jek – stating ambitions to offer digital financial services to their users in the near term. Meanwhile, several fintech start-ups have raised VC funding in the peer-to-peer lending space.

PE-backed Oriente, a Hong Kong-headquartered start-up focuses exclusively on consumer lending, raised $50 million at the end of April. Oriente operates in the Philippines and Indonesia, often working with local conglomerates that help facilitate its entry in a market. The company has plans to offer its solutions to Vietnamese consumers in the near future.

Walvis has more than EUR60 million ($67 million) in assets under management across three funds, primarily invested in the Netherlands. The firm invests in growth-stage technology companies with annual revenue of at least EUR1 million or monthly recurring revenue of EUR80,000, with a focus on e-commerce, enterprise software, fintech, healthcare, and internet-of-things.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Malaysia
• Thailand
• insurance
• Fintech