Ping An invests in Berlin start-up
Source: Asia Insurance Review | Jan 2019
Ping An Insurance Group’s Global Voyager Investment Fund is leading the latest funding round worth EUR41.5m ($47m) for Finleap, a Berlin-based FinTech company. Finleap provides technology to build digital solutions in Europe’s banking, insurance and asset management industries. The fund’s investment in Finleap represents its first foray into the continental European market, after finalising some deals in the UK.
“There’s just a tremendous amount of work that remains to be done in Europe,” said Ping An Global Voyager managing director and chief operating officer Donald Lacey on CNBC.
“We try always to put money to work where we have a significant conviction that some way, somehow by virtue of proximity to Ping An, we’re going to be adding a lot of value to a partner company,” he said.
Mr Lacey added he sees big opportunity in Europe’s ‘immense’ financial services industry, which he said needs the help of start-ups like Finleap to innovate. “The ability of legacy financial institutions to innovate in a meaningful way is absolutely hampered by their legacy technology systems, their legacy issues,” he said. A