Hong Kong-Headquartered Nova Gears Up To Invest In "Final Frontier" Of Fintech

Tom Burroughes

19 September 2014

Hong Kong-headquartered investment house Nova Founders Capital, which focuses on financial technology, has secured $50 million in investment from Pacific Century Group, the Asian-based firm.

Separately, Nova l has opened a European headquarters in London, and will open in Californa’s Silicon Valley technology region of northern California next year. In addition to its work in London’s fintech sector, as well as across Asia and Europe, the firm is inking a deal to invest in Denmark as a gateway to the Nordic markets and is exploring plans for Germany where it sees a strong entrepreneurial environment, it said in a statement yesterday.

Coming at a time when the Asian e-commerce world is abuzz with the forthcoming multi-billion Alibaba IPO in New York, Nova said that its funding deal with Pacific Century Group is part of how it aims to “take advantage of a sector that is ripe for disruption”. Within the fintech sector as it applies to wealth management, there is growing interest in what MyPrivateBanking Research, the Swiss firm, has called “robo-advisors”, or platforms using automated systems in dealing with clients.

Financial firms are the “last the frontier” in embracing online technology, Nova said about its funding deal.

The investment firm was launched in 2012 by entrepreneurs and former global partners of Rocket Internet, Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen and Raphael Strauch.

Among its ventures to date are CompareGlobalGroup , Lion&Lion and GlassesGroupGlobal .

“Fintech is the largest remaining internet frontier, presenting massive opportunities across Europe, LATAM and Asia in particular. We have so far identified twenty two billion dollar opportunities in financial services internet models worldwide. We have already begun work to build and invest in the first five of them. We firmly believe that the next tech superstars will come from the fintech industry,” Faurholt-Jorgensen said in a statement.