FinTech Collective is a VC firm that invests both in traditional fintech as well as emerging digital assets including in DeFi.

FinTech Collective, a New York-based venture capital firm founded in 2012, announced its raise of $250 million for investing in financial services startups focused on traditional fintech and DeFi. Of this $200 million would be directed towards investments in early-stage fintechs, and $50 million in DeFi applications. (BusinessWire)

Investors in the latest raise include The State of Wisconsin Investment Board, The Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, Greenspring Associates, and StepStone Group. DRW and British billionaire Alan Howard also participated in the round.

FinTech Collective: Investing beat

Driven by its objective to rewire how money moves across the world, FinTech Collective invests primarily in sectors such as capital markets, wealth and asset management, banking-lending-payments, and insurance.

It invests across the globe and portfolio companies span United States, Latin America, the UK/Europe, and Africa. Five are already fintech unicorns, and the firm has enjoyed lucrative exits from startups such as  Quovo to Plaid, Reorg Research to Warburg Pincus, and MoneyLion, which is en route to go public through a merger with the SPAC Fusion Acquisition Corp. in a $2.9 billion deal.

“FinTech Collective was among the first venture capital firms to recognize the fintech opportunity resulting from the global financial crisis, which served as a catalyst to unlock a generation of innovation in financial services,” Managing Partner Brooks Gibbins said in a statement. “We believe the next 30 years represent an unprecedented period when every facet of financial services will be deconstructed and reconstructed.”

However, the firm’s most investible themes are:

• The disruption of traditional finance by the shift to digital (conventional banks still represent 72% of the global banking and payments industry’s total market value)
• Middle class spending by billions of consumers in emerging economies
• The further growth and scaling of digital assets

Emerging digital assets

A fifth of the firm’s current portfolio is invested in blockchain and DeFi.

The new funding of $50 million will target open-source, composable financial protocols and applications being built on smart-contracting platforms such as Ethereum.

FinTech Collective will also boost further its investments in the DeFi space including in equity and liquid tokens.

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