The word "fintech" comes up a lot these days, but for good reason in my opinion. According to the Partnership Fund for New York City in the last quarter New York's financial technology hub received more venture capital financing than Silicon Valley for the very first time.
In the last quarter the growth of New York's fintech sector led to US$690 million of investment, compared to US$511 million of investment in Silicon Valley. This has many in the industry proclaiming today as the golden age of fintech.
There are a number of growing fintech companies in Australia right now such as Class Ltd (ASX: CL1) and Ozforex Group Ltd (ASX: OFX) which I believe are worthy of further investigation. But the one I'm going to talk about today is Praemium Ltd (ASX: PPS).
Praemium is an exciting fintech company which provides software platforms for investment administration, separately managed accounts, and financial planning.
This morning it released an announcement to the market revealing that despite the Brexit, its quarterly inflows were the second highest on record with gross platform and managed fund inflows of $432 million. These inflows were a 33% increase from the prior quarter and comprised $313 million for its Australian segment and $119 million for its international segment.
This led to funds under advice for the Australian segment achieving an annual increase of 26% to $3 billion, while funds under advice for the international segment increased 30% to £923 million (A$1.8 billion).
Praemium's CEO Michael Ohanessian had this to say on the results, "We are delighted to report another strong quarter of growth across the business. Our continued investment in innovative functionality, built upon Praemium's core strengths in portfolio reporting and auto-rebalancing, will ensure we retain our position as the leading global SMA platform. Continued innovation in our accountant-strength portfolio reporting for non-custodial assets has resulted in the signing of a leading financial institution in the June quarter."
I believe these are exciting times for shareholders and this quarter is yet another indication that the company has a bright future ahead of it. Whilst competition is likely to increase from the likes of Onevue Holdings Ltd (ASX: OVH) and Hub24 Ltd (ASX: HUB), at this point in time I favour Praemium above its rivals.
