Decline in amounts raised, increase in bankruptcy filings and low-cost buyouts: the first half of the year turned out to be gloomy for French banking and insurance start-ups, noted the Fintech Observatory on Tuesday.
The sector has been confronted since the beginning of the year with a growing number of fintechs ceasing their activities or being bought out under conditions that are unfavorable for them, and advantageous for the buyers, explains the Observatory in its half-yearly study, eighth of the name, a trend that already started last year.
This is the case, for example, of the young insurance company Luko. After the launch of a safeguard procedure to facilitate the repayment of its debt, it announced on June 15 its full takeover by the British insurance group Admiral.
What to question about the viability and sustainability of certain business models in the sector, continues the Observatory.
The association, which compiles fintech figures in France, counts however 73 fundraisers in the first half, against 66 last year over the same period.
But if the number is higher, the total amount invested is in free fall: it painfully reaches 673 million euros, against 1.4 billion euros between January and June 2022.
The majority of operations were done in seed (to launch the project) or in series A (at the beginning of the life of the project).
Only one fundraiser reached the symbolic bar of 100 million euros during the first half of the year: that carried out by the start-up Ledger, which specializes in securing cryptoassets.
Six start-ups had exceeded it last year at the same time.
Investors are more cautious, summed up with AFP the president of the Observatory of fintech, Mikal Ptachek, who also notes a lower appetite for American funds.
After being the darling of venture capitalists for a few exceptional years, the fintech industry has returned to more familiar ground, the Avolta investment bank already pointed out in mid-June in a publication on European fintechs.