Hong Kong fintech unicorn WeLab raises $75M led by insurance giant Allianz

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Hong Kong’s WeLab, a fintech company founded in 2013 saw users soar by 20% year-over year in 2020 bringing its accumulative user base to 50 million. Facing innovative players like WeLab, which aims to bring more convenience, transparency and affordability to consumers, financial incumbents feel compelled to reinvent themselves. That’s in part why Allianz X, a venture capital arm of the 131 year old European financial conglomerate Allianz, led WeLab’s latest funding round of $75 million. The Series C1, which involved other investors, followed WeLab’s $156 million Series C round in late 2019.

Co-founder and CEO Simon Loong said, obviously, Allianz is one of the largest asset managers and insurers in the world with a strong presence and solid footprint.

Loong declined to disclose WeLab’s latest valuation but said the number has gone up since the firm last reached the $1 billion unicorn status.

When WeLab set out to build a digital bank, which launched in Hong Kong last year, one of the products it had in mind was a new generation of wealth advisory on digital banks.

Loong said, Allianz saw what we did over the last couple of years and identified this very interesting opportunity to co-develop a wealth technology for digital banks, so they came to us and said, why don’t they lead the round?

Through the strategic investment, the partners will jointly develop and distribute investment and insurance solutions across Asia. Those products will diversify Welab’s current offerings, including a virtual bank and a lending product in Hong Kong, as well as several types of lending services in mainland China and Indonesia. Around 47 million of its total users are in mainland China, 2.5 million in Indonesia, and less than one million in Hong Kong, a city with a 7.5 million population.

Loong, referring to the roles of Allianz as an asset management and insurance firm, and WeLab as a bank and fintech solution provider said, it’s an interesting four-way cooperation. I think it will really be an interesting inflection point for the company to scale.

According to Loong, which are helping conventional banks and financial institutions build up a digital presence. The strategy is not unlike Ant Group’s effort to be an enabler for traditional financial players.