FinTech Futures: Top five news stories of the week – 10 January 2025
Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of fintech this week, featuring Finastra, Accenture, Solaris and more.
SBI Holdings reportedly set to acquire majority stake in Solaris as part of new funding round
Solaris is reportedly set to raise €150m led by SBI
Japanese financial heavyweight SBI Holdings is reportedly set to acquire a majority stake of more than 70% in embedded finance platform Solaris as part of the German firm’s latest fundraising round, according to Bloomberg, which cites sources familiar with the deal.
The report prices the stake at about €100 million, adding that Solaris will also raise a further €50 million from German exchange group Boerse Stuttgart and unnamed existing investors for a total of around €150 million in funding.
When contacted by FinTech Futures regarding the report, a spokesperson for Solaris says the company has “reached an important milestone in its financing process”.
“A group of investors and partners has developed a joint financing concept that has been submitted to our shareholders for approval,” the spokesperson says. “The final investment agreement is expected to be concluded before the end of this month.”
Simon Paris steps down as Finastra CEO, Chris Walters appointed as successor
Chris Walters, the former head of Avantax, has been named the new CEO of London-headquartered financial software provider Finastra, effective immediately.
Walters replaces Simon Paris, who is stepping down as Finastra’s CEO after more than six years in the role.
Under Paris’ leadership, Finastra, which provides banking, lending, treasury and capital markets and payment solutions, claims to have expanded its customer base to over 8,000 clients across 130 countries, and achieved double-digit Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) growth.
The incoming CEO joins Finastra with over three decades of experience, including his recent tenure as CEO of Pluralsight, a US-based online education platform.
Global fintech investment fell 20% in 2024, according to new Innovate Finance report
Innovate Finance unveils latest global fintech investment report
Global fintech investment fell by 20% in 2024, with fintech companies worldwide bringing in a total of $43.5 billion in investment compared to the $54.2 billion total achieved over 2023.
This is according to a new report by UK-based industry body Innovate Finance, which also revealed that the total number of fintech deals globally dropped to 6,464 in 2024 compared to 7,683 in 2023, a decrease of 16%.
This is the third consecutive year in which global fintech investment has seen a decline, marking a significant fall from the record funding seen in 2021, when global fintech investment hit $136.5 billion.
The US remained the largest market by some distance, attracting $22 billion in funding, followed by the UK, India, and Singapore, which raised $3.6 billion, $2.2 billion, and $1.4 billion, respectively.
Accenture acquires digital twin technology from Percipient to “help banks decouple from legacy systems”
Singapore-based digital banking and data firm Percipient has sold its proprietary digital twin technology platform, Digital TWINN, to Accenture, which plans to leverage the tech to help financial services clients across the Asia Pacific “accelerate the reinvention of their core systems”.
The integration of the platform into Accenture’s financial solutions suite will, according to the firm, “help banks decouple from legacy systems and embrace cloud and AI-led banking services”.
Accenture’s APAC financial services lead, Masashi Nakano, says the platform’s capabilities will “strengthen our existing core modernisation offerings, enabling banks to efficiently unlock new opportunities for growth, launch new products faster, and deepen customer engagement through cloud, data, and AI”.
Ally Financial lays off “less than 5%” of total workforce
Ally Financial has approximately 11,000 employees in total
US-based online bank, lender and trading platform Ally Financial is laying off “less than 5%” of its 11,000-strong workforce, according to a company spokesperson, who says the reductions “are not specific to any one line of business or location”.
In a statement sent to FinTech Futures, Ally spokesperson Peter Gilchrist confirms that the company is also “exiting the mortgage origination business and looking at strategic alternatives for our credit card business”.
“We remain relentlessly focused on serving our customers and all stakeholders by making the tough, yet necessary, decisions to guide our business into the future,” Gilchrist says.
