Daily Briefing: Temasek and Tencent invest $47.8m in London-based fintech; GIC raises stake in Julius Baer

And Credit Counselling Singapore has launched programme to help cash-strapped SMEs.

From Bloomberg:

Singapore government-owned fund Temasek and Chinese technology giant Tencent Holdings are to invest $47.8m (US$35m) in London-based fintech startup TrueLayer.

The firm sells open-banking software, which lets people share or aggregate their financial information from different providers.

Investors have been targeting UK fintech companies. SoftBank Vision Fund is injecting $1.09b (US$800m) into UK fintech Greensill, whilst WorldRemit, a London-based technology company that helps expatriates and migrant workers send remittances back to their home countries, has raised $239m (US$175m) in new funding.

TrueLayer is expected to use the funding to expand across Europe, with a goal of connecting most of the continent’s banks by the end of the year.

Read more here.

From DealStreetAsia:

The Singaporean state has built up a stake of about 3% in Julius Baer Group, providing a major boost for the Swiss wealth manager as it struggles to reach its targets on attracting new money and reining in costs.

The acquisition, through wealth fund GIC, will come as a relief for CEO Bernhard Hodler after Julius Baer’s stock fell the most amongst Switzerland’s biggest companies last year. Blackrock Inc. and Wellington Management are also among the company’s top shareholders.

Hodler is under pressure amidst a prolonged stretch of lackluster returns as he works through cost cuts and purges riskier accounts. Last month, the bank reported new client money that fell short of its targets.

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From iCompareLoan:

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) debt problem is now getting a hand from Enterprise Singapore’s Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS) as they launched a pilot programme that aims to help owners of small enterprises who took loans to try and keep their failing businesses afloat.

The pilot programme, Enterprise Credit Counselling Programme (ECCP), is a fairly new initiative to advise owners of small enterprises on their obligations and financial liabilities in the event of business termination. Where feasible, the programme will propose a repayment arrangement to their creditors for unsecured business debt that remains as well as for unsecured personal debts. This is provided that the total unsecured business debt owing to all banks and financial institutions is not more than $500,000.

Read more here.