On Thursday, Moonfare, the Berlin-based fintech whose digital investment platform aims to disrupt traditional private equity investment, announced that it has begun operations in Singapore. The news comes four months after Moonfare opened in the U.S., and follows a $125 million Series C venture capital round late last fall, led by New York-based technology investor Insight Partners.
Moonfare’s push into Singapore gives the firm a foothold in all five major global financial hubs (alongside London, New York, Zürich, and Hong Kong), and further consolidate its leading market position in the Asia-Pacific region. Since launching in Hong Kong in 2020, the company’s AUM in Asia has grown six times compared to the year before. To date, the company currently serves more than 2,700 investors across all of its hubs, with $1.8 billion in client assets.
Moonfare is a standard bearer in what it calls the “Private-Markets-Go-Retail” (a.k.a. market “democratization”) phenomenon. By lowering entry minimums, the company enables individual investors to invest directly into pre-vetted private equity funds that were formerly only accessible to institutional investors. Unique in the market, Moonfare offers individuals minimum entry as low as SGD 80,000 ($60,000). Moonfare partners with fund managers, including funds from industry giants such as KKR, Carlyle Group, IVP, and Khosla Ventures.
The offering is curated by a team of seasoned industry veterans from investment companies including KKR, Apax Partners, J.P. Morgan and BlackRock. Moonfare’s completely digital end-to-end process allows new members to go from registration to investment within 15 minutes, thus circumventing a lengthy administrative onboarding process.
Moonfare says Singapore holds strong potential for it to tap further into Asia’s growing wealth. In 2021, Asia recorded 12 percent growth in its ultra-high-net-worth population, making it the best-performing region in the world, despite the disruptions of the covid pandemic. Singapore along attracted strong capital inflows into both traditional and alternative investment strategies as assets under management (AUM) in Singapore reached $3.5 trillion in 2020.
“Singapore, as the leading offshore wealth management hub, holds a lot of growth potential for Moonfare and this expansion has been a strategic priority for us for a long time,” said Moonfare founder Steffen Pauls, a former KKR Managing Director. “Asia-Pacific continues to be one of the fastest growing regions for the HNWI population. With our Singapore and Hong Kong operations Moonfare is now present in both key hubs of the region, and is the only global digital D2C platform for private equity with a pan-Asian presence.”
Moonfare’s operations in Singapore will be led by Kit Toh, Head of Partnerships for Asia-Pacific. Prior to joining Moonfare, Ms. Toh was a Managing Director at Capital Group with expertise in asset management. She will oversee the Asia-Pacific market and devise business development strategies for the company’s rapid growth in the region.
“We are excited to announce the opening of Moonfare’s Singapore office, our second service point in Asia and it represents the strategic expansion of our brand,” Kit Toh said. “This opening is a testament of our commitment to extend our delivery and reach of Moonfare’s access to top-tier private equity investments to our clients. Together with the office in Hong Kong, I am confident we can transform capital markets through our best-in-class technology.”
Last November’s $125 million Series C round led by Insight Partners brought Moonfare’s aggregate private market funding to $185 million, and came just eight months after the announcement of a funding round led by Fidelity International Strategic Ventures (FISV). Fidelity currently has an exclusive distribution partnership with Moonfare.
