Fintechs, the best of both worlds

In the financial sphere on stock markets, there are two main categories of players. Those that already had their time in the sun and the trendy ones. The has-beens are usually the traditional banks and insurers. The cool ones are the neo-banks and all the remote services and payment companies, which are now grouped together under the name "fintech", to show that they are at the crossroads of finance and new technologies.But above all, there are many newcomers that attract investor's attention. Just look at the success of Adyen's IPO in the Netherlands in 2019 and the ultra-high expectations of Robinhood's arrival on stock markets...

The vast majority of "fintechs" share the particularity of being very generously valued. This is somewhat the opposite of European banking stocks. They are also often difficult to understand: what exactly are their activities, who are their competitors, how do they generate their profits? This complexity is at the root of one of the biggest financial scandals of recent years, the collapse of the German Wirecard fallen angel, once Europe's most promising fintech. But we shouldn't stop at this (big) thorn in the sector's side: there are dozens of innovative companies positioned in this fast-growing segment. The following list refers to several dozen companies in the sector. MarketScreener proposes filtered and unfiltered thematic lists: this one is not filtered. You can therefore apply your own criteria to draw the substantial marrow from it.

One last thing: you will notice that a lot of known actors in the fintech microcosm, in particular the neo-banks, are not included in this list. This is because they are not listed: private equity has been there. But perhaps they will appear on stock markets soon?