Fintech start-ups on record course in 2021

For the first time, there are over 1,000 fintechs in the German start-up landscape. This is the result of a study by Comdirect.

Following a slowdown in growth in the previous year, significantly more fintechs are being founded in Germany again: The number of start-ups is even rising to a record high. This is the result of a study by the bank Comdirect, the consultancy firm Barkow Consulting and the investor Main Incubator. Comdirekt and the Main Incubator are associated with Commerzbank. According to the study, 86 fintech start-ups were registered by September 2021. At the time of publication of the previous year's study, there were 48, which corresponds to an increase of almost 80 percent.

Another reason to be excited about fintech: there are currently over 1,000 start-ups in the German fintech sector for the first time: at the end of September 2021, there were exactly 1,056 companies. Up to this point, 3.2 billion euros had been invested in the German fintech sector. This means that the current year is already 1.5 billion euros above the previous record year of 2019.

In 2021, 137 financing rounds were also registered by the end of September. This is only slightly below the previous year's total of 142. There were 150 funding rounds in the record year of 2019. Only a few deals are missing until then. Since 2012, more than 10 billion euros in venture capital has flowed into fintechs in a total of 1,076 financing rounds.

"The sector is experiencing a second spring more than 15 years after the emergence of the first German fintechs," says Alena Kretzberg, Divisional Board Member for Comdirect and Digital Banking at Commerzbank AG. "Digital financial services are benefiting immensely from the changes in consumer and banking habits brought about by the pandemic. This can be seen both in the start-up momentum and in the fact that the sector has made up for the slowdown in growth after a period of waiting at the height of the pandemic last year."