How the coronavirus pandemic impacted the German Fintech sector

Nevertheless, the real figures could be somewhat worse than those calculated by Linkedin. Therefore, it could rather be assumed that the number of employees has remained more or less the same sector-wide.

Except for Getsafe and Friday, the Insurtech companies (Simplesurance, Coya, Ottonova, Element) are almost unanimously among the job cutters of the last months. This may be due to the fact that it was precisely the insurance fintech companies that had increased their numbers in the 1-2 years before in the course of large funding rounds. But it may also be because the “Corona brings the ultimate digitalization push” thesis with regard to the insurance industry is possibly questionable. It also fits that Insurtech companies with the presumed exception of Getsafe have not really found much since Corona (the funding for Element was rather medium-impressive).

One segment that clearly (and unsurprisingly) seems to suffer from the coronavirus crisis is the credit fintech companies. From a 6-month perspective, they are all more or less down, namely Funding Circle, Monedo (in temporary insolvency), Compeon, Auxmoney, Fincompare, Finiata (no more new business in Germany), and Creditshelf. Exceptions are Lendico (whereby Lendico as an ING subsidiary is a special case) and once again Billie.

At the Hamburg-based deposit broker Deposit Solutions, the figures show a strikingly clear downward trend, not only from a 6-month perspective but even more clearly from a 12-month perspective and even more clearly from an 18-month perspective. Currently, the Fintech company has 195 employees on Linkedin, but according to its own website Deposit has “more than 300”, according to verbal information it is “around 300”. The company explained that the delta is mainly made up of out-skilled workers who would work for Deposit from India, for example. The total number of around 300 employees (including outsourced staff) has been relatively constant for a long time, apart from minor fluctuations. Read more via Born2Invest