Grab Financial Group on Thursday confirmed the USD 300 million investment, which was led by South Korea’s Hanwha Asset Management. K3 Ventures, GGV Capital, Arbor Ventures, and Flourish Ventures participated in the Series A round.
The fresh funding shows the growing importance of Grab’s fintech segment, which includes its payments business and other services across lending, insurance, and retail wealth management. The firm says that the Financial Group recorded positive growth last year with total revenues increasing by over 40% in 2020, compared to 2019. New products such as AutoInvest saw fast adoption and nearly doubled monthly users in December.
The insurance category quadrupled its monthly users to over 4.5 million between September and December. GrabInsure covers passengers during their trips and provides personal and group accident protection for driver-partners. It has been distributing over 70 million insurance policies to date since launching last April, the company said.
Grab Financial, which has been awarded a digital full bank license by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in December, has been expanding its consumer finance offerings as well. In August, it launched several new services under the ‘thrive with Grab’ strategy, that include AutoInvest, a third-party consumer loans platform, and PayLater products in Singapore and Malaysia.
“We are delighted to draw upon the expertise of top investors who know financial services and fintech well,” said Grab Financial’s managing director Reuben Lai about the new funding.
Grab announced last week that its revenue jumped 70% year-on-year in 2020, supported by strong food-delivery business. Ongoing speculations on a possible merger with its rival Gojek have cooled down, since the idea to combine Gojek with its fellow Indonesian e-commerce unicorn Tokopedia has been gaining support, according to reports.