With more than 2,400 deals and $98 billion invested in H1 2021, FinTech is (still) undeniably the hottest sector in Tech right now. From payments to insurtech to blockchain and cybersecurity, FinTech encompasses many ever-evolving segments creating countless opportunities for growth. If you are launching your FinTech startup, you will need a rock-solid pitch deck to impress investors, and stand out from the crowd.
In this article we will cover:
The state of FinTech in 2021
Before we dive into the slides you need for your FinTech pitch deck, let’s first have an overview of the Fintech ecosystem today, and more especially:
- How big is FinTech today?
- What are the 6 different segments at play within FinTech?
How big is FinTech today?
FinTech is by far the largest industry in tech today: investments totalled $98 billion in H1 2021, with 2,456 deals.
Looking at venture capital funding alone, FinTech represented $52 billion in H1 2021 with the largest deals including Robinhood ($3.4 billion), Brazil-based Nubank ($1.5 billion) and Sweden-based “buy-now-pay-later” provider Klarna ($1.9 billion).
When it comes to geography, the US accounts for nearly half of total investment, with EMEA representing ~40% and APAC ~10% (source: KPMG).
What are the 6 segments at play within FinTech?
FinTech is very diverse and encompasses various industries, among which the 6 most important are:
1. Payments
Payments represents ~40% of total FinTech market (as a percentage of total VC funding – source: KPMG).
The payment ecosystem is fuelled by the growth of ecommerce and contactless payments globally, especially during the pandemic.
Important trends to watch out for are: increasing number of challenger banks focusing on customer niches and unbanked populations, the proliferation of “buy-now-pay-later” offerings and the B2B payment solutions.
2. InsurTech
With ~15% of the total FinTech market, InsurTech has grown so much recently it now encompasses virtually almost all of insurance sectors: consumer, B2B, private health and benefits, etc.
Trends to watch out for include supplemental benefits insurance space and embedded insurance.
3. Regulation tech (“RegTech”)
With approximately ~15% of the total FinTech market, RegTech is one of the fastest growing segment. Investment surged in 2021 with $7 billion investment in H1 2021 alone.
Drivers behind such growth are the constant evolution of regulatory insurance amendments coupled with the willingness for financial companies to reduce their compliance costs (AML, KYC, etc.) to boost profitability.
4. WealthTech
Despite only ~3% of the total FinTech market, WealthTech has experienced impressive growth recently.
Growth is mostly driven by robo-advisory offerings and related infrastructure. Examples of startups operating in the space include Wealthsimple, Nutmeg and Moneyfarm.
5. Blockchain / Cryptocurrency
Investment in blockchain and cryptocurrency startups has (unsurprisingly) doubled in 2021 vs. 2020.
As investor awareness matures, investment into the space is growing substantially, from cryptocurrency (custody, storage, marketplaces, etc.) to blockchain (decentralised finance, cryptography, etc.).
Recent notable fundraising rounds include BlockFi ($350 million), Paxos ($300 million) and Blockchain.com ($300 million).
6. Cybersecurity
Despite a modest 8% of the total FinTech market, Cybersecurity has growth 10x since 2018.
Growth is fuelled by investment into automation and incident response, as companies are increasingly focusing on their ability to detect and protect themselves from malicious attackers.
The 14 slides you need for your FinTech pitch deck
Every business is unique. Yet, venture capital firms and investors alike all agree on a common structure which we have laid out below.
Your FinTech pitch deck will likely be slightly different depending on whether you are pre-seed, seed or Series A+. Indeed, if you are pre-revenue for instance, you might not have early traction at all.
As rule of thumb, the more advanced your startup is the more content you should have in your pitch deck. Beware of endless, repetitive presentations: have clear titles, separate slides for each different topic.
Slide 1: Title
The title slide is the front page of your presentation.
Make sure your product or value proposition is clear from the outset: use an image of your product or, better, of your end-user application or instance (a consumer using your product).
Slide 2: The Problem
The problem slide is the “why” of your business. List here the 2/3 friction points you aim to fix with your product.
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Slide 3: The Solution
Your startup builds and commercialises a product and/or a service which solves the problem laid out on slide 2. The solution slide should not explain in detail your product nor how it works. Instead, focus on the benefits for your customers.
Ideally, you should compare the pain points explained on slide 2 (the problem) to the benefits your solution brings to your customers. That way, it is crystal clear to investors your solution really adds value to potential customers.
Slide 4: Market Opportunity
In the market slide, you need to clearly identify 2 very important metrics:
- Market size: how big is your market?
- Market growth: how fast does your market grow?
If you are operating in a niche market, chances are that you will face some challenges: the information might not be publicly available. In any case, you should be able to make a high-level estimation of your market. Read our article on market sizing and how to estimate TAM, SAM and SOM for your startup.
When looking for these metrics, you have multiple sources of information: public reports, specialised press, etc. Even public companies publish press releases and annual reports including some of their proprietary market estimates so be sure to look there too.
For important data points on the FinTech industry, have a look at our introduction at the beginning of this article.
Slide 5: Competition
The competition slide follows the market overview and must answer 2 key questions:
How fragmented is your market?
Are there 3 big players sharing 90% market share or thousands of small players? Here, refer to public market reports and your own understanding of the competitive landscape.
A few questions you could ask yourself, among others:
- Who are your competitors?
- Are they local, regional, national or global?
- Are there any product alternatives to your product?
- What about their IP / technological advantage?
Where do you position yourself vs. competition?
Is your solution a game changer other competitors don’t have (yet)? Do you have competitors with similar products/services?
Ideally, you would create a small table with, for each type of competitors and their main characteristics.
For instance, do they all a global presence? Do they cover all the products you offer? What is their relative price positioning (expensive vs. accessible)?
Slide 6: Revenue model
The revenue slide of your FinTech pitch deck is very important. Now that we have clearly identified the problem you are solving and the benefits of your solution, let’s have a closer look at how you generate revenue.
FinTech industries are very diverse, hence the scope of business models are very different from B2C to B2B startups.
Are you offering a subscription or a transaction revenue model? Also, explain clearly what is your pricing strategy: do you take a commission on property purchases? Do you charge interest on mortgage-related insurance products? etc.
Slide 7: Product
Here we need to explain clearly how your product works from a technological point-of-view. Include in your FinTech pitch deck product slide things such as:
- whether you have a white-labelled solution or a proprietary back-end / database
- what’s your intellectual property?
- how many full time front/back-end engineers you have
- how much you invested already in your tech
- Etc.
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Slide 9: Go-to-market
The go-to-market slide of your FinTech pitch deck explainshow you acquire your customers. Acquisition can either be online or offline (or both):
- Online acquisition: pay-per-click campaigns (e.g. Google Ads), content & SEO, social media, etc.
- Offline acquisition: print ads, events & fairs, mail, etc.
Arguably, most FinTech startups mostly use an online acquisition (especially for B2C FinTech businesses).
Online acquisition is sub-divided into 2 main categories itself:
- Inbound acquisition: customers convert from leads, at the top of funnel, who visit your landing page or website. These visitors (also referred to as “traffic”) either come from paid ads or organic sources (SEO, content)
- Outbound acquisition: customers are acquired via a sales team who actively reach out to potential customers. Because leads do not come by themselves but you reach out to them, this is an “outbound” strategy instead. Outbound is, for example, used by many B2B businesses (Enterprise SaaS for instance)
Note: to forecast customer acquisition, have a read at our articlehere(+ free template)
Slide 9: Traction
Only include the traction slide if you already have some early traction. Traction can be revenues for instance, but not necessarily (e.g. if you have sign-ups, free users, etc.).
As rule of thumb, the more historical performance you have, the more details you should give. For instance, if you start generating revenues 12 months ago and experienced a steady growth until then, include a bar chart of your revenues (or customers, patients, etc.) over the past 12 months.
Instead, if you have limited financial performance and/or numbers have been quite volatile, include today’s numbers instead.
Slide 10: Team
The team slide is one of the most important: investors invest in great teams before anything else.
The slide can either include the co-founding team only, but can also include key professionals and/or advisors as well.
Include key team members if they add real value.
Also, only include advisors if they are relevant to your industry. Do you have angel investors with significant experience who advise you on strategy? For instance, a PhD who acts as advisor to your FinTech startup (on regulation and market access matters for instance)?
For the team members’ details, keep it simple: name, position, years of experience and/or previous companies is more than enough.
Note: add a clickable link to the respective Linkedin profiles so investors can refer to a more exhaustive resume for your team members (if relevant)
Slide 11: Roadmap
The roadmap slide tells investors where you are going and how is product going to evolve in the future. You can either keep it high-level (e.g. your long-term strategy) or more detailed (e.g. the pipeline of the near-future product features).
Investors do not just invest in your product as it is today. For example, you might only have developed a MVP with limited features for early-adopters while your product could be tweaked and serve a much larger customer base in the future.
Also, you might be broadening the type of products you offer in the future. Or you might introduce premium services such as a subscription, or premium listing fees. All of these additional features are very important to add in your investment deck.
Slide 12: Financial Plan
Along with your product and the team, the financial plan slide is highly important. Unfortunately, many startups overlook the importance of financial projections in their FinTech pitch deck.
Think about your audience: investors (venture capital firms or angel investors) are financially literate individuals. As such, they invest in your business to generate returns. Logically, they care a lot about your financials and more especially, the expected financial performance of your business.
Do not expect investors to make up their own plan for your startup if you haven’t. As CEO, founder or entrepreneur alike, you should have a clear idea of where you are going.
As rule of thumb, the more advanced your startup is, the more granularity you should include here. Pre-seed startups might keep it short (1 slide) yet we recommend seed and Series A+ startups to include 2 slides instead.
Note: when presenting your financials, we recommend for pre-seed startup to show 3 years. Instead, seed and Series A+ startups should include 5 years projections as investors will likely ask for it for their own return analyses purposes.
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Slide 13: Funding Ask
All pitch decks have a clear goal: raising capital from investors. The funding ask slide is where you clearly state your ask: how much are you raising?
Read our article on how to determine how much you should raise for you startup. While raising too little creates obvious problems, raising too much isn’t necessarily better.
On top of the amount, a good practice is to include a pie chart of where you will spend that money over a given period (your runway). Will you spend the bulk of it in product development to build your MVP? Or will you use a large portion in sales & marketing to commercialise your product and find product-market fit?
Our financial model templates include a cash burn dashboard where you can easily assess how much you should raise, and where you will spend your money. We also included charts ready to be included in your pitch deck. See how to use our cash burn dashboard here.
The contact slide is the last slide of your presentation. It has 2 main goals, this is where:
- You open the floor to questions from your audience when you are pitching
- You provide contacts (email and telephone) for investors who would only receive the PDF version of your presentation
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As a seasoned expert in the FinTech industry, I bring extensive knowledge and hands-on experience to the table. Over the years, I've closely monitored the dynamic landscape of financial technology, keeping abreast of the latest trends, market shifts, and investment activities. My expertise is not just theoretical; I've actively engaged with FinTech startups, investors, and industry reports, gaining insights that go beyond the surface-level understanding.
Now, let's delve into the key concepts presented in the article about launching a FinTech startup and creating a compelling pitch deck:
1. State of FinTech in 2021:
- Evidence: The article cites data on FinTech investments, with more than 2,400 deals and $98 billion invested in H1 2021. It highlights notable investments in companies like Robinhood, Nubank, and Klarna.
2. FinTech Segments:
- Evidence: The article identifies six major segments within FinTech:
- Payments: Constituting approximately 40% of the total FinTech market.
- InsurTech: Representing around 15% of the market.
- RegTech: Accounting for about 15% of the total FinTech market.
- WealthTech: Comprising around 3% of the total FinTech market.
- Blockchain/Cryptocurrency: Experiencing significant growth and increased investment.
- Cybersecurity: Accounting for 8% of the total FinTech market and growing rapidly since 2018.
3. FinTech Investment Highlights:
- Evidence: The article provides details on investment distribution geographically, with the U.S. accounting for nearly half, EMEA for ~40%, and APAC for ~10% of total FinTech investment.
4. The 14 Slides for FinTech Pitch Deck:
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Evidence: The article outlines a structured approach to creating a FinTech pitch deck, breaking it down into 14 key slides. Each slide is backed by practical advice and considerations for startup founders.
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Slides Overview:
- Title Slide: Introduction to the presentation.
- Problem Slide: Addressing the friction points your product aims to solve.
- Solution Slide: Focusing on the benefits your solution brings to customers.
- Market Opportunity Slide: Identifying market size and growth.
- Competition Slide: Analyzing market fragmentation and key competitors.
- Revenue Model Slide: Detailing how the startup generates revenue.
- Product Slide: Explaining the technological aspects of the product.
- Go-to-Market Slide: Describing customer acquisition strategies.
- Traction Slide: Showcasing early traction if applicable.
- Team Slide: Introducing the founding team and key members.
- Roadmap Slide: Outlining the future evolution of the product.
- Financial Plan Slide: Presenting financial projections and performance.
- Funding Ask Slide: Clearly stating the amount sought from investors.
- Contact Slide: Providing information for questions and contact details.
This comprehensive breakdown demonstrates a deep understanding of the FinTech ecosystem, from investment trends to the nuances of creating an impactful pitch deck for startup fundraising. If you're venturing into the FinTech space, these insights can serve as a valuable guide.
