Video: The CompareAsiaGroup, Who They Are, What They’re All About, and How They Plan to Empower Cons

Andrew Work speaks to Sam Allen, CEO of CompareAsiaGroup, at Rise Hong Kong 2017. CompareAsiaGroup received a 50 million USD funding from big companies which included Goldman Sachs and Alibaba. They operate the leading online comparison platforms for financial, telco and utility products across Asia, aiming to become the No.1 trusted source of information on personal finance and saving money in Asia.

Transcript:

NEXCHANGE:

Hi I’m Andrew Work with NexChange. We’re at Rise in Hong Kong. It is super exciting down here and one of the reason is because of people like Sam Allen for the compare Asia group. We’re making big announcements just yesterday announced that they closed a 50 million U.S. dollar round of funding with a lot of big players including Goldman Sachs involve. First of all congratulations Sam.

SAM ALLEN:

Yeah we’re thrilled.

NEXCHANGE:

Okay now tell me a little bit about what the company does? A lot of people know you but some people know you by the local country partner and they might know the name of that company but not necessarily the parent group CompareAsia.

SAM ALLEN:

That’s right so CompareAsiaGroup, we’re across seven countries. Moneyhero.com.hk is our business in Hong Kong. Singsaver.com.sg is our business in Singapore and what we’re all about is helping people build better financial lives for themselves. So we match people to the best financial and insurance products for them and for their risk profile.

NEXCHANGE:

Okay well, I’m from Hong Kong. we like our hometown hero moneyhero and I’ve heard them say that someday you’ll be able to compare everything in the future get online and get all your comparison.

SAM ALLEN:

That’s right. So right now what we’re really focused on is banking insurance and home services like phone. And so we really help people on these key areas where you can save a massive amount of money if you have the right loan, if you have the right card, if you have the right set of insurance policies.

NEXCHANGE:

Yeah okay sounds good. Now you’ve got this U.S. fifty million dollar round of funding, great news. What are you going to do with that to get a return on that investment?

SAM ALLEN:

Yeah so we’re thrilled by the round was led by the IFC. We had Alibaba Goldman Sachs, terrific group of investors behind us. And we’re really spending it on three things. First is investing in our technology and for us technology is around how do we help people find the best products matched to them, so how do we personalize? That’s really using a lot of data to improve our algorithms for that matching. The second thing is awareness. Last year we helped 28 million people. There’s hundreds of millions more across our markets that we want to help. Third is around building our team, so we’re 150 strong around across our seven countries. Yeah but we need to be a lot stronger than that to go out and deliver on our vision of empowering consumers across our markets.

NEXCHANGE:

Okay that’s great Sam Al. Once again big congratulation.

SAM ALLEN:

Thank you very much Andrew.

NEXCHANGE:

Big newsmakers down here at Rise. I’m Andrew Work with NexChange, talking to Sam Allen, the CEO of the CompareAsiaGroup, thank you.