WORKERS CAPITAL
South Korea pension fund backs government push to fix 'Korea discount'

Reuters
Wed, March 13, 2024

The skyline of central Seoul is seen during sunrise 

SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea's pension fund supports the direction of the government's corporate reform plan aimed at resolving the so-called "Korea discount" in the stock market, its investment strategy director said on Thursday.

The National Pension Service, manager of the world's third-largest public pension fund, will make a decision on whether and to what extent it will allocate its assets after details of the reform plan are available, Director Lee Suc-won told a press conference held in Seoul.

The Korea discount refers to a tendency for South Korean companies to have lower valuations than global peers due to factors such as low dividend payouts, and the dominance of opaque conglomerates known as chaebols.

South Korea announced in February a reform plan, dubbed the "Corporate Value-up Programme", for listed companies to boost shareholder returns and stock prices, but the eagerly awaited proposals fell short of market expectations.

The country's financial regulator said on Thursday it will speed up the preparation of follow-up measures to the corporate reform plan and was considering bolder steps, such as tax incentives, to encourage voluntary participation.

(Reporting by Jihoon LeeEditing by Ed Davies)

Teachers' Venture Growth mints new unicorn in Indian fintech Perfios


Manish Singh
Updated Wed, March 13, 2024

Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is investing $80 million in Perfios, an Indian fintech that provides real-time credit underwriting solutions to banks and other financial institutions. The new investment values Perfios at over $1 billion.

Fifteen-year-old Perfios, which raised a $229 million funding round in September, said it will use the fresh capital to strengthen its business outside of India and to explore inorganic growth opportunities (read: acquisitions.) The startup, which is operational in nearly two dozen markets and has raised $464 million in primary and secondary transactions to date, plans to go public by next year, it said earlier.

Perfios, based in Bengaluru, provides real-time data aggregation and analysis tools to financial institutions, enabling them to streamline their customer journeys and make more informed decisions. By leveraging advanced algorithms, Perfios helps banks, fintechs and other financial institutions as well as insurance firms reduce risk, spot fraud, and improve the overall quality of their portfolios while strengthening their decision-making processes.

"Our business has been seeing steady growth year-on-year, with consistent improvement in the bottom line," said Sabyasachi Goswami, CEO of Perfios, in a statement. "I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all our partners who have trusted us throughout our journey."

Perfios said it delivers 8.2 billion data points to banks and other financial institutions every year to facilitate faster decisioning, and processes 1.7 billion transactions a year with an AUM of $36 billion. Perfios is the second unicorn from India this year.

The startup, whose customers include HDFC and Kotak Bank, generated a revenue of $49.1 million in the financial year ending March last year.

Perfios’ credit decisioning tools. Image Credits: AllianceBernstein

"We are excited about the growing opportunities within the B2B enterprise tech space in India, and we believe Perfios is a best-in-class fintech-focused SaaS player," said Kelvin Yu, senior managing director and head of Teachers’ Venture Growth in Asia, in a statement.

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, one of Canada's largest pension funds, has ramped up its interest in India in recent years. The fund, which also backed logistics unicorn XpressBees last year, has invested more than $3 billion in India and plans to deploy a significant amount in the country by 2030 as part of its broader goal to deploy $300 billion in certain key markets.