Venture capitalists who have scoured the beaten paths of North American and European fintech are increasingly opening up to opportunities in Asia. Vladislav Solodkiy has been eyeing that territory since 2012, when, as vice president of marketing at Moscow-based LIFE Financial Group, he launched Life.SREDA. The firm’s first fund, Life.SREDA I, invested $40 million in 13 start-ups, including mobile-oriented banks Rocketbank, in Russia, and Moven and Simple, in the U.S., the last acquired in 2014 by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (see Jay Reinemann, No. 14). The $100 million Life.SREDA II fund, announced in November 2014, is explicitly Asian — a point underscored in May, when the firm relocated to Singapore, invested in remittance company Fastacash and opened an accelerator program, InspirAsia. Solodkiy found that he had no problem managing investments in Germany, the U.S. or other points west from his Moscow base but that Asia was impractical without an on-the-ground presence. He concluded that “Singapore is the best place in the world for financial innovation,” in part because the local banking community and telecommunications infrastructure are leading-edge and the government is supporting development of a fintech ecosystem. (Another plus: “There are no traffic jams.”) The 32-year-old’s view of financial innovation’s historical sweep: “Seven years ago everybody talked about the branch of the future; five years ago it was omni-channel distribution; and three years ago the fintech hype started. But there are a lot of other trendy ideas in the air: IoT [Internet of Things], O2O [online-to-office e-commerce], big data, etc. Previously, fintech was about retail clients; now services for small and medium-size enterprises are growing faster. Fintech started as a fancy game for hipsters and geeks, but now the biggest challenge is fintech for the unbanked.”
 1. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures  2. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners  3. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures  4. Steven McLaughlin Financial Technology Partners  5. Jonathan Korngold General Atlantic |
 6. Richard Garman & Brad Bernstein FTV Capital  7. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park Anthemis Group  8. Thomas Jessop Goldman Sachs Group  9. Meyer (Micky) Malka Ribbit Capital  10. Hans Morris Nyca Partners |
 11. Maria Gotsch Partnership Fund for New York City  12. Marc Andreessen Andreessen Horowitz  13. Barry Silbert Digital Currency Group  14. Jay Reinemann Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria  15. Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures |
 16. François Robinet AXA Strategic Ventures  17. Vanessa Colella Citi Ventures  18. Alan Freudenstein & Gregory Grimaldi Credit Suisse NEXT Fund  19. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena SenaHill Partners  20. Rodger Voorhies Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |
 21. Michael Schlein Accion International  22. Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates  23. Rumi Morales CME Ventures  24. Mark Beeston Illuminate Financial Management  25. Vladislav Solodkiy Life.SREDA |
 26. Fabian Vandenreydt Innotribe SWIFT  27. Derek White Barclays  28. Alex Batlin UBS  29. Jeffrey Greenberg & Vincenzo La Ruffa Aquiline Capital Partners  30. P. Howard Edelstein REDI Holdings |
 31. Nektarios Liolios Startupbootcamp FinTech  32. Roy Bahat Bloomberg Beta  33. Andrew McCormack Valar Ventures  34. Lawrence Wintermeyer Innovate Finance  35. Janos Barberis FinTech Hong Kong |