The Prospa IPO: Lessons from a watershed moment for fintech

The Prospa IPO highlighted a number of key lessons around investor education and transparency and paved the way for other budding fintechs wanting to go public.

This is the assessment made by a “reunion of Prospa’s IPO team at the FinTech Australia Intersekt forum in Melbourne on Tuesday.

The comments came just a day before Latitude decided to halt its IPO.

The panel included Prospa joint CEO Beau Bertoli; investment lead bankers, Macquarie executive director Georgina Lalor, UBS executive director Katie Klosterman and venture capitalists Peg Capital partner Tony Holt and Airtree partner James Cameron.

Klosterman said the Prospa’s IPO in June was a watershed moment for the industry generating “great amount of interest” in the fintech sector.

“It really set a high bar for what fintech is. The Prospa IPO really resonated with investors who understood that the business was solving a difficult problem, that is how lend to businesses that were hard to assess and do that at scale,” Klosterman said.

For Lalor, timing was crucial.

“You have to go to an IPO when it is meaningful to the market. We closed $100 million [when Prospa went for its second IPO]. This size was indicative of good engagement from investors.

“You have to go the market with as much fanfare and investor interest. You have to replicate that mindset from your initial investors as it is hard to replicate [from a secondary market],” Lalor said.

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Source: The Prospa IPO: Lessons from a watershed moment for fintech | RFi Group