Tag: GoBear

Sydney, Australia – Comparison platform Finder has acquired the financial content platform GoBear in order to drive its growth and presence in the Southeast Asia region.

It should be recalled that GoBear had announced last January this year that they will be ceasing operations due to constraints in funding to continue operating.

“Both Finder and GoBear believe in the importance of improving people’s financial health. We are happy to see that the GoBear brand will continue to live on and it will be exciting to see where Finder will bring it next,” said Jinnee Lim, chief strategy officer at GoBear.

Through the acquisition, GoBear’s trademark and digital assets including domains, website content and social channels in seven markets: Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia will be acquired. The GoBear brand will continue to operate via social media and email channels, however the website content will now form part of finder.com and its local services. 

Finder, which is founded by Frank Restuccia, Fred Schebesta and Jeremy Cabral, envisions that through the acquisition, they hope to serve 438 million unbanked consumers in the region, as there is a significant opportunity for growth as digital financial services is set to grow to a $60 billion industry by 2025, according to Bain and Company.

“Like Finder, GoBear has been committed to improving the financial wellbeing of its audience, with over 55 million people having visited its website since its launch in 2015 to make better-informed decisions. Finder’s mission is to help people all over the world make better financial decisions and we’re excited to ramp up our offering to the region through a recognised brand like GoBear,” Restuccia stated.

He added, “We see Finder as playing an important role in the financial ecosystem to help Asian consumers make decisions that are right for them when it comes to financial products and services.”

Singapore – A sad news surprised many on Tuesday – GoBear, financial services and data platform in Asia, has decided to cease operations, breaking the announcement on a LinkedIn post. 

GoBear, which started its operations in 2015, revealed on the post that the pandemic has created a challenging operating environment, where despite the company’s best efforts, is unable to raise more funding. 

“It’s with a heavy heart that today we’re sharing that GoBear will be ceasing operations and begin the process of closing the business,” wrote the company. 

It further said, “It’s been quite a ride with the opening of new markets, launching new products, and building our financial services and data platform one step at a time.”

GoBear as a financial services platform assists users in their financial decision-making through comparison guides of different financial products such as credit cards, home loans, travel insurance, and home insurance. It also offers definitive guides on working around bank accounts, personal loans, and credit cards, among others. 

“Our purpose is to improve your financial health so that, together, we can build secure, stable, and sustainable communities. And we’re going to do that by making financial literacy, financial inclusion, and financial security attainable for everyone!” it says on its bio. 

As of current, the platform has presence in seven markets. Having founded in 2014 in its headquarters Singapore, the platform launched in the Lion City and Thailand in 2015. The year after, GoBear expanded to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam, and finally launching in Indonesia in 2018. 

“We had amazing employees, partners, vendors, and fans along the way that made our accomplishments possible,” concluded the company in the post. 

“Thank you to everybody who believed in us and has been part of our journey,” it said. 

Singapore – Financial services platform GoBear has announced that it has appointed martech solutions, Netcore Solutions to power up its multi-channel marketing automation and engagement campaigns, as it eyes unparalleled customer retention

GoBear, which advocates financial health through a comparative model of financial products, currently operates in seven markets across Asia with over 55 million users. 

Netcore Smartech’s platform offers AI-powered technology which bundles the customer data platform (CDP), multi-channel campaign management, journey builder, and AI-based email delivery among others.

Go Bear’s performance marketing director Azril Arif thinks Netcore will be of valuable partner as they push their customer engagement to new heights

“GoBear is ushering in the next phase of customer engagement and we believe all engagements need to be personal in nature. Netcore Smartech will enable us to understand our users better, conceptualize engagement strategies, and deploy personalized engagement at scale. We foresee this to be instrumental in our growth,” said Arif.

Meanwhile, Netcore CEO Abithab Bhaskar believes that the collaboration is a demonstration of one of many that there’s a viable opportunity within Fintechs for customer engagement.

“GoBear is a marquee name in the Fintech space and we are thrilled to impact the key retention and engagement KPIs and contribute to their incredible growth story,” said Bhaskar.