What do the 30 FinTech funding rounds from last week tell us about the state of the industry?
There has been the regular smattering of investment rounds going into the FinTech industry. And they give us a perfect opportunity to take a closer look at the InsurTech and the RegTech segments of the market.
Five InsurTech ventures were among the rounds raised in the last week. They were Fabric, Superscript, DataFleets, Steadly and VIPR. This highlights that the interest in InsurTech has remained strong despite the global pandemic. In fact, an argument can be made that the Covid-19 crisis has pushed insurers to embrace collaborations with tech firms to a great extent than before.
In fact, the funding in the InsurTech industry doubled in the third quarter of 2020. The industry raised a three-quarter high of $2.4bn between July and October, according to FinTech Global’s research. That was up from the $900m raised in the first quarter and the $1.2bn injected into the industry in the second. The spike was due to a return of huge rounds such as Bright Health’s $500m cash injection, Ki Insurance’s $500m round and Next Insurance’s $250m investment.
Moreover, Root Insurance has filed to go public, The Zebra also announced that it has become profitable after achieving a run rate of $100m, Hippo has joined the unicorn club and Lemonade went public his summer. All of those stories are a testament to the growth of the market.
Last week also saw several RegTech such as Sigma Ratings and Theta Lake. However, the industry as a whole has seen a decline in terms of investment over the past three months. While the industry attracted $2.4bn in the first quarter of 2020, investment dropped to $1.2bn in the third quarter, according to FinTech Global’s research.
Let’s take a closer look at the other rounds raised.
DriveWealth closes Series C round on $56.7m
Digital trading technology platform DriveWealth has closed its Series C round $56.7m, which will help it to make strategic acquisitions. Point72 Ventures acted as the lead investor, with commitments also coming from Raptor Group, SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures. Mouro Capital and Fidelity International Strategic Ventures also joined the round, making their first investments into DriveWealth. The capital will be used to make strategic acquisitions, enhance its technology and grow the organisation.
PrimaryBid scores $50m in its Series B round
PrimaryBid, which connects retail investors with companies raising funds, has bagged $50m in its Series B found. The capital injection was raised to help PrimaryBid expand its team and technology, as it looks to enter international markets and deepen links with intermediaries. Investors included London Stock Exchange Group, Draper Esprit, OMERS Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and ABN AMRO Ventures. This investment comes after a period of strong growth for PrimaryBid. The FinTech has completed more than 41 capital raisings for UK listed companies and investment trusts since April 2020, it claims.
Jiko bags $40m Series B round
Mobile banking startup Jiko has raised $40m in its Series A funding round co-led by Upfront Ventures and Wafra. Commitments also came from Radicle Impact, NYCA Partners, Anthem Ventures, and all of Jiko’s previous backers.Jiko recently acquired US-regulated bank Mid Central National Bank. Funds from the Series A supported this acquisition, but capital will also be used to deepen Jiko’s technology stack, it said.
Odaseva closes its Series B round on $25m
Enterprise cloud trust platform for businesses Odaseva has collected $25m in its Series B round, which will support growth in North America. Eight Road Ventures led the round, with commitments also coming from F-Prime Capital and previous backers Partech, Salesforce Ventures and Serena. With the funding in its pocket, Odaseva plans to build momentum in North America and internationally. The capital will help with the development of its technology, hiring staff for its San Francisco, Sydney and Paris offices, and inverse investment into its user and partner ecosystem.
FlexiLoans bags $20.1m in new investment
FlexiLoans, which provides micro-businesses and smaller vendors in India with quick access to financing, has reportedly raised $20.1m in a funding round comprised of both debt and equity. The investment was entirely supplied by the Falguni and Sanjay Nayar Family Office. Plans for this fresh capital are to scale up the company’s SME lending efforts and expand its supply chain and co-lending products.
Fabric closes its Series B round on $18m
Digital life insurance app Fabric has closed $18m Series B round to scale its product suite. The investment was led by CNO Financial Group, with participation also coming from Guardian Life, Nippon Life, Samsung Ventures, Securian Ventures, and existing investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners. Capital will be used to expand the product suite and help more families reach long-term financial security.
Zivver secures $17m in new capital
Secure communications platform Zivver has closed a $17m investment round, which was led by DN Capital. Participation to the round also came from new investor SmartFin and return backers henQ and Dawn Capital. ABN AMRO Bank also supplied the company with innovation credit. Funds from the round will be used to support the international expansion of the platform into the UK and other markets. Capital will also be used to support the development of the technology, including expanding the use cases of its tools to digital signatures, secure forms and secure video.
Funding U raises $14m in debt and equity
Student finance platform Funding U has secured $14m in a debt and equity round in order to scale ots operations. The equity investment totalled $4m and was supplied by Deciens Capital, Valor Ventures, MacKenzie Scott, Next Act Fund LLC and The JumpFund. The remaining $10m was a credit facility from Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group.
Theta Lake bags $12.7m in Series A round
Collaboration tool compliance experts Theta Lake has bagged $12.7m in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners as the coronavirus pandemic has seen demand for its services skyrocket.
“The need for security and compliance solutions that fully cover modern collaboration tools should be obvious to everyone,” said Devin Redmond, CEO and co-founder of Theta Lake. “That need pre-existed the pandemic, but now is more pressing than ever.
“The shift from physical work sites and employer-owned networks with tightly managed devices and applications, to a distributed workplace that lives inside your collaboration tools means organizations need new security and compliance coverage that lives inside that new workplace. We built Theta Lake to protect any organization’s customers, data and employees in collaboration platforms in order to safely and compliantly unlock the value of this new communication stack.”
Wise collects $12m in a series A round
Digital banking platform Wise has closed a $12m Series A round just six months after it closed its $5.7m seed round. The investment was led by e.ventures, with contributions also coming from Grishin Robotics and previous backers Base10 Partners and Techstars. Wise will use the money to accelerate its growth and partnerships across several verticals and deepen its technology’s capabilities.
StreetShares closes doors on $10m investment
StreetShares, which helps financial institutions provide loans to small businesses, has closed a $10m investment. The equity injection came from Motley Fool Ventures, Ally Ventures and several individual FinTech angel investors. With the support of the capital and strategic partnerships, the FinTech is expanding its platform into a full suite of post- paycheck protection programme (PPP) technologies that can better serve needs of small businesses.
insurTech Superscript secures £8.5m in funding
UK-based Superscript has picked up another £8.5m in a funding round just months after it closed an £8m Series A round. The new round brings the total injected in the InsurTech company this year alone to £16.5m. The latest raise was led by BHL Holdings, alongside the Government’s Future Fund, Seedcamp, Concentric and the London Co-Investment Fund.
RealBlocks nets $7m in a new round
Alternative investment tech platform RealBlocks has secured $7m in a series A round led by Crosslink Capital. The one-year old WealthTech company will use the new cash injection to scale its business, engineering teams and meet growing customer demand.
Cybersecurity company Enso Security has secured $6m in funding
Enso Security, which builds application security posture management, has closed its seed round on $6m. The investment was led by YL Ventures, with contributions also coming from Jump Capital, former Bank of America chief security scientist Sounil Yu, HackerOne co-founder and CTO Alex Rice, the Luminate founders, former JPMorgan Chase executive director Omkhar Arasaratnam and toDay Ventures.
Finmark scores $5m in seed round
Financial modelling software developer Finmark has scored $5m in its oversubscribed seed funding round. IDEA Fund Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Draper Associates served as the lead investors to round, with support also coming from Promus Ventures, Green Visor Capital and Altair Ventures. There were 14 investment firms to contribute to the funding, as well as 30 angel investors.
GetVantage closes $5m seed round
Revenue-based financing platform GetVantage has reportedly raised $5m in its seed funding round, which will help it to expand into new markets across Southeast Asia. The capital injection was supported by Chiratae Ventures, Dream Incubators and other investors. Funds from the round will be used to expand into new markets across Southeast Asia, and will start with Singapore.
DataFleets bags $4.5m in seed capital
DataFleets has picked up $4.5m in new funding to further its efforts to enable databases to be accessed without companies running the risk of their data being compromised. The seed capital raise was co-led by AME Cloud Ventures and Morado Ventures. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Peterson Ventures, Mark Cuban, LG, Harvard’s president of its board of overseers Marty Chavez, Stanford-StarX fund and founders from unicorns Rappi, Quora and Lucid Software also participated in the raise.
Steadily collects $3.8m in new investment
InsurTech company Steadily has raised $3.8m in a new funding round led by Matrix Partners and emerges out of stealth. The company plans to use the money to expand its reach and to keep developing its platform. Steadily is currently licensed across 45 states in the US.
BizCapital adds $3.55m in new capital
Brazilian FinTech BizCapital has raised $3.55m in a new funding round led by Dutch investor Oikocredit with the participation of the group Wharton Alumni Angels. Oikocredit, which specialises in investing in businesses with a social impact, approached fintech due to its work to facilitate credit for small entrepreneurs in Brazil.
MirrorWeb secures £2m round
Web archiving and monitoring solution MirrorWeb has completed a £2m investment from UK private equity firm Maven Capital Partners. Based in Manchester, MirrorWeb offers a cloud-based SaaS platform that enables businesses to archive website and social media communications. This not only gives them complete ownership of their “digital truth”, but it also helps them meet compliance with a selection of regulations.
RAI Finance nets $1.5m in funding
Blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol RAI Finance has reportedly closed a $1.5m strategic investment. The funding was led by global cryptocurrency funds including GBIC and Alphabit. Rai aims to create a DeFi exosystem with a higher amount of liquidity and diverse set of financial use cases. The solution is combined with Polkadot, a blockchain protocol that connects specialised blockchains into one unified network.
Paytia secures £1.2m in pre-Series A round
Paytia, a telephone payment compliance service, has closed its pre-Series A funding round on £1.2m, which was led by Bloc Ventures. With the capital injection, Paytia will increase its operational capability, increase the size of its team and build new products which will complement its existing offering. Founded in 2016, the FinTech leverages technology to ensure customers are protected and remain in control of their card data throughout any customer not present payment transactions.
Parpera raises $800,000 in crowdfunding campaign
Australian FinTech Parpera has raised $800,000 in a crowdfunding campaign held on the platform Equitise. Parpera launched earlier this year with the aim to provide a fairer and more transparent ecosystem for products and services that help people to effectively setup.
Coinrule secures £353,996 in new investment
Automated investment app Coinrule has stormed past its crowdfunding target to reach £353,996 and still has another 32 days left on the sale. The FinTech set the initial target of the crowdfunding campaign on £250,000 at a pre-money valuation of £4m. It is unclear whether there will be a hardcap for this fundraise.
Sigma Ratings collects new funding
Risk intelligence platform Sigma Ratings has closed a new round led by Fitch Group, a global leader in financial information services, via its equity investment arm Fitch Ventures. Other investors backing the raise included FinTech Collective, Contour Ventures, and Barclays. New York City-based Sigma plans to use the cash injection to fuel the growth of its engineering and delivery teams to accelerate its growing risk and compliance technology offering.
Icon Solutions has secured new investment from J.P. Morgan
Payment solutions provider Icon Solutions has picked up a strategic investment from J.P. Morgan. The PayTech will use the undisclosed cash injection to invest in its technology and geographic reach, helping new and existing customers do more with less and realise the potential of payments in the real-time, 24/7, open, data-driven world.
XTransfer closes new round
China-based XTransfer has reportedly raised a Series C1 round to help the FinTech extend its global financial network. The investment was led by Telstra Ventures, with additional support coming from MindWorks Ventures and other previous XTransfer backers. With the equity injection, the FinTech plans to grow its global financial network, strengthen its data capabilities, improve its anti—money laundering and risk control capacity, and improve its customer services. Capital will also be used to hire more staff.
InsurTech VIPR enjoys new cash injections
VIPR, which builds delegated authority solutions for the insurance sector, has received an investment from UK private equity firm Tenzing. This fresh capital will be used to help VIPR with the next phase of its growth strategy in the UK.
Pondurance has picked up additional funding
Newlight Partners, a private equity firm focused on North America, has invested into managed detection and response platform Pondurance. Equity from the investment will help Pondurance accelerate its growth by deepening its R&D efforts, increasing innovation and bolstering the team. The value of the investment was not disclosed.
Curv extends Series A round
Digital asset security officer Curv has extended its Series A round, with contributions coming from Franklin Templeton and Illuminate Financial Management. The FinTech previously secured $23m in its initial Series A funding back in July from investors including CommerzVentures, Coinbase, Digital Currency Group, Team8 and Digital Garage. It is not clear how much extra capital the company has raised.
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![Smarsh, a pioneer in regulatory technology (RegTech), emerged from the visionary mind of Stephen Marsh in 2001. Grounded in his experience within the financial services sector, Marsh foresaw the imminent need for regulated organisations to effectively manage their digital communications. With traditional regulatory retention and oversight rules extending to new communication technologies, he identified a gap and founded Smarsh to bridge it. Tom Padgett, General Manager of Smarsh Enterprise, explained the company's founding months, "Steve had been working in the financial services industry and saw that the companies lacked a streamlined solution to be able to capture and archive their communications data and meet their compliance requirements." From these humble beginnings in Brooklyn, New York, Smarsh has evolved into the global industry leader that it is today, serving a substantial portion of the world's largest banking and insurance companies. Padgett examined their growth, attributing it to a steadfast commitment to innovation, "Ultimately, it has been a constant commitment to innovation that has enabled Smarsh to become and remain the industry leader in communications compliance – even as the digital messaging landscape has revolutionised over the last two decades." Keeping up with the times Over this more than two-decade journey, the US firm underwent significant transformation, aligning its offerings with the changing dynamics of digital communication. This constant evolution aligned firmly with Marsh's early vision, to spot the trends across the digital communications sector that no one else was spotting. Upon its inception, the firm initially focused on email, an antecedent to the modernised, futuristic digital landscape, as Padgett explained, "Back in 2001, e-mail was the dominant forms of digital communication, but Steve saw that with the rapid advancements in digital infrastructure, communication was also evolving fast." Indeed, it was Marsh's vision that continued to drive his eponymous company forward through the 21st century, with the firm leveraging up-and-coming technologies to find success in an industry where every change is scrutinised, thanks to ever-increasing regulatory restrictions, as Padgett revealed. "He knew that regulated organisations would need a solution that is able to keep up [with the digital transformation of communications]. Over the past 22 years, we have witnessed the needs of customers change dramatically as the number and complexity of communications platforms have surged. Over this time, Smarsh has evolved, expanding into platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and leveraging new technologies like AI to be able to further help meet these challenges head on. Throughout all these changes, our core purpose has remained the same – using technology to transform mandatory oversight into valuable foresight for our customers," he continued. The jewel in the crown While Smarsh has acted as the regulatory sector's chameleon for much of its two-decade run, shapeshifting into whatever caters to the needs of the modern client, as we head into 2024, it has established an offering as the centrepiece of its portfolio - the jewel in the crown. This flagship product is known as the Smarsh Enterprise Platform, and it stands as an integrated, cloud-based solution crafted to safeguard and prepare enterprise communication data strategies for the future. It facilitates the acquisition of fresh perspectives by leveraging top-notch technologies such as elastic compute, natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. According to research from the TMF Group, in 31% of regions surveyed, there's an indication that clients might be unaware of the upcoming complexity of regulatory changes in regard to compliance, highlighting their lack of preparedness for what lies ahead. With this in mind, large financial institutions are finding it more difficult than ever to meet compliance regulations - which is where the Smarsh Enterprise Platform steps in. Padgett explained what their flagship product provides, stating, "The Smarsh Enterprise Platform is our cloud-native communications retention and oversight solution for enterprises. It enables large, highly-regulated organisations to meet the complex needs of global compliance. "Alongside capturing and retaining the myriad of communication channels that organisations use today, the platform leverages Smarsh-developed AI to surface business-critical insights from organisations’ stored communications data. We serve over 6,500 customers including 90% of the world’s leading financial services organisations," he continued. Smarsh's services don't stop there however, the firm also has its own simple, yet comprehensive risk management solution, targeted at small and mid-sized companies. The Professional Archive aims to ensure easy-to-use and effective digital communications compliance, and covers a wide range of needs, from capturing over 100 channels and website data to archiving, supervising, discovering, and securing information. On top of this, it also has its own third party and cyber risk management solutions, which can enhance your organisation's cybersecurity stance and effortlessly oversee the security and compliance of devices, networks, users, and vendors through a unified interface. Tailored to align with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework, Smarsh Cyber Compliance encompasses compliance and reporting functionalities. Challenges across the landscape The landscape of compliance technology isn't devoid of challenges. Padgett acknowledged the impact of incoming regulations, citing the Biden Administration's Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence which has captured the attention of many in the industry. However, while others may see this as a concern, he sees this as a validation of Smarsh's foresight in developing 'regulatory-grade AI' solutions, aligning with the imminent regulatory standards for AI implementation. Padgett said, "Smarsh has been developing AI solutions for a decade and has long been predicting that there are three pillars to AI: data, tech and regulation. This Executive Order removes all doubt that regulations are a third pillar. We see the regulation of AI as less of a challenge, more so validation that the time-consuming and labour-intensive work we prioritised to develop ‘regulatory-grade AI’ solutions, including model explainability, exhaustive testing to ensure protections against bias and discrimination and continual evaluation – was ahead of the curve." On top of this, the rapid development of new messaging platforms presents a vast challenge for compliance solution providers. Padgett emphasised the sector's struggle to monitor and capture diverse communication types while addressing the complexities arising from a growing array of messaging platforms. Specifically, monitoring "change-of-venue" conversations poses a significant associated challenge. In terms of addressing this proliferation of new communication platforms, Padgett once again turned to Smarsh's highly vaunted adaptability, claiming that the ability to be agile, dexterous, and quick of foot, was the path to keeping up with the evolving technological landscape. What does the future hold? Looking forward, Padgett envisions AI as an indispensable element rather than a luxury in compliance offerings. In line with Smarsh's long-term strategy, the firm has been an "early-mover" in the AI space, as the company looks to avoid resting on their laurels, and instead be a part of the next wave of change, as it has over its 22-year run. As the company steers toward 2024, Smarsh is aiming to focus on its market differentiators according to Padgett. He said, "We continue to develop and release AI-powered ‘Scenarios’, purpose-built models to help organisations accurately identify and address specific behaviours at scale. We are frequently adding to our library of Scenarios, which span market conduct, financial crime, workplace conduct and more. In addition, we have forged strong strategic relationships with key technology partners like AWS and collaborate closely with the modern communications platforms our customers depend on including Slack, Zoom, and Box. " Smarsh's trajectory exemplifies its unwavering commitment to innovation, regulatory excellence, and adaptive solutions, cementing its position as a stalwart in the ever-evolving landscape of compliance technology. Starting with Marsh's vision at the turn of the century all those years ago, the firm has never failed to fulfil its modus operandi sitting on the tenets of innovation, and future-planning, meaning that just as it was back in 2001, Smarsh is looking ahead to the future, aiming for ambitious targets, that its competition can't even see yet.](https://fintech.global/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/austin-distel-EMPZ7yRZoGw-unsplash-218x150.jpg "Arete Wealth debuts direct-to-consumer digital wealth platform")
