Fintech funding round-up: 13 December 2017
Following on from Monday’s (11 December) summary, here’s another slice of fintech funding action. This round-up features Finstar, State Street, FRISS and iZettle.
Finstar Financial Group in a move to “strengthen” itself in the Asia-Pacific region has unveiled a five-year plan to invest $150 million into the fintech space.
As a first step in implementing the investment plan, Finstar is investing up to $50 million into consumer lender Digital Finance International (DFI) to increase the “presence” of its mobile-first consumer finance services in Southeast Asia. Back in July, Finstar revealed plans to invest $150 million into new start-ups over the next five years. This follows on and is part of Finstar’s investment in consumer technologies in emerging markets across Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
State Street has become the latest to invest in the UK start-up boom, by backing PensionBee, which brings pensions together into a single online platform for people who often move jobs.
Since its launch in 2014, PensionBee has signed up 55,000 people to its pension consolidation platform and is said to be using State Street’s industry contacts to start licensing its technology to providers for use themselves. State Street says its investment will help the company to expand into new markets, such as Ireland and the Netherlands, as well as expanding its assets under management, which currently sits at £100 million, with a further £125 million of pension in the process of being transferred.
Next, fraud and risk analytics provider FRISS has closed a €15 million Series A funding investment led by Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG) and Blackfin Capital Partners, both specialising in insurance.
FRISS says the new funding will be used towards building its solutions, expansion and facilitate the anti-fraud community by enabling cross-carrier and cross-border co-operation between insurers. 132 insurers use the FRISS platform in 26 countries. Based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques, the FRISS score indicates the risk for each quotation, policy or claim, increasing straight-through processing (STP) and supporting digitisation.
Finally, mobile payment company iZettle has raised €40 million in a funding round led by venture capital (VC) firm Dawn and the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund, alongside participation from other existing investors. This follows on from September, when it said it will receive €30 million in debt funding.
iZettle says it will use the funding for expansion and development. This latest round takes the company’s total funding to around $150 million, with previous investors Indeed, a Swedish start-up, and European Investment Bank (EIB) to fund R&D initiatives. Founded in 2010 and based in Stockholm, iZettle targets small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with hardware and software, including a physical card reader and an app that allows merchants to accept payments from customers through their mobile devices.
