Retirement platform Smart raises $165m in Series D funding
Smart, an investment platform based around retirement savings, has raised $165 million in a Series D funding round.
Smart co-founders Andrew Evans and Will Wynne
Chrysalis Investments led the round with a £75 million equity investment, with a raft of other investors set to be announced “in the coming weeks”.
Smart plans to use its new cash to grow its retirement technology platform offering in the UK, the US, Australia and the Middle East.
Connected to around one million customers, the fintech aims to reach the five million user figure by the end of 2023.
Smart claims “tremendous” growth in 2020. Assets on its platform rose by 160% to £1.8 billion. It also saw rollouts with Bank of Ireland, Zurich and the Dubai Financial Centre.
“Smart’s achievements over the last 12 months are testament to our amazing team, and also to the incredible resilience of both our operating model and the Smart platform,” say Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, Smart co-founders, in a joint statement.
“We are very focused on our core goal: offering the very best technology to improve the lives of retirement savers around the world.”
The co-founders say that Smart’s technology – a cloud-native solution offered in a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model – is “perfect” for financial services companies and governments “trying to get to grips with delivering for their members and citizens as they save for retirement”.
Chrysalis’ investment portfolio includes Klarna, Wise (formerly TransferWise), Starling Bank, The Hut Group and Graphcore.
Richard Watts, head of strategy at the investment firm, says Smart is an innovator and “continues to establish itself as the leading retirement technology platform provider globally”.
He adds: “In just a few years it has disrupted the retirement savings industry, working with some of the world’s most well-known financial services providers.”
