The
FinT ech50 2020:
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The FinTech50 2020 The Top Ten 2020 1. Onfido 2. Checkout.com* 3. Tink 4. Revolut 5. Raisin 6. OakNorth 7. WeFox 8. Thought Machine 9. Solarisbank 10 Comply Advantage The FinTech50 2020 Alan Anyfin* Apiax* AQMetrics Archax* bunq BUX Clark ClearBank ClearScore Cleo* Cloud Margin Credit Kudos* Datamaran* Dawex* Eigen Technologies Enfuce* Everledger Farewill FintechOS* Fluidly Form3 Habito HQLAx IDnow
* new listing in 2020
Liberis* Metaco* Modulr Monese Monzo Moonfare* N26 PensionBee Pleo Previse Privitar Qonto* Railsbank Rapyd* Roger.ai* Salary Finance Sharegain* Snoop* Starling Bank Tessian Tokeny Tractable TradeIX* Truelayer Yulife* The Hot Ten 2020 Cledara* Cerebreon* Doconomy* Finteum* Fronted* Kalgera* PQShield* Primer* Tumelo* Tomorrow*
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Congratulations to TheFinTech50 2020 We are BrightBridge. Experts in supporting fast business growth and digital transformation with NetSuite Cloud ERP. But don’t take our word for it...
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Lucy Demery Global Head of Fintech Banking: Standard Chartered
Edward Berks Global EGM, Xero
Johan Lundberg CEO, NFT Ventures
Oliver Bussmann Bussmann Advisory
Andrei Brasoveanu Partner, Accel Joshua Barraclough Head of Fintech, JP Morgan Robin Buschmann, Head of Ecosysem Commerzbank
Sophie Guibaud Chief Growth Officer Openpayd
Harrie Vollard Managing Director Rabo Frontier Ventures
Samarth Shekhar EMEA Lead, SixThirty Ventures
Craig Fox Director, Fintech Silicon Valley Bank
Tom Moore Head of Fintech Moore Kingston Smith
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Our 2020 Selection Panel Buyers, investors in and champions of Fintech across Europe.
Charlotte Wood Head of Innovation Schroders
Alison Harwood Head of London Branch: Varengold Bank
Nasir Zubairi CEO, The LHoFT Mukund Umalkar Head of RegTech Partnerships, ING
Julie Lake, Founding Director The FinTech50
Richard Hay, Linklaters / Nicolas Cary, Blockchain/ Amy Neale, MasterCard Labs / Paolo Cuomo, Brit Insurance
Jack F Clarke Enterprise Ireland
Elsa Said-Armanet
Dan Cobley Managing Partner Fintech, Bleinheim Chalcot
Martyn Holman Partner, Augmentum Fintech Mark Whitcroft Founding Partner Illuminate Financial
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Welcome In this not-business-as usual-year we made a few tweaks to selection.
This Year’s Top Ten pp 10-15
We wanted the 2020 50 to be three things: Relevant to the lives and livelihoods of people and business (including the financial services sector many enage with) Viable as a business and Sustainable as a model.
F50 celebrates: pp 16-21
We also wanted to recognise a greater range of geographies - and founders. So this year’s FinTech50 is a FinTech70
The FinTech50 2020 pp 24 - 48 The Hot Ten 2020 pp 52 - 53 The Hall of Fame pp49-51
We have a separate Top Ten (ranked by our panel from 1-10)
Editorial: pp 54 - 61
A multi-talented FinTech50
> Sustainable Finance
And a very Hot Ten of earlier-stage innovators.
> RegTech
It’s a mix of highly successful businesses; innovators whose work we respect (a lot) and those whose heart, in this particular year, we cannot help but love. Between them they are helping people to save money, making business (and finance) easier for SMEs - and their employees accelerating digital, bridging centralised and decentralised finance, pioneering alternative investments, keeping systems, data (and our money) safe, making our lives all-round easier, and, amongst many other brilliant things, addressing the small issue of climate change. They are based in Denmark, Germany, France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Ireland and the UK - but their reach extends much further. And their founder stories are as interesting as anything on your media channel of choice right now.
> European Payments > Financial Wellbeing Last Words 62
UNLOCKING YOUR FINTECH BUSINESS’ POTENTIAL Our team of dedicated fintech accountants and business advisers understand the complex demands of the sector. The team provide a full service to clients of all sizes, from start-ups to substantial international groups, to ensure businesses meet their compliance obligations whilst helping to maximise their potential. Our core services to the fintech sector include: • Strategic advice
• Audit and accounts
• Data proctection
• Tax
• Cybersecurity
• HR and payroll
• Staff engagement
• Fundraising and M&A
• Regulatory reporting and advice
• Legal services
Tom Moore, Head of Financial Services www.mks.co.uk
Our Partners 2020
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First: this year’s Top Ten This year, we asked our panel to identify their Top Ten European innovators ... and order them from 1 - 10. Why? Because businesses are at different stages of evolution and we did not want to band start-ups and super-scalers together under the umbrella term: Fintech. It’s no longer 2014. We recognised this ten for their unstoppable innovation, expansion into new markets (new continents); for the value they bring to their customers, and for their indisputable skills in leading a high-growth business. As founders, they are a collective Masterclass of How to do Fintech. Congratulations to Onfido - again voted the panel’s #1 Fintech in Europe - and to Checkout.com - new to the 50 this year and debuting at #2. See also The Hall of Fame
#1. Onfido Identity
Onfido is the new standard for digital access. The company uses AI to verify any photo ID and then compares it with the person’s facial biometrics. This use of AI means that businesses no longer need to compromise on customer experience, conversion, privacy or security. Recognised as a global leader in artificial intelligence for identity verification and authentication, Onfido is backed by TPG Growth, Crane Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, M12 - Microsoft’s venture fund, and others. With over 400 employees across 9 offices globally, Onfido has raised $200m in funding and powers over 1500 customers worldwide, including HSBC, Revolut and Zipcar. Founders: L-R: Eamon Jubbawy, Ruhul Amin, Husayn Kassai (CEO).
#2. Checkout.com Payments 2. Checkout Payments
Founded by Guillaume Pousaz in 2012, Checkout.com is a global payments solution provider that empowers and enables the world’s most dynamic and innovative enterprises such as Revolut, Klarna and Transferwise to manage their digital payments. As a result of ongoing strength in payments innovation, Checkout.com successfully closed its $150m Series B funding round in June. The Series B was one of the year’s biggest funding rounds and tripled the total valuation to $5.5bn, making it one of the world’s most valuable fintechs.
#3 Tink Open Banking
Sweden’s Tink offers tools that allow anyone – from big banks, fintechs to startups – to build the future of financial services across Europe. Tink now operates across 14 markets, has integrated 2500 banks and institutions and reaches 250m customers across Europe. 5000 developers use its PSD2 compliant platform which processes 10bn transactions each year. Through one API, Tink allows customers to access aggregated financial services, initiate payments, enrich transactions and build personal finance management tools. Founders: Daniel Kjellén, Fredrik Hedberg
#4 Revolut Financial Super app It’s a while since Revolut launched as an essential travel companion saving us money when we shopped overseas or exchanged currencies. Revolut’s 12 million customers can still do that. But they can now also invest, save, trade stocks, commodities and crypto, buy insurance, give to charity, budget and track spending. Between them they make more than 100 million transactions a month. its peers, Revolut’s financials have been widely discussed. Meanwhile, the superapp continues to move its business forward: tripling revenue, opening in the US (March 2020); launching open banking (in partnership with Truelayer) in the UK and Ireland, and to its 100,000 French and 400,000 Italian customers. Officially launching in Australia (July), where it already had 30,000 Australians on its waiting list...and most recently in Japan. Founders: Nikolay Storonsky, Vlad Yatsenko
#5 Raisin Wealth The leading pan-European online savings and investments marketplace, Raisin offers simple access at no charge to attractive and guaranteed deposit products from all over Europe, as well as globally diversified, cost-effective ETF portfolios and pension products (currently available in Germany). With one online registration, customers can choose from all available investments and subsequently manage their accounts. Since launch in 2013, Raisin has placed €26 bn for more than 280,000 customers in 28+ European countries and 98 partner banks. This year, Raisin U.S. launched a tailored business solution for banks and credit unions looking for cost-effective new deposits. Founders: Tamaz Georgadze (CEO), Frank Freund, Michael Stephan.
#6 OakNorth Business Lending OakNorth Bank is achieving performance metrics that place it amongst the top 1% of banks globally – an ROE run-rate of 23%, an efficiency ratio run-rate of 26%, a borrower NPS of 80.5, and pre-tax profits that increased 95% in 2019 to £65.9m. It’s lent over £4.5bn to hundreds of businesses across the UK (without a single credit loss to date) and has continued lending throughout the COVID-19 period, approving an average of £150m in new loans every month since March. It’s participating in both CBILS and CLBILS and is currently seeing twice as many deals going to credit committee compared to this time last year. In addition, OakNorth is aiming to make its credit science platform the go-to enterprise software solution to help banks make faster and moreinformed credit decisions. Founders: Rishi Khosla (CEO), Joel Perlman.
#7 wefox Group Insurance
#8 Solarisbank Banking as a Service
Berlin, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Digital all-in-one insurance solution
The technology company with a full German banking license
European InsurTech wefox Group operates two businesses: wefox, a platform that connects insurance companies to brokers that manage and consult their customers completely digital. Wefox currently features more than 300 insurance companies on the marketplace and serves more than 450.000 consumers.
Solarisbank enables other companies to offer their own financial services. Via APIs, partners integrate Solarisbank’s modular banking services directly into their own product offering. The platform offers digital bank accounts and payment cards, identification and lending services, digital asset custody as well as services provided by integrated thirdparty providers.
The second - ONE - is a fully digital European insurance company with a vision is to create a single point of protection for all risks in life in real-time based on actual exposed risk. ONE is fully integrated into the wefox platform. WefoxGo, a slimmed-down version of the full-service Advisor portal which currently exists in wefox Group’s core markets of Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, allows insurance brokers to connect their calendars to schedule meetings and conduct consultations via the platform’s video conference functionality. Julian Teicke (CEO), Dario Fazlic, Fabian Wesemann, Jonathan Seoane, Teodoro Martino wefox.com
The Berlin-based company employs more than 300 employees from over 50 nationalities and generated net revenues of €15.5 million in 2019. In 2019 Solarisbank established the 100% subsidiary Solaris Digital Assets GmbH to offer a licensed custodial solution for digital assets. To date, Solarisbank has raised more than EUR 160 million from a bluechip shareholder base, including ABN AMRO’s Digital Impact Fund, BBVA, finleap, Global Brain, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Lakestar, Samsung Catalyst Fund, SBI Group, Storm Ventures, Visa, Vulcan Capital, and yabeo Capital. Roland Folz (CEO) solarisbank.com
#9 Thought Machine Core Banking
#10 ComplyAdvantage Financial Crime Detection
London, UK
London, UK
High-growth, cloud native core-banking technology
Fighting financial crime and powering anti-money laundering
Thought Machine’s mission is to cure the banking industry’s reliance on outdated IT infrastructure - and the London fintech, founded by former Google engineer Paul Taylor, is in high demand. In recent months, the company has scaled internationally, adding 150 employees in 2020 across three regions. Thought Machine has also expanded product compatibility to all major cloud providers and will be making major client announcements in the coming months. With a new round of financing this year, Thought Machine will continue to invest in growing its business at international scale – hiring key roles in APAC, US and Australia - while continuing to develop new products and features, including its upcoming advanced payments solution.
Paul Taylor (Founder / CEO) thoughtmachine.net
The sixth fastest-growing Fintech in Europe (2020), ComplyAdvantage is building the world’s only global AI-driven database of people and companies to power anti-money laundering and financial crime detection. With around $2 trillion laundered annually, its services are in demand worldwide and ComplyAdvantage now has over 500 clients. ComplyAdvantage embraces data science and Machine Learning to analyze risk computationally, and actively identifies tens of thousands of risk events from millions of structured and unstructured data points every day. The company’s configurable cloud services help automate and reduce the frustration of complying with sanctions, anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing of terrorism (CFT) requirements. At the core is a central database of known money launderers, human traffickers, terrorists and others who exploit financial rails to run illegal operations. ComplyAdvantage also tackles the illegal wildlife trade (the pangolin, the most trafficked animal in the world, is an unofficial mascot). Comply Advantage now works for more than 500 enterprise clients in 75 countries. Charles Delingpole (Founder / CEO) complyadvantage.com
The Digital Health Hub Health = Wealth Paris-based digital health insurtech Alan wins wide praise for its product, userexperience and ambition to build a digital health hub See p26
Consumer Champions
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The First Founder...
...To feature on every FinTech50 Currency Cloud (then “The Currency Cloud”) founded by Nigel Verdon featured on the first FinTech50 (in 2013), again in 2014 and 2015, before being admitted to The Hall of Fame in 2016. This year Nigel’s latest initiative, Railsbank, clocked its third successive year on the 50. See p40. This makes Nigel the only founder to feature on The 50 every year since launch. In March 2020 Railsbank launched their response to Covid-10, Lightning Aid, to enable Government departments, NGOs and community groups to distribute financial support directly to those in need.
The Grand Master
Nick Ogden is a serial entrepreneur in banking and fintech with a particular focus on payments. Nick’s career in the financial sector began in 1994 when he founded the first online shop - the Wine Warehouse - through which e-commerce was pioneered. Nick is passionate about changing and improving business operations. Throughout his 30 years’ experience, he’s founded WorldPay, Cashflows, ClearBank (see p28) and, most recently, RTGS. Global, the world’s first cross-border liquidity network.
The Consumer Champion Founded by former Virgin Money CEO, Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Snoop wants to help consumers take back a big part of the ÂŁ12 bn cost of loyalty. See p43
USA
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The Digital Accelerator
With 40 global clients and 300% YoY growth, FintechOS has seen a significant rise in demand for its solutions designed to support online onboarding, setting up virtual branches and online assistance via remote video and co-browsing. See p 35
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T W
his is how we select the FinTech50 each year. It’s not a competition, there are no public votes or Twitter polls. And nobody pays to be considered, or listed.
e undertake our own research of fintech businesses across Europe, make a form available for those who want to be considered, and ask our panel and wider community which businesses, or types of innovation, they would like to see on the shortlist.
Then we invite panel members to take part in a discussion, and select (by secret ballot) their chosen 50. As a process, it takes months. We don’t claim to be the definitive list of European Fintech (that doesn’t exist). And this is not the PR initiative of a single institution. It’s much more collaborative: a collective of people and organisations who buy, invest in, champion and value innovation in the sector. The FinTech50 is, and always has been, a “watchlist” that reflects their well-considered views.
50 20 21 to watch in
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Apiax Alan Designed for: Businesses + individuals Founders: Charles Gorintin, Jean-Charles Samuelian Founded: 2016 HQ: Paris, France, with offices in Spain & Belgium
Designed for: Financial organisations / firms / professional services
AQMetrics
Founders: Nicolas Blanchard, Philip Schoch, Ralf Huber, Thomas Suter
Designed for: Asset Service Providers, Investment Managers
Founded: 2017 HQ: Zurich, Switzerland Keywords: Regtech, Compliance, Machine Learning Funding: $8.1M
Keywords: Health Insurance
Online: apiax
Funding: $140.9M
Transforming complex regulations into machinereadable rules
Online: alan.com
The digital health hub Alan wins wide praise for its product, user-experience and ambition. In addition to being a digital seller of existing insurance products, Alan wants to build a health hub, which is a first point of contact whenever people have a question, need a piece of information or want to get reimbursed on health appointments. Members have access to medical professionals through in-person appointments or by video - and to information and care support through the company’s app. The “Alan Map” enables users to quickly source medical help and handle all reimbursements.
Apiax featured on our 2019 Hot Ten for enabling organisations to remain continuously compliant. The RegTech makes it radically simple for companies of all sizes and across industries to bridge the gap between compliance, business and technology. In the past 12 months, Apiax has picked up a haul of awards + nominations for its service designed to cut costs, ensure compliance, and help accelerate sales. In June 2020, they were awarded the FSTI Proof-of-Concept grant by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
Founders: Geraldine Gibson Founded: 2012 HQ: Kildare, Ireland / offices in London and Paris Keywords: Compliance, Capital Market Surveillance, MIFID II Funding: $6.25M Online: aqmetrics.com
Managing an ever-increasing volume of regulations The Irish RegTech leader provides integrated capital markets surveillance and compliance solutions to alternative investment management and broker/dealer companies. AQMetrics’ proprietary risk analytics automates traditionally resource-intensive and error-prone processes to ensure intuitive, fast, and cost effective electronic compliance risk management, regulatory reporting and document management. Clients won in 2020 include a tierone Asian sovereign wealth fund, as well as a leading ETF provider focused on fixed-income solutions for institutional investors.
Stockholm
Anyfin Designed for: Consumers Founders: Filip Polhem, Mikael Hussain, Sven Perkmann Founded: 2017 HQ: Stockholm, Sweden Keywords: Consumer finance / credit / financial wellbeing Funding: $44.9M Online: anyfin.com Anyfin wants to put Europeans back in control of their finances - saving them an average 64% on loan instalments. Currently available in Sweden and Finland, Anyfin lets consumers select their current loan provider from a menu on its website, iOS and Android apps, take a picture of their statement or upload it. Anyfin uses AI combined with publicly available consumer data to create a more complete picture than credit score alone and will only make an offer if it finds a better rate. If the consumer accepts the new option, Anyfin takes care of settling the existing loan. No fees involved. People can select a payment plan and pay directly from the app. Anyfin raised $30M in May 2020 to develop additional products and help it expand into other European countries. Those using the service can now also block themselves from shopping on credit. In addition, they can get a loan of up to SEK 1,000 - free of interest and fees - as an alternative to expensive payday loans if needed at the end of the month.
Sweden
Clark
Archax Designed for: institutional and digital asset communities
BUX Designed for: individual investors across Europe Founders: Nick Bortot
Founders: Graham Rodford (CEO), Matthew Pollard, Andrew Flatt
Founded: 201
Founded: 2018
Keywords:
HQ: UK, London
Funding:
Keywords: Blockchain, Digital Assets, DeFI, Tokenisation
Online: getbux.com
Funding: Seed Feb 2019 Online: archax.com
Bridging centralised and decentralised finance In August 2020, Archax Exchange became the first ever FCA regulated digital securities exchange and custodian in the UK. Digital issuances from across the world will now be able to trade on an FCA authorised secondary market and institutions will have access to a credible regulated trading venue on which to engage with the digital securities space.
HQ: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Now Europe’s largest neobroker BUX tripled assets under management and won 100,000 German customers when it launched in Germany and Austria in June 2020. Europe’s largest neobroker has a team of 70 people based in the heart of Amsterdam and over 2.5m users across 9 countries in Europe. BUX currently offers 3 apps that allow users to explore financial markets. Flagship platform BUX Zero makes commission-free investing possible, allowing users to invest in the brands and companies they care about.
Designed for: Consumers (1M contracts digitized / 250,000 customers) Founders: Dr Christopher Oster (CEO), Dr Marco Addelt, Steffen Glomb Founded: 2015 HQ: Germany, Frankfurt am Main + offices in Berlin, Vienna & Püttlingen Keywords: Insurance, Insurtech Funding: $43.8M Online: clark.de
One million Insurance contracts digitized CLARK celebrated its fifth birthday this year with a milestone of more than one million contracts digitized through its app. The business expanded to Austria in April and currently employs around 200 people at its four locations in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna and Püttlingen. High-profile partners include N26, and the Miles & More premium and frequent flyer program, who integrate the digital insurance manager into their service portfolio.
Donegal Hot Ten Cledara Designed for: Startups, SaasOps, IT Compliance, Regulated Entities Founders: Cristina Vila, Brad van Leeuwen Founded: 2018 HQ: London, UK Keywords: SaaS purchasing, management and compliance Funding: $930k Online: cledara.com
2021.
When running operations for a fintech startup with offices in 3 different countries, Cledara’s founder, Cristina Vila, saw first hand how difficult it was for businesses to efficiently purchase and manage their cloud software. She founded Cledara to fix this by building an all-in-one SaaS purchasing and management platform to help businesses manage, control and automate their cloud software. Cledara helps its customers reduce their software costs by up to 30%, save at least 12 hours of manual admin each month and simplify compliance with new Outsourcing Regulations that will affect almost every financial institution and fintech in the UK and Europe from 2021.
Cleo ClearBank
ClearScore
Designed for: fintechs, credit unions, building societies and challenger banks
Designed for: Individuals
Founders: Nick Ogden, Andrew Smith
Founders: Justin Basini (CEO), Dan Cobley, Nigel Morris Founded: 2014
Designed for: Individuals who want to manage their money Founder: Barnaby Hussey-Yeo Founded: 2016 HQ: UK, London Keywords: Habit tracking money management app, AI, financial health
Group CEO: Charles McManus
HQ: UK, London
Founded: 2014
Keywords: Credit Scores, credit marketplace, identity theft, dark web, cybersecurity
Funding: $13.3M
Online: clearscore.com
Because budgeting doesn’t have to be boring
HQ: London, UK Keywords: core banking services, payment processing Funding: £113M Online: clear.bank
The cloud-based clearing bank ClearBank’s suite of Bankingas-a-Service solutions help its clients to offer real-time payment and innovative banking services to their customers. In September 2020, ClearBank become the first clearing bank to offer multi-currency bank accounts via API, providing customers with the ability to seamlessly move funds between accounts with real-time foreign exchange pricing based on interbank rates.
10M customers and now tackling identity theft Free credit-scores which help people to better manage their finances and a credit marketplace have won ClearScore over 10M customers in five years. This year ClearScore tackled cybersecurity and identity theft, launching its dark web fraud protection platform in April and attracting 1M customers to its free service. In that time, ClearScore discovered over 5.3m passwords on the dark web and identified 440,000 actions that would protect against data breaches.
Online: cleo.ai
Cleo tracks money habits, and it likes to spot bad ones. Once people connect their bank accounts to Cleo, they can ask questions - such as whether they can afford to buy something. The habit-tracking money app also identifies areas where people spend heavily, assisting with planning and sticking to a budget. Since 2015, the business has launched in the US and now has 3M users - or “stackers, hustlers – BOSSES” - as it announced when it reached the milestone in March.
Hot Ten Tumelo Designed for: retail investors / investment and pension platforms Founders: Georgia Stewart (CEO), Benjamin King, William Goodwin Founded: 2018 HQ: Bristol, UK Keywords: ESG, sustainable finance, shareholder voice Funding: £1M Online: tumelo.com Tumelo wants to see a world where 100m investors have transparency over the companies they own and a shareholder voice that holds global corporates to account. The Bristol start-up’s whitelabelled software allows people to see exactly which companies they own through their pension and personal investments and to have their shareholder voice heard by their fund manager on topics such as climate change or gender equality. This allows investment firms to reach and engage millions of their customers on issues they care about at companies they actually own. Tumelo was established at Cambridge University, where its founders campaigned for the sustainable investment of their university’s £6 billion fund.
Credit Kudos CloudMargin Designed for: Financial Services Institutions (buy-side, sell-side, and outsourcers) technology vendors CEO : Stuart Connolly
Designed for: businesses of all sizes, individuals
London
Datamaran
Designed for: In financial services - Global banks, hedge funds
Founders: Freddy Kelly (CEO), Matt Schofield
Founders: Marjella Lecourt-Alma (CEO), Jean-Philippe Lecourt, Jerome Basdevant
Founded: 2015
Founded: 2014
HQ: UK, London
HQ: UK, London, offices in Valencia, Spain
Founded: 2014
Keywords: Alternative redit scoring, open banking
HQ: UK, London
Funding: $7.8M
Funding: Series A 2018
Keywords: collateral management, cloud-based
Online: creditkudos.com
Online: datamaran.com
The “challenger credit bureau”
Using AI to help banks prioritize sustainability issues.
Traditional scoring models don’t consider an individual’s day-to-day income and expenditure. Because of this, many borrowers are forced to pay higher interest rates or are rejected.
If you don’t know the name Datamaran, you might be familiar with a phenomenon known as the ESG “explosion”. As sustainability drives change, ESG (environmental, social, governance) is hot. This is Datamaran’s space. Trusted by blue-chip companies and global partners, Datamaran is the only software in the world that supports a data-driven business process for identifying and monitoring external risks, including environmental, social, corporate governance, geopolitical and technology issues - with the power of AI and Big Data. Companies use Datamaran to monitor emerging and ESG issues, and capture real-time analytics on strategic, regulatory and reputational risks to strengthen decision-making.
Funding: $15M Online: cloudmargin.com
World-first cloud-native collateral management CloudMargin’s Software-asa-Service (SaaS) model is helping many leading financial institutions globally – including Tier one investment banks, brokerage firms, retail banks, asset management firms and insurance companies and exchanges – to meet time-critical regulatory deadlines and reduce costs associated with collateral requirements that are growing dramatically. CloudMargin bypasses many of the shortfalls of legacy, onpremise software, enabling clients to experience rapid implementation and access to robust and secure collateral management workflow software.
By using open-banking data provided by customers when they apply for credit, Credit Kudos is able to create a far more accurate picture of someone’s financial health and creditworthiness. They do this by analysing past banking transaction data alongside factors such as whether people repay on time. Credit Kudos is the first regulated challenger putting control in the hands of borrowers by allowing them to share their bank transaction data through open banking.
Keywords: ESG, Materiality
Helsinki
Helsinki
Enfuce Designed for: Financial, Merchants, Fintechs, Founders: Monika Liikamaa, Denise Johansson, Tom Gråhn, Niklas Apellund and William Ekström Founded: 2016 HQ: Helsinki, Finland Keywords: Open-banking, payments, C02 emissions Funding: €10M
online: enfuce.com
Finland’s payments and open-banking pioneer, and the country’s largest Fintech startup, works with fintechs, financial operators, and merchants and has over 10m end-users in their platform. Founders Monika Liikamaa and Denise Johansson say that the Enfuce platform is enabled for the whole world. A company could start working with Enfuce in Europe and expand to Canada or Japan, with the same core platform. Accredited as an authorised payment institution by the
Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority in June 2020, Enfuce can now unlock a variety of opportunities for its customers, allowing insurance companies, accounting bureaus and mobile network operators to benefit from PSD2 regulation. In November 2019 Enfuce launched a service to help consumers tackle climate change. My Carbon Action is a purchase-based tool that calculates individuals’ CO2 emissions based on what they buy and where they choose to shop.
Individuals Underserved
Individuals
The FinTech50 2020
This year’s Fintech50 + Top Ten: What is relevant in a changed and changing world for individuals, businesses Top Ten and financial services. 2020
Busin Gig / Freelance / Micro
SME
Financial Services
ness
E
Enterprise
Fintechs /
Regulated
Financial institutions
Dawex Designed for: Business, Financial Services
Eigen Technologies
Founders: Fabrice Tocco, Laurent Lafaye
Designed for: Financial institutions, Corporates, Professional Services
Founded: 2015
Founders: Dr Lewis Z Liu, Jonathan Feuer
HQ: France, Paris
Everledger Designed for: Insurance + industry sectors including diamonds, art, luxury goods and e-recycling Founders: Leanne Kemp
Founded: 2014
Founded: 2015
HQ: UK, London / New York
HQ: UK, London
Funding:
Keywords: AI / Natural Language Processing (NLP) / Qualitative Data
Online: dawex.com
Funding: $60M
Keywords: Blockchain, AI, Supply Chain Transparency, Ethical Trade, Tech for Good
Keywords: Data monetisation, the data economy
Pioneers of the data economy Dawex allows organizations to source, monetize and exchange data directly, securely and in full compliance with regulations. Today 10,000 organizations from 20+ sectors rely on Dawex to build their data exchange strategy. In 2020, Dawex was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. In Financial Services, Dawex works with retail and investment banks, financial advisors and fintech companies.
Online: eigen.com
Bridging the gap from document to decision Research-led artificial intelligence company, Eigen, helps individuals and organisations make the right decisions by unlocking the value of their qualitative data. Eigen’s Natural Language Processing technology accurately extracts information from diverse types of documents at scale and can be integrated into clients’ workflows. The business uses machine learning algorithms to recognize patterns in text and give accurate answers to unique questions. This enables clients to use data in new ways to make the right business decisions: driving down costs, finding opportunities, calculating risks, and meeting regulatory requirements.
Funding: $37.4M Online: everledger.io
Using emerging technologies to build an ecosystem of trust Everledger develops technology to create a secure and permanent digital record of an asset’s origin, characteristics and ownership. This transparency helps industries respond to growing expectations for sustainable, verifiable sourcing. In Insurance, paper trails of asset data in a disconnected value chain make the insurance journey complex and difficult, opening the door to fraud. As high value assets change hands, each party needs to know that the asset is real and that they are protected from loss.
Farewill Designed for: Individuals, families Founders: Dan Garrett, Tom Rogers Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK Keywords: online wills, probate, financial planning, inheritance, wealth transfer, family assets, death services Funding: £28M (latest July 2020) Online: farewill.com
Protecting family assets at end of life Farewill set out to innovate an archaic industry and now writes one in every 10 wills in the UK, currently 10-12,000 wills each month, including 15,000 wills written for free for NHS workers since February. To date, the firm has raised £265m through pledged legacies created by their free online will for charities, such as Cancer Research UK and Save the Children. Farewill aim to reach £1b by 2023. Farewill also offers probate services and a simpler cremation service.
Fluidly FintechOS Designed for: Retail/commercial banks, insurance companies, emerging FSI Founders: Sergiu Negut, Teodor Blidarus Founded: 2017 HQ: London, with offices in Bucharest and Amsterdam (New York, Dubai, Singapore to open soon) Funding: $20M Online: fintechos.com
Accelerating digital transformation in weeks FintechOS’ out-of-the-box, opensource, automative technology makes hyper-personalisation at hyper-speed a reality in weeks just 4-6 weeks, to be precise. Their technology allows banks and insurers to transform the digital customer experience quickly and affordably and match the speed and flexibility of fintech startups. Clients (in 20 countries and on four continents) include ERSTE, Vienna Insurance Group, Orange Money, Hyperion Group, TBI Bank, BT, Idea Bank and more.
Designed for: SME Business / Accountants Founder: Caroline Plumb Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Business Financial Management / Data Analytics / Cashflow Management, AI Funding: $15.5M Online: fluidly.com
Using AI to transform how SMEs manage their finances If Cashflow forecasting and management was important last year, this year it is now critical to the survival of many SMEs. Fluidly’s solution is AI-powered “intuitive cashflow forecasting” which takes transaction data from a business’s accounting system and uses it to automatically forecast its financial future in minutes, down to invoice-level detail. Fluidly is extending its cashflow solution into two critical areas for SMEs: chasing late payments and securing the finance.
HQLAx Designed for: Institutional clients in global securities financing markets Founders: Guido Stroemer (CEO / Chairman), Olly Benkert (Advisor) Founded: 2017 HQ: Luxembourg Keywords: Payments, clearing, settlements, blockchain, R3 Funding: €8.55M, 2018
Habito Form3 Designed for: Businesses, Fintechs, Financial services Founders: Michael Mueller (CEO) Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Payments, clearing, settlements, Payments-as-aService platform Funding: $57.3M Online: form3.tech
Real-time payment processing without borders Form3’s cloud-native, API platform delivers technical connectivity and managed services to address critical payments infrastructure challenges facing banks and fintechs globally. Form3 recently raised $33M with investment from banking groups Lloyds and Nationwide. The collaboration will enable Lloyds banking group to simplify its payment capabilities and form the basis for the Group’s response to the industry New Payments Architecture (NPA) initiative, and provide support for enhanced data and new overlay services.
Designed for: Homebuyers / existing mortgagees Founders: Daniel Hegarty Founded: 2017 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Digital Mortgages Funding: $82.2M (latest: 2020) Online: habito.com Creating a digital end-to-end service for homebuyers Habito has helped more than 330,000 people to find or secure a better mortgage, to to a collective total of €4.9bn. Habito has made the transition from broker to direct lender, offering a range of buy-to-let mortgages. In August 2020, Habito raised $33M to continue digitising aspects of home financing and buying, And in January launched “Habito Plus,” which brings together a buyer’s mortgage application, conveyancing needs and surveys, taking its offering closer to a digital end-to-end service.
Online: hqla-x.com
Accelerating collateral mobility HQLA x’s long-term vision statement is to accelerate the financial ecosystem’s transition towards frictionless ownership transfers of assets, and it aims to achieve this vision by collaborating with its clients to design, develop and deliver innovative, technology-driven solutions for specific pain points in the financial markets. The first pain point that HQLA x addresses is to improve collateral mobility amongst market-leading tri-party agents and custodians. HQLA x and Deutsche Börse Group formed a strategic partnership, creating a joint operating model that provides market participants with improved collateral mobility across a fragmented securities settlement eco-system. In the HQLA x / Deutsche Börse Group operating model, there is no movement of securities between custodians. Instead, a digital collateral registry is used to record ownership of baskets of securities, whilst the underlying securities remain static in the custody location of the collateral giver. This enables platform participants to seamlessly execute capital efficient securities lending transactions for enhanced balance sheet optimization.
Liberis Designed for: Small Business
IDnow
Founders: Charles Mindenhall, Manoj Badale, Paul Mildenstein
Designed for: Finance, Insurance, Automotive, Telecommunications, Digital contract management, e-Commerce
CEO: Rob Straathof
Metaco Designed for: financial institutions Founder: Adrien Treccani (CEO), Nicolas Dorier Founded: 2015 / SILO launched 2018 HQ: Lausanne, Switzerland
Founded: from 2014
Keywords: digital asset infrastructure, crypto custodian
HQ: London, UK
Funding: $17M 2020
Founded: 2017
Keywords: Business Finance, alternative finance solutions
Online: metaco.com
HQ: Munich, Germany + offices in London
Funding: £89.5M (incl debt financing)
Keywords: Identity Management, Identity as a service, onboarding
Online: liberis.com
Online: idnow.io
Changing small business finance for good
CEO : Andreas Bodczekk
“Verification as a Service” Munich’s IDnow announced 385 % cent year-over-year growth this year. In September, the business, which claims to be able to verify the identities of 7bn people in 193 countries in real time, acquired Wirecard Communication Services GmbH to address the “high demand for its biometric digital verification procedures, boost service quality and reduce waiting times.”. Customers include Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, Raisin, solarisBank, Telefonica Deutschland, UBS, Fidor, N26, smava and wefox.
Liberis’ embedded finance platform allows partners like Worldpay, Global Payments, First Data and Nets to offer a white labelled, pre-approved customer journey. Customer data combined with Liberis’ technology and expertise allows small businesses personalised access to fair and flexible finance. Since inception, Liberis has helped over 16,000 small businesses across the globe, providing them with over £500m in funding and supporting 82,000 jobs.
Enabling institutions to enter the digital asset ecosystem Metaco’s Series A (July 2020) was oversubscribed - twice. Investors included Standard Chartered Bank and Investiere. Launched in 2018, Metaco’s institutional operating system for digital assets, SILO, enables large financial institutions to securely integrate cryptocurrencies, tokens, and distributed ledger use cases into their core infrastructure. The firm has built up a roster of Tier 1 and Tier 2 bank implementations, including at Finma, BaFin, Banco de España, ECB, and MAS regulated banks and exchanges. The $18m raised will primarily go toward Metaco’s planned expansion to the US, Western Europe, and Southeast Asia.
Modulr Designed for: Fintechs, Business, Crypto, Wealth Management, Accountants, Property Services, Alternative Lending, Payroll Services, Travel, Marketplaces Founders: Myles Stephenson (CEO), Jakub Zmuda, Martin Threakall, Cyrus Wadia, Ritesh Tendulkar and Kevin Hayes Founded: 2015 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Embedded payments, Digital payments for business Funding: $53.4M Online: modulrfinance.com
The first non-bank to launch a confirmation of payee service Modulr is the tech powering the often instant payments available from Fintech brands such as Revolut, Iwoca & Salary Finance, enabling them to offer consumer and business banking services without the cost or impediment of traditional banking infrastructure. In September, Modulr became the first non-bank to launch its own Confirmation of Payee (CoP) service to combat fraud, protecting Modulr customers and their end users. It’s not news that fraudsters are increasingly taking advantage of the fact they don’t necessarily need to steal our details, if they can just convince us to “push them money instead. CoP verifies against the account holder’s name for added security, giving businesses and consumers greater reassurance that they’re sending funds to a legitimate account.
Moonfare Designed for: Qualified private investors and their advisors Founders: Steffen Pauls (CEO), Alexander Argyros, Heinrich von Liechtenstein Founded: 2016 HQ: Berlin, Germany Keywords: Alternative investing, US tech funds, top-tier private equity
Pleo Designed for: Businesses (SME + larger), accountants (over 10,000 clients: Sept 2020) Founders: Jeppe Rindom, Niccola Perra Founded: 2017 HQ: Copenhagen, Denmark / Offices: London, Berlin, Stockholm & Madrid
Funding: $28M
Keywords: Smart payment cards for employees
Online: moonfare.com
Funding: $78.8M
Access to top-tier funds at low minimums and fair fees
Online: pleo.io
Individual investors have historically had a difficult time accessing private equity opportunities, including buyout, venture capital and growth equity funds. Moonfare allows clients to register and invest in these outperforming asset classes in less than 15 minutes. In some cases the Berlin-based fintech has reduced investment minimums by a factor of 100. Through a proprietary secondary window, Moonfare is also providing unprecedented liquidity to investors, reducing a fundamental concern for investors. Since 2018, Moonfare has offered more than 15 private equity funds to its investors. Fewer than 1% of available funds meet Moonfare’s standards - one reason why, as of June 2020, Moonfare has won the trust of more than 600 clients who have invested more than €350M on its platform.
Tackling the $3Bn Expenses Economy Pleo enables employees to buy the things they need for work, while keeping companies in full control of spending. For businesses, this reduces administrative complexity, eliminates expense reports and simplifies bookkeeping. The platform also works with various accounting systems to save time on repetitive tasks. Pleo pivoted its business model early this year in partnership with JPMorgan and Mastercard, and now offers company credit cards - more widely accepted than prepaid cards - to allow the business to scale. New features include out-ofpocket expenses, mileage, subscription management, instant credit approvals and invoice payments.
PensionBee Designed for: individuals with multiple pension plans Founders: Romi Savova (CEO), Jonathan Lister (CTO) Founded: 2014 HQ: UK, London Keywords: Pensions Online: pensionbee.com One simple pension and one clear balance
With PensionBee, savers can manage their pension online like they manage their bank account: checking their real-time balance, viewing their projected retirement income, and setting up contributions and withdrawals effortlessly. This year, PensionBee saw a 37 per cent increase in customers completing their first pension transfer between March and July versus 2019. During the last 12 months PensionBee saw the number of customers with a live balance more than double. PensionBee believes pension providers have a key role to play in the transition from the carbon economy to one based on 100% renewable energy.
Previse Designed for: SMEs/Corporates Founders: Paul Christensen (CEO), Philipp Schoenbucher, Giulio Rossi, Andre de Cavaignac Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK / Office: Glasgow, Scotland Keywords: Payments, Trade Finance, SME finance, algorithm-driven invoice payments, machine learning Funding: $21.7M Online: previ.se
Supporting SMEs through the late payment crisis The economic fallout from coronavirus is intensifying the problem which is threatening the survival of thousands of British small businesses, say Previse Previse algorithms analyse the data from invoices that sellers send to their large corporate customers. Predictive analytics identify the few problematic invoices, enabling the rest to be paid instantly. InstantPay gives sellers cash, confidence and clarity, by getting invoices paid on day 1, leaving them free to invest in their futures. Large corporate buyers save money, whilst strengthening partnerships with happier, sustainable suppliers.
Privitar Designed for: Financial Services / Healthcare / Retail
Railsbank
Founders: Jason duPreez, John Taysom
Designed for: Regulated and unregulated businesses
Founded: 2014
Founders: Nigel Verdon, Clive Mitchell
HQ: UK, London Operates: US, Europe, Asia Keywords: Data Privacy, Regulatory compliance Funding: $150.5M Online: privitar.com
Enabling a global client base to use and share data safely Privitar allows organizations to use sensitive data to gain valuable insights. By delivering comprehensive data privacy techniques and streamlining data provisioning, Privitar enables enterprises to extract the maximum value from the data they collect, manage and use, while minimizing risk. Customers include HSBC, Citi, the UK’s National Health Service and AstraZeneca. In June 2020, HSBC joined its Series C, expanding its strategic relationship with Privitar, becoming a shareholder after four years as a customer.
Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Open banking, API, Banking-as-a-Service Funding: $14.1M Online: railsbank.com
Register in 30 seconds issue live accounts in 15 mins Global open-banking platform Railsbank further fuelled its expansion this year by acquiring the technology and assets of Wirecard UK (August 2020). It also confirmed it had won the Asia-Pacific business of former Wirecard customer Wirex. Railsbank also launched in the US to offer its complete platform, including Banking as a Service, Cards as a Service and the first-of-its-kind Credit Card as a Service (CCaaS) to fintech and “brand” customers in the US. The new product will encourage increased competition and innovation within the country’s $3.8 Tn credit card market in spending and over 40Bn transactions annually.
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Copenhagen
Roger.ai Designed for: SMEs Founders: Cathrine Andersen (CEO), Christian Rasmussen, Albara Hakami Founded: 2017 HQ: Founded Copenhagen, Denmark, with offices in NYC Keywords: automation, all-in-one solution Funding: $7.5M Online: roger.ai
Danish founded Roger.ai is a fast-growing automation platform for small-andmedium-sized businesses looking to scale faster with fewer overheads. More than an accounts payable platform, Roger is an all-in-one solution for taking the unnecessary work out of bookkeeping, reimbursements, expense reports, fraud detection, internal communication and more. Roger’s Advisors platform for accountants and book-keepers helps businesses manage client work automatically, uncover new revenue models and design a practice for growth. In April 2020, Roger released new payment options designed for businesses facing financial liquidity hurdles and is rapidly expanding features to help SMBs where they need it most.
Salary Finance Rapyd Designed for: Banks, lenders, marketplaces, SMBs Founders: Arik Shtilman Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Payments / APIs Funding: $170M Online: rapyd.net
Connecting Businesses to all the ways the world likes to pay Rapyd started life as a mobile payments company, but soon realized that a bigger problem needed to be solved. Finding a way for fintech applications to scale globally that allows them to invest in expansion without building infrastructure or worrying about local regulatory issues. Rapyd’s “Fintech-asa-Service” provides a full stack of integrated payments, commerce and financial services capabilities that can be embedded into any application. With 900+ payment methods in 100 countries, Rapyd lets businesses open new markets, reach new customers, and create new opportunities anywhere.
Designed for: Businesses and their employees Founders: Asesh Sarkar (CEO), Dan Cobley, Daniel Shakhani Founded: 2015 HQ: London, UK Keywords: employee finance, social purpose, financial wellbeing, affordable credit
Sharegain Designed for: Fund managers private banks & custodians digital wealth managers online brokers Founders: Boaz Yaari (CEO), Liad Amit
Funding: $90M
Founded: 2015
Online: salaryfinance.com
HQ: London, UK
Improving the financial health of millions of employees
Keywords: Securities lending, capital markets, capital markets Fintech
Founded with a desire “to do good”, Salary Finance helps employees in the UK and US to manage debt, build a savings habit and access earned pay - rather than resorting to expensive payday lenders. Customers include BT, EON, Virgin Active, Capgemini, Carlsberg, Dixons Carphone, L&G and NHS Trusts, councils and schools. A Salary Finance survey of U.S. workers conducted in December 2019 found that access to affordable credit is one of the most desired benefits not currently being offered by companies. A June survey by the salary-linked benefits provider found that nearly two-thirds of American workers are dealing with financial stress, which has a significant effect on physical and mental health.
Funding: $23.4M Online: sharegain.com
Democratising the $2.5tn securities lending market Sharegain is bringing a fintech solution to one of the most analogue, complex and inaccessible corners of capital markets: securities lending. Sharegain’s automated platform enables fund and asset managers, private banks, wealth managers, custodian banks and online brokers to unlock a new revenue stream by lending their stocks, bonds and ETFs, while retaining complete control, full transparency and no upfront costs.
Snoop Designed for: consumers Founder: Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia Founded: 2019 HQ: London,UK Keywords: Consumer Champion, open-banking, Hyperpersonalization Funding: $9M
Tessian Designed for: Financial Designed for: the financial, legal and technology sectors Founders: Edward Bishop, Thomas Adams, Tim Sadler Founded: 2013 HQ: London, UK / office San Francisco
Online: snoop.com
Keywords: enterprise security platform
Open-Banking Consumer Champion
Funding: $58.7M
Snoop uses secure openbanking technology and a combination of human and artificial intelligence to deliver data-driven, hyperpersonalised insights to help consumers avoid rip-offs and make the most of their money. Founded by former Virgin Money CEO, Dame JayneAnne Gadhia, Snoop believes that consumers shouldn’t have to be constantly on guard to avoid bad value deals, products and stealth price rises. They want to help consumers take back a big part of the £12 bn cost of loyalty.
Online: tessian.com
The world’s first human layer security platorm Tessian protects leading enterprises across the financial, legal and technology sectors from being compromised by spear phishing, misdirected emails, unauthorised emails and other threats caused by human error on email. The cyber security specialist has built the world’s first Human Layer Security platform to protect every business’s mission, empowering people to do their best work, without security getting in their way. n London (HQ) and New York.
Tokeny Designed for: Investment banks, funds, mid-cap companies and distributors Founders: Luc Falempin, Daniel Coheur Founded: 2017 HQ: Luxembourg Keywords: Asset Management, Tokenization, Capital Markets, DeFi Funding: €5M Online: tokeny.com
Building the Token Economy Tokeny Solutions allows financial actors operating in private markets to compliantly issue, transfer and manage securities using distributed ledger technology, enabling them to improve asset liquidity. In June 2020, The Government of Monaco appointed Tokeny as its technology provider to support the issuance of tokenised financial instruments. The initiative will support Monaco with its upcoming regulatory framework to become the world’s first state utilising the benefits of decentralised finance (DeFi).
Tractable Designed for: insurers worldwide Founders: Adrien Cohen, Alexandre Dalyac, Razvan Ranca Founded: 2014 HQ: London, UK Keywords: AI, claims assessment in real time, touchless assessment Funding: $59.9M Online: tractable.ai
Helping insurers to settle claims in real time Some of the world’s largest insurers across 13 countries - including Tokio Marine, the largest auto insurer in Japan, and Covéa, the biggest in France - use Tractable’s solutions to speed up how quickly they can process claims for their customers. Insurers can use the AI to understand what their repairers are doing and to review and check those processes and repairs. Tractable’s AI is able to provide data in a structured format that enables better management of processes internally and externally, making insurers much better at datadriven decisions.
TradeIX Designed for: Financial institutions and corporates Founders: Andy Berti, Marcus Wade, Richard Tynan, Robert Barnes Founded: 2015 HQ: Dublin, Ireland Keywords: Trade Finance, blockchain Funding: $16M Online: tradeix.com
The “app store” of trade finance The financial systems that manage trade flows are complicated, old and hampered by increasingly complex supply chains. The TradeIX solution is Marco Polo: a network designed to make trade finance smoother, more efficient and more transparent. The team liken it to the “app store” for trade finance - they’re not providing services, such as credit insurance services themselves. They’re just connecting them to the network. Partners include banks (ING, NatWest, Bank of America), consultancies (Accenture), tech firms (Microsoft) and corporates (Daimler, MAN, Logwin).
Truelayer Designed for: Fintechs, Merchants Founders: Francesco Simoneschi (CEO), Luca Martinetti Founded: 2016 HQ: London, UK Keywords: Open Banking / PSD2 / Payment Initiation Funding: $72M Online: truelayer.com
Powering Payment Initiation The first company in Europe to offer an API which enables Payment Initiation, Truelayer recorded an eight-fold increase in consumers using Payment Initiation (PI) to pay for goods and services online this year. Estimated to account for more than half of the PI market in the UK, TrueLayer partnered with Revolut in March 2020 to allow the financial app’s 400,000 customers in Italy to connect their bank accounts to Revolut, meaning all information may viewed in a single App.
Yulife Designed for: Business Founders: Sammy Rubin (CEO), Jaco Oosthuizen, Jonathan Roomer, Josh Hart, Sam Fromson Founded: 2016 HQ: UK, London Keywords: Group life Insurance, financial wellbeing, gamification, health insurance Funding: ÂŁ13M Online: yulife.com
YuLife is a tech-driven insurance company on a mission to inspire life and turn financial products into a force for good. Harnessing AI and gamification, YuLife equips members with an engaging, game-like app allowing them to earn rewards from top brands in return for completing daily wellbeing activities (from walking to mindfulness) thus incentivizing healthy habits and offering insurance with added value every single day. Companies can now encourage their employees to boost their mental and physical health while also improving their long-term financial stability thanks to a new model for life insurance.
Qonto Designed for: M/SMEs 100,000 customers Founders: Alexandre Prot, Steve Anavi Founded: 2014 HQ: Paris, France Funding: €136M Online: qonto.com
The French neobank with 100,000 SME clients, processed €10bn transactions in 2019, Designed for businesses in France, Spain, Italy and Germany with 1-250 people, Qonto has a tiered and transparent pricing model, where the most popular option is €29.99 per month. Services include expense management, automatic VAT detection, accounting and cashflow management. Client testimonials include Jean-Charles Samuelian, co-founder of fellow FinTech50 listee: Alan. Qonto even, helpfully, provides a comparitor service on its site to show how it compares with other digital banks.
Starling Bank Designed for: Individuals, M/SMBs (1.4M accounts / 200k SMEs) Founder: Anne Boden (CEO) Founded: 2014 HQ: London, UK Funding: £364M Online: starlingbank.com
Starling now claims 1.5M customers, of which around 200,000 are small business accounts (July 2020). The bank onboards a new account every 35 seconds and regularly tops customer service polls, winning British Banking awards and, alongside Monzo, topping a recent Ipsos Mori poll relating to online and mobile banking services. Starling reports that it benefited from participating in government schemes to provide business loans this year. It also expects to be profitable by 2021.
Bunq Designed for: Individuals, M/SMBs (1.4M accounts / ] Founders: Ali Niknam (CEO) Founded: 2014 HQ: Amsterdam, Netherlands (available in all EU markets) Funding: €73.8M Online: bunq.com
Available in all EU markets Bunq has been a fully-fledged bank since 2014 and is now available in 30 European Union markets. In late 2019, bunq boosted its ethical credentials by partnering with Eden Restoration Projects to create a metal card that plants trees as users spend. This was later followed by a SuperGreen subscription, through which a user plants a tree for every 100 euro spent with any card. Bunq doesn’t reveal customer numbers but by July 2020, user deposits had grown to $654k. Bunq also entered the mortgage market, announcing a plan to start lending €100m in its native Holland.
Monese Designed for: Individuals, M/SMBs Founder: Norris Koppel (CEO) Founded: 2013 HQ: London, UK Funding: £80.4M Online: monese.com
Monese reached 2M ‘sign ups’ (up 1M from the previous year) across 31 countries. In April it became one of the first digital banking providers to launch a desktop platfom - Monese for Web - which allows all of its customers (business and personal) to view their balance, browse transactions and download statements. In July, Monese partnered with Paysafe to give customers who rely on cash ‘more freedom of choice’. Monese already has over 40,000 cash top up locations in the UK - through a partnership with the Post Office - and the new partnership boosts the total number to more than 110,000 across Europe. The international roll-out began in France, followed by the Netherlands at the end of August, with plans to extend the service into 11 additional countries across Europe.
Monzo Designed for: Individuals, M/SMBs (3M customers - Sept 2020) Founders: CEO: T.S. Anil Founded: 2015 HQ: London, UK, London Funding: £384.7M The bank that its customers love
By now most people know the story. Young man, co-founds famous Fintech brand (GoCardless). Leaves. Joins a startup called Starling. Leaves. Founds a brand called Mondo (early days) in an industry not known for generating fanmail. Five years on, the Monzo fanmail remains strong amongst the people who matter most: its customers.
Online: monzo.com A recent tweet put it this way: “I love how people who bank with Monzo are so passionate about Monzo. Monzo doesn’t have customers, Monzo has stans.” Revenues more than tripled to £67.2m and Monzo lent out £143.9 million, up from £19.2m in its 2019 results. With the notable exception of Marcus (from the old world but not the high-street) no bank, in the UK at least, trying to digitize banking for consumers has managed to generate the love afforded the neobank.
N26 Designed for: Individuals / M/SMEs (5M customers) Founders: Valentin Stalf, Maximilian Tayenthal Founded: 2013 HQ: Berlin, Germany Funding: $782M Online: n26.com The European digital bank with 500,00 US customers In August 2020, N26 announced it had reached a new milestone: 500,000 customers in the US. The average age of the N26 US customer is 36. With 35% in their 20s, 34% in their 30s, and 19% in their 40s. This is not the bank of or for Mum and Dad.
By numbers, N26 has more than 5m customers in 25 markets, who between them generate over €2bn in monthly transaction volume. One panelist at a recent virtual ‘Fintech conference’ opined that it depends who gets the funding. If so, then N26 may take comfort from allegedly having billionaire Mike Bloomberg, founder of the eponymous news and data provider, as a key US investor.
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Hall of Fame 2020 Mambu Each year we promote one European Fintech to our Hall of Fame see pp 50-51 This year, it’s Mambu. The Berlin banking platform has listed on The 50 three times: in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Mambu was launched in 2011 with the vision to enable access to modern financial services for all. By providing a modern cloudnative banking platform, Mambu is changing the market through its composable banking approach which is the quick and flexible assembly of independent systems. A team of over 400 spread across the globe is servicing over 170 customers in over 60 countries on 6 continents. Mambu is enabling customers to build a modern banking or lending offering, in the cloud, by composing a best-for-purpose solution for their needs which is an order of magnitude more agile and cost-effective than the legacy approach to core banking.
Hallof Fame New in 2020: Mambu (see pp 49)
Adyen
Crowdcube
Funding the wonderful
DarkTrace
Payments Founded: 2006 adyen.com Total funding: IPO June 2018 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Equity Crowdfunding Founded: 2010 crowdcube.com Total funding: $48.9m Exeter, UK
Cybersecurity Founded: 2013 darktrace.com Total funding: $230.5m Cambridge, UK
BehavioSec
CreditBenchmark
For global payments
Biometrics-as-a-Service Behavioral biometrics Founded: 2007 behaviosec.com Total funding: $25.7m Sweden / San Francisco
Consensus credit ratings Financial data analytics Founded: 2012 creditbenchmark.com Total funding: $34m London, UK
BIMA
CurrencyCloud
Fueling financial inclusion Mobile insurance emerging markets Founded: 2010 bimamobile.com Total funding: $200.6m Stockholm, Sweden
Powering global payments Global payments platform Founded: 2012 currencycloud.com Total funding: $160.2m London, UK
Cybersecurity superstar
Digital Shadows The digital detective Digital security / risk Founded: 2011 digitalshadows.com Total funding: $58m London, UK
eToro
For socialising trading Social trading / multi-asset brokerage Founded: 2007 etoro.com Total funding: $222.7m UK, London, Limassol, Tel Aviv
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Fenergo
Transforming how financial institutions manage clients Founded: 2008 fenergo.com Total funding: $160.4m Dublin, Ireland
Klarna Founded: 2012 kreditech.com Funding: $2.1Bn Stockholm, Sweden
Kreditech FundingCircle
For funding business ... to the tune of ÂŁ5.4bn P2P lending marketplace Founded: 2010 fundingcircle.com Funding: IPO Sept 2018 London, UK
GoCardless
For making recurring payments easy Online payments/direct debit Founded: 2011 gocardless.com Total funding: $122.3m London, UK
Iwoca
Making working capital instant Credit facilities for SMEs Founded: 2011 iwoca.co.uk Total funding:$605.5m London, UK
iZettle
The MPos pioneer Payments Founded: 2010 iZettle.com Total funding: acquired by PayPal in 2018
For improving financial freedom Online lending to individuals Founded: 2012 kreditech.com Funding: $519.2m Hamburg, Germany
LendInvest For speeding up digital mortgages Property lending & investing Founded: 2013 lendinvest.com Total funding: $1.3Bn* London, UK
MarketFinance
Getting businesses paid faster Invoice finance Founded: 2010 marketfinance.com Total funding: $128.5m London, UK
Nutmeg
The original robo Investment Management Founded: 2010 nutmeg.com Total funding: $153.6m UK, London
OpenGamma
For driving down trading costs Financial derivatives analytics Founded: 2009 opengamma.com Total funding: $50.2m London, UK
Spotcap
For empowering SMEs with tailored finance Business lending Founded: 2014 spotcap.com Total funding: $112.9m Berlin, Germany
TransferWise For services to the Revolution Payments Founded: 2012 transferwise.com Funding: $1.1Bn London, UK
WorldRemit For reinventing remittances
international remittances Founded: 2010 worldremit.com Total funding: $407.7m London, UK
Zopa
For starting the ball rolling in 2005 P2P lending Founded: 2005 zopa.com Total funding: $464.5m London, UK
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This year’s Hot 10
Cledara London, UK
Bringing visibility and control to SaaS spend Cledara is building an all-in-one SaaS purchasing and management platform to help businesses manage, control and automate their cloud software. Cledara helps its customers reduce their software costs by up to 30%, save at least 12 hours of manual admin each month and simplify compliance with new Outsourcing Regulations that will affect almost every financial institution and fintech in the UK and Europe from 2021.
Cristina Vila, Brad van Leeuwen cledara.com
Cerebreon
There is always room to celebrate more stand-out innovators. Meet our 2020 Hot Ten.
Doconomy
Finteum
Donegal, Ireland
Stockholm, Sweden
Kalgera
Helping the vulnerable to avoid insolvency
Digital tools for sustainable living
Using neuroscience
Financial market for bank treasurers
Cerebreon’s mission is to support the most vulnerable people in society to help them to avoid insolvency. By supplying data, debt insight and insolvency predictions to creditors as well as the insolvency industry, Cerebreon can have a direct and positive effect on financial wellbeing and ultimately survival as a result of breaks in family incomes.
Gillian Doyle, Kenneth Doherty cerebreon.com
DO is a mobile banking service that enables consumers to understand the impact of their daily choices. This allows people to adjust behaviour, and to compensate for their impact on the planet. The enterprise service, Åland Index, is a cloud-based service for climate impact calculations. Åland Index is the leading index solution for CO2 emission calculations for payments and financial transactions with over 1,000, 000 users and growing. Johan Pihil, Mathias Wikström doconomy.com
London, UK
and AI to prevent fraud
We included Kalgera for their focus on a demographic that gets (too) little attention from technology: the elderly and vulnerable. Founded by Dr Dexter Penn, a UCL dementia researcher, to develop a simple tool to address the serious problems vulnerable people face every day.
Dr Dexter Penn / Ivona Wolff kalgera.com
London, UK
Gardenia provides Marketbased, participants cloud endwant real-time to-end softwarevisibility of their cash solutions thataccounts, deliver as the velocity of innovative, pragmatic money in the Working financial and practical system Analytics increases.and Capital Liquidity solutions to Finteum is aof global enterprises all sizes financial and scale.market for intraday borrowing, The winner of thisledger using distributed year’s NadiFin technology (DLT) to alAccelerator Program low market participants in Luxembourg, to completely redesign selected their businessby processes cohort peers, that have been unGardenia’s actionable able to keep pace with analytics help technological achange company improve in recent years their working capital position without the need for Nolan, additional Brian liquidity capital. Zbigniew Czapran finteum.com Rupert Schneider
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Fronted
Primer
PQShield
Tomorrow
Tumelo
Purposeful credit to help renters
A unified API to simplify payments
The future of Cybersecurity
Sustainable bank for the digital century
Getting shareholder voices heard
Fronted’s mission is to help those renting their homes by offering credit to spread the cost of deposits which can often cost as much as five weeks’ rent.
Founded just this year by former PayPal Seniors, and backed by Balderton, Primer wants to build a payments platform that is paymentmethod agnostic.
PQShield are providing quantumsecure cryptographic solutions for software, software/hardware co-design and data in transit. Founder Ali Kaafarani says: “We need to be prepared for the threat landscape of the future. Consider the proliferation and lifecycle of connected systems across telecoms, automotive, smart environments and financial institutions – the need for advanced postquantum protection is evident.”
London, UK
It’s the first step for the London start-up (founded by former employees of Monzo, Bud and Apple) which wants to build a superapp for renters and all things to do with the stressful business of moving. Jamie Campbell, Simon Vans-Colina, Anthony Mann fronted.rent
London, UK
Primer can help merchants adopt new payment methods, and provide insights into how checkout options are performing - and costing. Customers also benefit from a smoother checkout experience. Gabriel Le Roux, Paul Anthony primer.io
Cambridge, UK
Dr Ali El Kaafarani pqshield.com
Hamburg, Germany
New neobank Tomorrow may be small (40 people and 30k customers) but its ambition is big. They exclusively finance sustainable and social projects. The independent initiative’s climate credentials are attracting customers who care less about metal cards and more about the planet + equality, Tomorrow Zero costs €15 per month. Along with carbon offsetting, it offers its users unlimited free cash withdrawals and any number of subaccounts (pockets) Inas Nureldin, Michael Schweikart, Jakob Berndt tomorrow.one
Bristol, UK
Tumelo’s whitelabelled software allows people to see exactly which companies they own through their pension and personal investments and to have their shareholder voice heard by their fund manager on topics such as climate change or gender equality. This allows investment firms to reach and engage millions of their customers on issues they care about at companies they actually own. Georgia Stewart (CEO), Benjamin King, William Goodwin tumelo.com
SUSTAINABLE FINANCE
ALIGNING ESG MEASUREMENTS TO OUTCOMES HAS BEEN NOTORIOUSLY HARD. UNTIL NOW. RICHARD PEERS ON THE NEW COLLABORATIVE MODEL IN SUSTAINABLE FINANCE
Sustainability’s New Wave
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n a previous life, it seems, I travelled to Borneo with my wife.
Thirty years ago, we were alone with a guide as we drifted along in a boat watching proboscis monkeys shelter from the rain under leaves, like old men caught in the open and hiding under newspapers.” We saw orangutans in the wild and helped turtle conservation as eggs were protected and released from the local rat invasion. Most striking, though, were the stories of deforestation and the quantity of primary rain forest destroyed to extract one teak tree.
Fast forward to the present day and we have all seen the effects of clear cutting in Borneo to plant Palm Trees and other mono crops. Many have seen the striking image of an orangutan desperately battling against a logger’s machinery, which personified the plight of nature for me more than any number of cuddly Panda shots. Most right-minded people are aware of the tragedy of bio-diversity loss, yet wonder how to balance the needs of local people to make a good living, companies to make a profit, Governments to be able to care, protect and develop and yet sustain the natural world.
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ne area that has huge momentum and potential to resolve this conundrum is Sustainable Finance. Simply put, imagine a world where we could go back thirty years and no decision would have been taken to affect that Borneo Rain Forest unless it passed a test. A test which benefited People (Local), Profit and Planet. If all business cases and investment decisions had considered what that world would look like in thirty years and all factors such as: local health, wealth and education; natural ecosystem; water; air; global GHG impact and more had gone into the risk calculation, would those Rain Forests have come down? Most pragmatic sceptics would throw up their hands and say probably! Probably because it is an imperfect world, where greed and corruption seem so prevalent. But frankly the short term demands of feeding a growing population often drives decisions that in hindsight seem so wrong.
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o, let us reimagine the way we test before we invest and try to fix it by adding the ability to predict future scenarios and manage to the agreed outcomes. One of the key acronyms in Sustainable Finance is ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance). These three pillars help define the test and the measurements but aligning to outcomes has been notoriously hard. Outcome measurement has been equivalent to flying a plane at 30,000 feet over that Rain Forest once a year and taking a picture with a mobile phone. Maybe worse we have asked the owner of the logging company to take the picture and send the investors their interpretation of the results. But we are at the confluence of change that should offer hope more than at any other time. The combination of citizens and consumers demanding sustainability; Governments legislating for mitigation and adaptation to Climate change; Corporates repurposing in the face of this demand and the financial services industry being driven to price in the risk of these threats to their balance sheets, has unleashed a wave of technology that
can at last provide the check and balance to ensure the desired outcomes are delivered. One example, if you are in any doubt, is Ocean Mind. OceanMind began in 2014 as “Project Eyes on the Seas”, a collaboration between the Satellite Applications Catapult and The Pew Charitable Trusts. Initially a collaboration to develop technology fusing satellite data and artificial intelligence to detect illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, it soon developed into a suite of services to help governments and the seafood supply chains to understand the compliance of fishing activities. See this case study with Sainsburys https://oceanmind.global/ seafood/ to learn how it works. Now we have the model, we know how to track and trace, we know how to create and value a circular economy, we know how to feed this data to the risk systems of investors and we know how to measure compliance outcomes and returns. Indeed a Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures building on the lessons of the Task Force for Climate related Finance Disclosures was launched in July.
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s recently reported in the FT, we are on the cusp of making more devastating short-term decisions in Indonesia. The plan on this occasion is to dump Nickel mining tailings into pristine seas renowned for unique coral reefs and turtles. A good intent, Electric Vehicle batteries, is creating the drive for Nickel. But this time we must use high quality Sustainable Finance stewardship to ensure the mining does not even start until they have a guarantee of sustainable mining practice and the investment manager has “state of the art” monitoring in place to hold the investee supply chain to account. If we had been able to apply these practices and technologies at scale in 1990 I feel sure I could have revisited that trip to Borneo with my children and shown them the wonders I saw, while noting the improvements to the lives of the local people. Richard Peers is the founder of Responsible Risk
RegTech
Reg Tech
Mukund Umalkar, Head of RegTech Partnerships, and Ian Hollowbread, Head of RegTech, at ING on RegTech as a driver for change.
Past, Present, Future
Regulation matters. It affects every one of our employees, our customers and our shareholders. We believe that ‘RegTech’ – Regulatory Technology - can be a fundamental driver for change and a source of value creation. The potential impact RegTech can have is further amplified in a post-pandemic world which has prompted a seismic shift towards technology and digital solutions.
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At ING RegTech Labs London we have been on a Imagine a solution that (i) curates industry leading journey of our own, with focused efforts on RegTech solutions in one place (ii) standardises how modern exploration and adoption. Regulators do not set and legacy solutions interoperate, without the regulations with single institutions in mind, they set need to agree bilateral or bespoke integrations, and them for the industry – our approach to RegTech (iii) provides an orchestration layer that manages is therefore industry led. Where possible, we aim application distribution, security and interoperability to bring together multiple industry participants for the desktop environment, in a way that is very including Regulators, Financial Institutions, Venture similar to what iOS or Android mobile operating Capitalists, Technology Vendors, and Advisory and systems do for the mobile phone. What we need is an Advocacy firms. Since 2017, we have run multiple industry platform that operates like the “Appstore” initiatives, across various sub-segments within the concept enabling discovery and deployment of regulatory chain – including within Horizon scanning, RegTech solutions and which can also adhere to Obligations Management, Regulatory Reporting, stringent risk and security requirements at a financial KYC/AML, Data Privacy to name a few – some very institution. successful, others less so! Over time, with experience and through proactive engagement with the ecosystem We have teamed-up with a strategic partner on an across the globe, we have built a unique perspective on ambitious initiative, called Project Orchestrate, that core challenges in RegTech adoption, what the future aims to build the next generation platform for risk and of RegTech should compliance solutions. “Over time, with experience and through look like, and how The objective is to bring proactive engagement with the ecosystem to go about building together the market it. leading solutions, and across the globe, we have built a unique legacy tooling, under a perspective on core challenges in RegTech We see a huge single platform, on the adoption, what the future of RegTech should potential in desktop environment. look like, and how to go about building it.” RegTech solutions. This platform will However, there enable orchestration are some structural impediments that need to be of multiple solutions into streamlined workflows addressed, again, with an industry-wide-lens. From creating meaningful, contextual and end to end userthe perspective of a financial institution (demand experiences. side), the RegTech ecosystem is still very fragmented with several, rapidly evolving, somewhat overlapping, We are currently in the process of on-boarding select point solutions. This makes it very difficult to choose vendors / partners on the platform, and very grateful one vendor over the other, especially in large complex for the support, and positive feedback we have had global institutions, that typically carry the technology from global financial institutions and regulators debt from legacy solutions and come from a culture of from around the world. Our objective is to keep this building solutions internally. From a RegTech vendor platform an “Open” ecosystem and enable deployment perspective (supply side), the long sales-cycles make of solutions at scale in a way is commercially viable things challenging, especially given the lack of an suppliers and consumers alike. We believe that industry-wide approach for evaluation, distribution Project Orchestrate is necessary to bring the supply and adoption of market solutions. Unfortunately, and demand side together, and to standardise how and too often, this results in a lack of adoption of our industry leverages innovative risk and compliance innovative RegTech solutions, and continued reliance solutions, further accelerating our respective digital on manual or semi-manual processes, across the transformation journeys and ultimately improving industry. customer outcomes. The good news is that these challenges are not unique and there is a proven path forward.
Contact Mukund and Ian at regtech@ing.com
European payments
THE BIGGEST GAME -CHANGER YET?
Sophie Guibaud on how regulatory and technology advances are paving the way for European payments innovation. Many see regulation as the antithesis of innovation. The notion of putting rules in place and making processes uniform seems contrary to the free-thinking and dynamic environment innovation requires. Yet, in the European payments industry the opposite is true. Regulation, in tandem with technology, has provided fertile ground for the fintech industry to thrive.
New legislative developments and technological advances have created competition where there was stasis, transformed legacy experiences and implemented safeguards that unlock new Open Banking services. All this has helped the once nascent fintech industry mature and given rise to one of the biggest game changers yet – Bankingas-a-Service (BaaS).
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The change-making regulations To understand the impact of regulation on European payments innovation, let’s look at some of the key European initiatives. 1. The EU Passporting System enables banks and e-money institutions in the European Economic Area to have one licence, in one country, but operate across Europe by “passporting” this licence, bolstering scale instantly and making expansion into new markets easy. 2. Next is the advent of instant payment schemes, including Faster Payments Service and Instant SEPA. Both schemes ‘do what it says on the tin’ and process payments in real time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This facilitates innovation through offering businesses a system to take advantage of which drastically improves the end user experience. In particular, instant payments allow for faster business transactions and build trust between parties on each side of the transaction. 3. And finally, the EU Payment Service Directive (PSD2). Aimed at creating safer, more innovative payment services, PSD2 fosters innovation and gives rise to competition by enabling a customer agency model where data is sourced, or payments are made, by a payment institution on behalf of someone else.
Enter Banking-as-a-Service The confluence of regulatory and technological advancements has given rise to the BaaS model. This model leverages standardised infrastructure from established players – ‘the pipes’ – to which BaaS players add layers of technology and regulatory knowledge to develop more intuitive services for enterprise businesses. Enterprise businesses can then provide their customers with banking services without the hassle of applying for their own EMI or banking license.
And these digital banking services are provided through APIs for ease of integration and speed unlike their legacy banking counterparts.
Unlocking the next wave of innovation The growing adoption of BaaS means the fintech industry, on the cusp of its next evolution, can focus on building more imaginative value propositions and user experiences. As well as providing the backbone for innovation, BaaS acts as a catalyst for growth and scale, enabling businesses to offer new services, instill healthier profit margins and reach new markets. The BaaS model has continued to evolve over the last decade. One area of evolution has focused on offering more integrated experiences across multiple geographies. BaaS providers can now integrate with multiple service providers to offer an ecosystem of services through a single API – becoming a one stop shop for banking and payment experiences across the world, promoting banking without borders. Access to this ecosystem of global and local partners, teamed with a large network of licences, enables businesses to scale and expand with ease. BaaS is also evolving to offer more specialised services. Some BaaS providers are narrowing their focus to particular niches catering for specific verticals like neobanks, PSPs, crypto companies or marketplaces, all of whom have unique banking and payments challenges such as payments automation or speed of reconciliation. It is a model that is also expanding beyond Europe to the rest of the world including the US and Asia in particular. With this new way of provisioning banking and payments services, that was once the preserve of established financial institutions, fintechs can finally implement the processes and capabilities that will supercharge their growth and see them deliver the next wave of innovation. Sophie Guibaud is Chief Growth Officer at OpenPayd
Financial wellbeing
Personal Green Investing at the Intersection of health, wealth and privacy
In the last couple of years, as my colleagues and I (in Europe, the US and Asia) spoke to founders, co-investors, and even neighbors, we started to see a common theme. A stressed generation is forced to take personal responsibility for retirement, rising education costs, inflating medical expenses, legacy infrastructure, and vulnerable data and privacy. “Money for Retirement”, “Long Term Care” and “Medical Expenses” rank as the top concerns among Americans (LIMRA - Top Financial Worries of Americans). While things seemed hunky-dory with post-
retirement savings and pension when I moved to Europe fifteen years ago, you and I know that that is changing fast as Europe continues to age.And this was before the COVID-19 era. The sheer scale (and pervasiveness) of the stress invites disruption and gives room for big, bold ideas. Innovation across channels and products, re-shaping of customer journeys and the modernization of core technology drive the change – and present the opportunity for positive impact, investment returns and leadership in thought and action. At the heart of the change and innovation is data. Data from across Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare is converging at points of overall consumer wellness, personalization, delivery, and security. Startups enabling a “Personal Green”.
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Based on our prior investments in Europe / EMEA, we did expect to find startups born in the crucible of European mega-trends: Open Banking/ PSD2, GDPR, RegTech etc. A year-and-a-half later, we have seen way more in the region.
interconnected and complex, and all stakeholders must respond to compete in a digitally transforming world. As examples: CEOs face the dual expectation from customers: understand me and look out for my wellbeing, and leverage my data in secure, transparent and responsible ways. Health care providers and employers, often acting together, need to re-think the data/intelligence and user experience to incentivize and encourage employees to make better choices regarding their financial and medical health behavior – reining in costs and addressing workplace stress.
We have gone on to invest in founders building a global payments orchestrator out of Zurich (which allows insurers, for example, to accept premium payments and pay out claims regardless of local payment methods); a “Moody’s for Financial Crime Risk” out of Berlin that will help compliant correspondent banking at scale; a global fixed-income trading platformWout of London & Magdeburg, and an insurance distribution solution for the digital era out of “A new definition of Fintech Cape Town. that lies at the intersection
CFOs and Chief Human Resource Officers are reexamining their benefit stacks across of Financial, Medical and However, we a broader definition Information Health: what we are most excited of wellbeing for their call the ‘Personal Green”. to be talking to employee segments. founders who E.g., helping believe in – or are the “sandwich creating - a new definition of Fintech that generation“ employee – care giver for older lies at the intersection of Financial, Medical adult parent and parent for young adults. and Information Health: what we call the ‘Personal Green’. Financial advisors and medical/social workers are increasingly understanding, Several startups we are talking to are both, health and financial risks to better combining data from across Financial serve their clients and patients. Services, Insurance and Healthcare. They are creating solutions that address the eye As we continue to expand our portfolio in of the storm affecting people’s most basic Europe, we are looking forward to work needs- financial, medical, and information: together with key stakeholders to explore, understand, and collaborate with an • Sense of financial security and adequacy. increasingly complex ecosystem, to better • Ability to meet our medical and long-term serve not only their customers but also care expenses. their own digital transformations, all the • Protection of our identity, privacy, and while, capturing value through financial and personal information. strategic investments.
Why does this matter? The three worlds of financial, information, and medical health grows increasingly
Samarth Shekhar heads The EMEA Region at SixThirty Ventures in Amsterdam.
And finally - a few words from our panel “DESPITE A CHALLENGING MACRO ENVIRONMENT, 2020 MAY TURN OUT TO BE ONE OF THE DEFINING YEARS FOR FINTECH. MANY OF THE TRENDS WE’VE BEEN INVESTING BEHIND, SUCH AS DIGITAL BANKING ADOPTION, ONLINE INVESTING OR THE TRANSITION TOWARDS A MODERN PAYMENTS STACK HAVE ONLY ACCELERATED IN THE CURRENT REMOTE CONTEXT.” Andrei Brasoveanu, Accel
“SILICON VALLEY BANK IS A LONG-TERM SUPPORTER OF THE FINTECH SECTOR AND THE WIDER INNOVATION ECONOMY IN BOTH THE UK AND EUROPE. IN WHAT HAS BEEN A CHALLENGING YEAR, WHERE THAT SUPPORT HAS BEEN NEEDED MORE THAN EVER, THE RESILIENCE, CREATIVITY AND HIGH QUALITY OF THE COMPANIES INCLUDED IN THIS YEAR’S FINTECH 50 LIST COULD NOT BE MORE APPARENT.” Craig Fox, Silicon Valley Bank
“MY PERSONAL HIGHLIGHT THIS YEAR WAS THE REALISATION THAT FINTECHS BRING A POSITIVE, FAST AND POWERFUL IMPACT ON THE SOCIETY THAT WE LIVE IN, AS WE NAVIGATE COVID-19 DISRUPTION. WITHIN A MERE FEW MONTHS, PAYMENT FOCUSED FINTECHS HAVE ALLOWED A 10X EXPANSION OF ECOMMERCE TRANSACTIONS, WHILE CREATIVE PARTNERSHIPS INCREASED ELASTICITY IN THE LENDING SPACE.” Elsa Said-Armanet
“WEALTH AND CAPITAL MARKETS TECHNOLOGY REMAINS A TOP THREE SUBSECTOR OF FINTECH IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2020 FOR THE NUMBER OF FINANCING TRANSACTIONS GLOBALLY”. Mark Whitcroft, Illuminate Financial
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And from us To everyone who contributed to this year’s FinTech50, from the insights shared by our panel, the support of our partners, and the creative energy of those who take such genuine joy in the brands they are building:
A Big “Thank You” Next up in 2020: Our first Global FinTech50, which will look at sustainable finance, financial inclusion and impact initiatives together - because the current situation has shown us that they are inextricably linked. Full details on our site: Thefintech50.com. Twitter: @TheFinTech50 and on LinkedIn: FinTechCity - The FinTech50
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www.thefintech50.com
