The FinTech 50 2019 - launch edition - The 50 Hottest Fintechs in Europe

The

FinTech50 2019: launch edition

Congratulations to The FinTech50 2019 Fintech at Linklaters. Redesigning Finance.

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The FinTech50 2019 This year’s Top Ten Alan - Paris* Monese - London Monzo - London N26 - Berlin OakNorth - London Onfido - London Raisin - Berlin Revolut - London SolarisBank - Berlin Tink - Stockholm Arabesque S-Ray * Azimo bunq Calastone Chainalysis* ClauseMatch ClearBank Clearmatics ClearScore CloudMargin* ComplyAdvantage Cuvva Cytora* Eigen Technologies* *New to the list in 2019

Everledger Farewill* Featurespace Fluidly* Form3 Financial Cloud* Habito HQLA-X* IDnow - Berlin Minna Technologies* Modulr* Mosaic Smart Data Nivaura* PensionBee Pleo* Previse Railsbank SalaryFinance* Simudyne* Sonect* StarlingBank Tessian* ThoughtMachine Tokeny* Tractable* Truelayer Zego*

The

FinTech50 Hall of Fame See pp 44-45 Adyen BehavioSec BIMA CreditBenchmark Crowdcube Currencycloud DarkTrace DigitalShadows eToro Fenergo* Funding Circle GoCardless

The

Hot Ten 2019 see pp 46-47

iwoca

Apiax - Zurich

iZettle

Aryze - Copenhagen

Klarna

Bankifi - Manchester/Amsterdam

Kreditech

Gardenia Tech - Luxembourg

LendInvest

Globechain - London

MarketInvoice

Neufund - Berlin

Nutmeg

OKO Finance - Tel Aviv

OpenGamma

Swoop Funding - London

RateSetter Spotcap TransferWise

Tully - Nottingham 11:FS Foundry - London

WorldRemit Zopa

*Promoted to the Hall of Fame in 2019

Welcome to the #HomeofFinTech Rise, created by Barclays, is a global community of the world’s top innovators working together to create the future of financial services.

We bring the FinTech community together to:

Connect We operate state-of-the-art workspaces in five of the world’s top FinTech ecosystems: London Tel Aviv

• •

New York Mumbai

Each Rise location offers a unique environment specially designed for the FinTech community to connect, collaborate and build together with Barclays.

Create We continuously pivot, evolve and adapt at Rise. Our awardwinning range of programmes are geared to supercharge a FinTech’s progress: from developing the first PoC to pitching for a major partnership deal. All supported by our Barclays network of experts, customers, clients and partners.

Scale We focus on the growth and success of our community members, and provide unparalleled support through our specially curated programme of training, events and workshops from across the world, helping FinTechs achieve their full potential.

To join our community, or keep in touch with the latest Rise news, visit or follow us on:

Rise is a trade mark of Barclays PLC, used under licence. Barclays Bank PLC. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (Financial Services Register number: 122702). Registered Number is 1026167 and its registered office is 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP. © Barclays 2019

The FinTech50

International Selection Panel We invite some of the biggest names in FinTech to select The FinTech50s - Europe and Global.

Ben Davey Barclays UK Ventures

Andrei Brasoveneau

Accel Partners

Eoin Fitzgerald Enterprise Ireland

Martyn Holman Augmentum

Kathryn Van Nuys, Amazon WS

Amy Neale Mastercard

Elsa Said-Armanet Stripe

Lucile Cornet Eight Roads

Nasir Zubairi The LHoFT

Don Ginsel Holland FinTech

Thomas KroghJensen / Jan Hammer Copenhagen FinTech Index `Ventures

Gregory Vincent INTL FCStone

Jack F Clarke Enterprise Ireland

Danny Gilligan Reinventure Group

Joshua Barraclough JP Morgan Nicolas Cary Blockchain / SkysTheLimit

Laurent Nizri AltĂŠir / Paris FinTech Forum

Irene Arias IADB

Mark Whitcroft Illuminate Financial

Mirna Sleiman FinTech Galaxy

Ajay Subramaniam Zone Startups India

Harrie Vollaard Rabo Frontier Ventures

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Lucy Demery Standard Chartered

Alastair Lukies Fintech-Alliance / Pollinate

Chris Skinner The Finanser /

Elly Hardwick UBS

Parul Kaul-Green AXA NEXT Labs

Kaiser Naseem IFC EMENA

Dr Rainer Deutschmann Dialog Axiata PLC

Tamara Cook FSD Kenya

ABN AMRO

Mahesh Uttamchandani The World Bank Sophie Guibaud Fintech advisor

Varun Malhotra Quona Capital

Craig Fox Silicon Valley Bank Jake Kendall DFS Labs

Menno Van Leeuwen

Oliver Bussmann Bussmann Advisory

Rohit Bodas Propel Ventures Jorge Ruiz FinConecta

Richard Peers Responsible Risk

Richard Hay Linklaters

John Hucker Swiss FinTech

Hisanori Ogawa Mitzuo Securities

Paolo Cuomo Instech.London

Nshuti Lucy Mbabazi EcoBank

Takahisa Ohira Julie Lake Deloitte Tomahatsu The FinTech50

250+

CEO speakers

160+

fintechs on stage

70+

countries

2600+ attendees

∞

networking

Get ready for the 5th Edition!

parisfintechforum.com

@ParisFinForum

Welcome to The FinTech50 2019 This is how we select the FinTech50 each year. We invite a group of industry experts to take part in a “lively” discussion, review a very long list of Fintechs, and select their chosen 50 by secret ballot. As a process, it takes months.

We don’t claim to be the ‘definitive’ list of Fintechs in Europe (that doesn’t exist). No companies listed pay to play, and the 50 is not the PR initiative of a single enterprise. It’s more of a collective - of people and organisations who buy, invest in, champion and generally eat, breathe and sleep innovation in the sector. The FinTech50 is, and always has been, a watchlist that reflects their extremely well-considered views.

This year, we approached it with a fresh lens.

With so many initiatives mapping ‘verticals’ (this or that ‘tech’) we focused on value. Specifically, we wanted to recognise Fintechs delivering value across the economy: to consumers, to businesses (of all sizes) and to financial services, from the door to the core.

Our map (pp 28-29) shows how this year’s 50 sit within that grid - or deliver value across it.

For those new to The FinTech50, we were the first list in the world to recognise European Fintechs for innovation. We began in 2012 with a longlist of 136 innovators. This year our panel reviewed over 2000, compiled through our own independent research, word of mouth and the simple option open to all of getting in touch. We do not rank the 50, but this year we have profiled the panel’s Top Five by votes on pp 12-17.

Our Hot Ten (pp 48-49) features this year’s early contenders for The FinTech50 2020. And for anyone wondering why some famous names are missing - visit The Hall of Fame (pp 44-45).

Thank you, as always, to FinTech50 partners for their invaluable support, to our international panel for their insights, to contributors Lucy Demery, Eoin Fitzgerald, Richard Hay, and to the endlessly enterprising global Fintech community for your inspiration.

We are now working on two new Fintech50s for 2020. Both are global and will look at Inclusion (Access) and Sustainability (Impact). We will keep you posted.

And, of course, The FinTech50 2020 is now open for applications.

Julie Lake Founding Director, The FinTech50 thefintech50.com

@thefintech50 / @fintechcity / @fintech50julie

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Global - Standard Chartered

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Bankingon Fintech

Lucy Demery, Global Head of Fintech Banking at Standard Chartered, on taking bank-fintech partnerships to the next level.

Finance was ripe for disruption following the global financial crisis, when consumers and policymakers began to re-evaluate their relationship with banks. In the meantime, tech-savvy millennials began to demand fast, transparent and personalised user experience. All this combined with a new

wave of venture capital to support new technology and business models built from scratch. Banking incumbents are slowly waking up to the reality of this new competition.

Financial services innovation is rapidly evolving – across faster payments, open banking, distributed ledger technology, artificial

intelligence, robotics, digital assets and cloud computing, to name a few themes.

These are converging in the space traditionally served by banks.

Fintechs have been successful not only by building this new technology, but by bringing a new approach to customer focus and execution.

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They have found success by engaging with previously underserved customers and high-friction areas, such as cross-border payments and lending. Many fintechs take a hyper-segmented approach to the value chain, concentrating on specific issues that traditional banks – with complex legacy systems and competing investment priorities – have been slower to address. Fintechs have also achieved incredible growth where they are able to launch quickly, pivot when required, focus on scalability and obsess over user experience.

Even within the fintech ecosystem, we see constant change and progression. Peer-topeer payments companies are expanding into business-to-business products. Challenger banks initially focused on current accounts, deposits and payments are expanding into credit, investments and trading. New entrants in consumer card issuance are starting to capture the lucrative corporate expense card market, particularly among SMEs. And of course, there’s the race for geographic expansion, heading both east and west.

to re-think our strategy.

For starters, we launched SC Ventures to enhance our innovation culture, test new ventures and learn from fintechs through select, early-stage investments. Some of these ventures compete directly with our existing business. For example, we have launched digital retail banks across Africa and in Hong Kong, separate from our traditional branchbased Retail Banking franchise in those markets. We are also rapidly digitising our Corporate, Commercial & Institutional Banking franchise, with new, market-leading API capabilities and data analytics.

We see new fintech players as important partners on this journey. For example, we teamed up with Ctrip and Hong Kong Telecom for our virtual banking license, recognising their superior online customer engagement. On the institutional side, we have scores of fintech partnerships powering our Transaction Banking and Financial Markets businesses. We have also launched a Fintech Banking segment, to offer our network, products and services to fintechs as they scale. Those fintechs are not only “clients” of Standard Chartered; they are co-creators and collaborators. We work together to build new digital payments and FX solutions; we partner to provide access to new markets; and we selectively provide financing to accelerate growth and monetisation.

“Our vision is to be the leading bank for the new economy.”

Fintech is buoyed by unprecedented growth in global e-commerce, with retail e-commerce sales growing over 20% from $2.9 trillion in 2018 to $3.5 trillion in 2019, according to eMarketer. This growth is led by Asia, where we at Standard Chartered have built the bulk of our business over the past 160 years.

In emerging markets in particular, fintech and e-commerce players have converged, leapfrogging traditional infrastructure to build new “super-apps” that are truly mobile-first and ubiquitous.

As an incumbent bank, we have been pushed

Our vision at Standard Chartered is to be the leading bank for the new economy. We want to drive commerce and prosperity across our network, leveraging fintech innovation. This year’s FinTech50 list is an inspiration. We look forward to partnering with you on the next phase of growth in financial services and digital life.

Ireland - Enterprise Ireland

Irish FINTECH success has DEEPTECH roots Ireland’s top fintechs are built on the appliance of cutting-edge science and the world is taking note, says Enterprise Ireland’s Eoin Fitzgerald.

“Deeptech”, which is generating buzz across the business world, describes technologies that result from the commercial application of cutting-edge scientific research. These technologies are creating radically new solutions, with the potential to upend existing products, processes, and even markets.

“Right now, deeptech is driving innovation in Ireland’s fintech sector,” says Jack Finucane Clarke, Enterprise Ireland’s London-based market advisor specialising in financial services, software and fintech.

“By harnessing technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, Irish fintechs are not just helping to improve business

performance right across the financial services sector but are creating and capturing new commercial opportunities for it.”

That matters because, right now, both new and existing financial services players around the globe face increasing challenges and opportunities.

“These are emerging not just from the digitisation of banking but from the advent of new payment platforms and ever-changing compliance requirements too, particularly the raft of new regulations that emerged in the aftermath of the financial crisis,” says Finucane Clarke.

Ireland’s formula for tech success Ireland’s deeptech capability

is helping financial services institutions to succeed. It’s happening in part because fintech is an area in which Ireland already excels.

“Ireland is really good at fintech.

Enterprise Ireland, the trade and innovation agency, has a really strong portfolio of top fintech companies in this space and, indeed, is one of the largest investors in fintech startups in the world,” explains Eoin Fitzgerald, Enterprise Ireland’s senior advisor for fintech, based in Dublin.

In fact, Enterprise Ireland has invested in over 80 fintech start-ups since 2014. Its portfolio of more than 200 financial services and fintech companies generated over €1bn in revenue in 2017.

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“Ireland is now showing strength in deeptech for the same reasons that it developed strength in fintech – because it has both a strong international financial services sector and a strong technology sector,” says Fitzgerald.

Ireland is the fourth-largest exporter of financial services in the EU. More than 250 of the world’s leading financial services firms operate in the country. Almost half of all global hedge fund assets are serviced from Ireland. It is home to operations of nine of the world’s top 10 technology companies, including Facebook, Google and Amazon.

Commercial innovation driven by academic excellence Ireland’s strong academic research base is helping to drive innovation too.

“Ireland’s most successful deeptech start-ups are either university spin-outs or are created through the commercialisation of the really good fundamental research being carried out here,” says Fitzgerald.

Right now, much of this academic research is going into fintech. Enterprise Ireland is helping, having launched a major fund to support fintech and deeptech start-ups working in areas such as AI, machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, the internet of things (IoT), and blockchain.

This work supporting the commercialisation of research is coming to fruition through the success of Enterprise Ireland’s fintech companies.

Many specialise in compliance – or regtech – providing solutions for anti-money laundering and know your customer requirements, including working with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s regulatory sandbox to develop robust solutions.

Governor Software took this approach to develop its products, which help senior risk and compliance executives maintain regulatory governance and oversight through clear visualisation of regulatory obligations. Its compatriot Gecko Governance uses blockchain to create integrated regtech solutions for managing compliance in the funds industry.

Sedicii creates blockchain-based products that

track digital asset ownership and verify data between organisations without exposing the underlying data.

Machine learning and AI underpin innovative mobile marketing solutions for the financial services sector, such as Xtremepush, whose product allows banks to schedule web prompts based on when a recipient is most likely to engage with them.

By identifying where customers drop off in the engagement cycle, it can help digital banks improve the speed and efficiency of customer onboarding, reduce the cost of customer acquisition and amplify opportunities for engagement, as well as for the sale of products such as loans and mortgages.

Irish fintech Trezeo helps provide financial stability for self-employed people working in the ‘gig’ economy, turning unpredictable pay cheques into regular income. In doing so, it enables a cohort to gain access to lending opportunities from which they may previously have been precluded.

Swoop, which received GBP 5m from the RBS bailout fund scheme, delivers AI-based advisory services to small businesses, simplifying and speeding up access to loans, grants and equity funding. Machine learning specialist RecommenderX, who has worked with companies like Mastercard, guides enterprise teams to better data-driven decisions.

Trinity College Dublin spin-out DataChemist helps organisations find insights previously hidden in their data, including some of Europe’s largest financial organisations Groundbreaking AID:Tech uses a combination of blockchain, AI and machine learning to create a decentralised digital identity platform that empowers people to manage their own data securely and privately.

It’s one of a growing number of Irish fintechs that have been sparked into life by scientific breakthroughs. “There is a lot of innovation going on, a lot of really interesting technologies

emerging and a lot of really good research being commercialised,” says Fitzgerald.

In Ireland, fintech’s foundations run deep.

Hydrogen Founders Matthew Kane (l) and Michael Kane (r) on:

New York I B A N

The Top Five

1 Onfido - London It was unanimous.

Following a selection process that involved five panel discussions and a ballot of 35 industry experts, Onfido emerged as this year’s top ranked #Fintech from a longlist of 2000 plus.

For Onfido, it is further recognition in a year which has seen it placed second (Fintech) in Deloitte’s Fast-Track 50 (overall 7th), and listed on The Sunday Times Tech Track 100.

The RegTech now has 1500 customers worldwide including Monzo and Revolut, placed at 2 and 3 respectively on this year’s 50. It achieved 342%

sales growth in 2018; secured investment from SBI, Salesforce Ventures and Augmentum. And In January, Onfido launched in Paris (its sixth office worldwide) securing clients Europcar and AR24, and partnering with IDEMIA, the global leader in Augmented Identity.

So far, so fast growth.

Significantly, Onfido is also establishing a global industry standard in a market that McKinsey has predicted to hit $20 billion by 2022.

“We’re firing on all cylinders innovation, winning business, bringing aboard exceptional

talent, expanding globally, and gaining recognition and accolades,” said Kassai, who co-founded Onfido in 2012 with Eamon Jubbawy and Ruhul Amin.

“We’re helping to re-establish trust and increase access to services by offering secure and remote identity verification.

Our mission is to create an open world where identity is the key to access, and we’re engaged in an ecosystem that is working toward a new, decentralized, consumerempowering portable identity that will help us get to a world free of fraud, with access for all.”

2. Monzo - London

This year’s Top 5 Monzo

One in 20 people in the UK now use Monzo and the digital bank claims to be onboarding 55,000 new customers each week.

Like most challengers, Monzo has transformed significantly since it famously crowd-funded £1M in 96 seconds (in 2016). By late 2018, it had topped a consumer survey by Which? emerging as best British bank for customer service. In March 2019 it was named best banking app at the British Banking Awards, and in June announced plans to launch into the US.

As adoption shifts beyond the early fanbase, Monzo, like its competitors, continues to innovate and ‘delight’ customers, offering current, joint and business accounts, alongside overdrafts and loans up to £15,000. It partners with TransferWise for international payments and OakNorth to offer savings. Monzo also claims to be 4x better than other UK banks at stopping card fraud, and 3x better at stopping identity theft. emerging.

But something more powerful is also emerging. 140,000 customers have used Monzo’s

block on gambling spending, and in September the digital bank announced a wider merchant block. Put your salary into Monzo, and they will advance you the cash one day early.

For the past two years Monzo has shared a full annual report with its customers. This year, CEO Tom Blomfield outlined Monzo’s progress, as well as its ambition to generate sustainable profits and remove barriers to banking.

Beneath the hot coral veneer, transparent, socially responsible Monzo is actively hard-wiring values as well as innovation into its brand.

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3. Revolut - London

Revolut’s rise has been meteoric since its early (2015)

iteration as a pre-paid card + app that let users spend money abroad without paying high foreign exchange fees.

Four years on, Revolut reports 7 million customers, and has introduced a range of features which allow users to exchange cryptocurrencies (with other Revolut users), open business accounts and trade stocks. Its global ambition is supported by significant investment and high profile partnerships.

A new partnership deal with Visa, announced late September 2019, will see Revolut grow to 5000 people and expand into 24 new markets, including the US, giving it a presence in 56 markets around the world.

In January 2019, Revolut partnered with leading London RegTech ClauseMatch to streamline management of internal policies, controls and regulatory compliance. ClauseMatch Co-founder / CEO Evgeny Likhoded said, “They have just announced reaching 7 million customers, which is an impressive

accomplishment in such a limited period of time and ClauseMatch has been the number 1 business customer of Revolut’s Business Banking.

“We are excited to partner with them, pioneering our regulatory technology to help Revolut automate certain aspects of their compliance and get to market faster where licenses are required.”

In October 2019, Revolut reported an almost 5x growth in its revenue at £58.2 million in 2018.

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4. Raisin - Berlin

Raisin has accumulated €16Bn in deposits since

2013, delivering more than €115M in interest to over 200,000 savers across 31 European countries.

The pan-European deposits marketplace, which this year acquired a bank, now works with more than 80 partner banks across Europe, including the UK. In October, Raisin announced its launch in Ireland, promising to triple interest rates on deposits for Irish savers.

The deposits marketplace has also struck partnerships with digital banks Monese, N26 and Starling, providing their customers

with access to over 500 savings products.

An earlier cross-border relationship, forged in 2016, with Paris-based Younited Credit has enabled the French company to develop and extend its savings offer in Europe.

Co-founder & COO at Younited Credit, Geoffroy Guigou, says, “Raisin took over our term deposits day to day operations and offered us all the tools to efficiently manage our offers in France, Spain, Germany and Austria. This allows us to easily adjust our funding strategy as often as needed and optimize our cost of funding – a key challenge for a bank. “The

benefit of this partnership is not limited to the operations and features offered by Raisin platform, but also includes the benefit of Raisin’s expertise on marketing and distribution of our saving offers, which lead us to conclude exclusive distribution partnerships with prestigious financial institutions.

“Raisin is unquestionably a “turnkey” solution that perfectly illustrates the Open Banking trend, a true inspiration for Younited when it come to the launch of our own partnership offer (Creditas-a-Service solutions, which now account for almost 20% of our activity) related to financing services.”

Discover an international Fintech hub in the heart of Europe The Luxembourg House of Financial Technology is a not-for-profit foundation formed by leading financial sector institutions, in collaboration with the Luxembourg Government and the Chamber of Commerce, to drive digitalisation and Fintech in Luxembourg's financial sector.

• 136 international banks from 29 countries • Largest fund center in the world outside the US with over $4 trillion AuM • EU Headquarters for leading technology companies such as Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Alipay and Rakuten • Home to 88 insurance and 216 reinsurance companies • 47,9% of the population are foreign residents • Innovative and tech friendly regulatory environment

Where you can find the LHoFT in the upcoming months: Speak with the LHoFT at one of the events below, or contact us directly to learn more about how we can help you drive your Fintech business forward in the EU. AFRICAN MICROFINANCE WEEK BURKINA FASO, OCTOBER 21-25

GLOBAL VENTURES SUMMIT LUXEMBOURG, NOVEMBER 19-21

CANADA FINTECH FORUM

FINTECH ABU DHABI

CANADA, OCTOBER 21-23

UAE, OCTOBER 21-23 SINGAPORE FINTECH FESTIVAL SINGAPORE, NOVEMBER 11-15 HONG KONG FINTECH WEEK HONG KONG, NOVEMBER 4-8

www.lhoft.com

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Join 3,000 festival goers now Delegates from financial institutions representing strategic, business, transformation and innovation teams can apply for a free festival pass!

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5. Tink - Stockholm

Sweden’s open banking pioneer Tink

launched its cloud-based platform in five new markets this year.

Originally a consumer-facing app, Tink now provides its four “pillars of technology” - Account Aggregation, Payment Initiation, Personal Finance Management and “Data Enrichment”- to banks and other financial service providers, allowing them to roll out standalone apps or add their own in-house .

In May 2019, Tink partnered with NatWest to integrate their Personal Finance Management and “Data Enrichment” products

into the British bank’s core mobile banking app. And in June, Tink announced payments giant PayPal as a strategic investor.

Banking clients include Nordea, SEB and ABN AMRO. Tink also works with Fintechs, including Klarna.

When Danish challenger bank LunarWay considered whether to build or buy, they estimated that it would require the work of one full-time employee just to build connections to the new APIs banks are required to roll out as part of the EU’s PSD2 legislation.

And that would only offer access

to current accounts.

According to Lunar Way’s COO, Morten Sønderskov, “Tink has an interesting Nordic perspective that matches Lunar Way’s ambitions. Besides the coverage and connectivity, Tink has a well-developed API structure that makes the integration and collaboration seamless.

“They’ve already proven that they can collaborate with a range of different players within the financial services industry, which underlines their ability to close the gap between banks and new

financial players,” he said.

Our Partners - 2019

Country partners

Media partners 2019

Impact partner

Community partner

The FinTech50 2019

London - Fluidly

Using AI to transform how businesses manage their finances After 15+ years of owning and running businesses, Caroline Plumb had experienced first hand the painpoint of managing cashflow in a scaling business: chasing late debts, trying to forecast future cash and worrying about making payroll.

She founded Fluidly to help businesses sleep more soundly by providing confidence, certainty and control around cashflow. Fluidly uses artificial intelligence to produce automated cashflow forecasts that allow business owners to instantly see their future cash position, maximise opportunities and avert risk.

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Alan*

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Charles Gorintin, Jean-Charles Samuelian

Audience: Businesses of all sizes FOUNDED

2016

KEYWORDS

Insurance / Health insurance

HEADQUARTERS

Paris, France $ FUNDING

Total: $86.5M Latest: €40M Feb 2019

ON TWITTER

@avec_alan

ON THE WEB

alan.com

Ranked in this year’s top ten, and listed on the 50

for the first time, Alan is tackling a very specific industry: the health insurance market in France — and soon across Europe.

Backed by investors including Index Ventures, the first new health insurance company in France in 30 years is on a mission to create a welldesigned insurance product with transparent pricing and policies that make healthcare more accessible. And it isn’t just a marketplace — the startup has also obtained an official health insurance license.

Arabesque S-Ray

KEY PEOPLE

CEO (S-Ray): Andreas Feiner Audience: Financial institutions, investors FOUNDED

2017

KEYWORDS

Analytics / ESG Data / Sustainability HEADQUARTERS

$

Frankfurt, Germany / London, UK

FUNDING

Total: $20M Latest: $20M, June 2019 Lead investors: Allianz X

ON TWITTER

@ArabesqueAM

ON THE WEB

sray.arabesque.com

Assessing the corporate DNA of the world’s largest companies.

Trillions of assets are now managed under responsible investing strategies.

Arabesque’s S-Ray combines big data and machine learning to enable all stakeholders to assess the corporate DNA of the world’s 7,000 largest corporations so that they may make better decisions for a more sustainable future.

Arabesque S-Ray® streamlines vast amounts of ESG information into one easy-to-use, smart application, processing over 150 million data points daily.

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Azimo

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Ricky Knox, Michael Kent, Marta Krupinska CEO: Richard Ambrose Audience: Individuals transfer money overseas

FOUNDED 2012 KEYWORDS Money Transfer / Remittances HEADQUARTERS London, UK $ FUNDING Total: $66M Latest: $20M Series C May 2018 ON TWITTER @Azimo ON THE WEB azimo.com

Continuing to win in a market valued at €1Tn. Azimo enables payments from Europe to more than 200 countries and territories in more than 80 currencies, reaching more than 5 billion potential customers.

In April 2019 Azimo secured a licence from the Dutch Central Bank to operate its services in the Netherlands. It also opened an office in Amsterdam to grow its share of the market for crossborder payments from Europe, a market valued at over EUR 1 trillion.

Azimo also announced a strategic partnership with leading African payments business Interswitch Group to further enable instant money transfers from 23 countries in Europe to any customer in Nigeria - Azimo’s biggest market.

In August, Azimo announced that it had reached profitability in Q22019, and that the volume of transfers it enables had increased year on year by 60%.

bunq

KEY PEOPLE

Founder / CEO: Ali Niknam Audience: 1.1M customers across Europe FOUNDED

2012

KEYWORDS

Digital Banking

HEADQUARTERS

Amsterdam, The Netherlands $ FUNDING Total: $45M (investor: Ali Niknam)

ON TWITTER

@bunq

ON THE WEB

bunq.com

The digital bank now available in all EU markets.

Netherlands-based neobank bunq has already expanded from its home base into Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain and this year it also opened in France, Belgium and Ireland.

As of 1 October 2019, bunq launched in 22 additional markets including the UK, making it available in all 30 European Union markets.

The mobile-only app offers both personal and business accounts and has partnered with TransferWise, allowing users to send money in 39 currencies straight from their bunq app. bunq is also enabling Apple Pay and Google Pay support for its Travel Card users in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Ireland.

Calastone

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Kevin Lee, Ian Taylor, Philip Goffin CEO: Julien Hammerson Audience: fund managers, distributors, custodians and fund administrators FOUNDED

2007

KEYWORDS

Trading, Global Transaction Network, Global Funds Market, Blockchain

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ FUNDING Total: $22.8M

ON TWITTER

@calastone

ON THE WEB

calastone.com

The world’s first blockchain powered global funds market.

Calastone featured on the first FinTech50 back in 2013 - and now makes its return, having launched the world’s first blockchain powered global funds market in May 2019.

Calastone has migrated the technology underpinning its network of 1,800 customers across 41 markets to a blockchain-enabled market infrastructure. A worldfirst and representing the largest community of global financial services organisations connecting and transacting via distributed ledger technology.

Calastone has highlighted the scale of tangible value the DMI could bring to the industry, forecasting more than £3.4bn in savings per year for the mutual funds market worldwide.

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Chainalysis

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Michael Gronager Jan Moller, Jonathan Levin

Audience: financial institutions, Government agencies, Cryptocurrency exchanges FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Blockchain, AML for Bitcoin businesses FOUNDED:

Switzerland Offices in New York, London and Copenhagen $ FUNDING Total: $53.6M 2019: Feb, $30M / Apr, $6M

ClauseMatch

Building trust in blockchains.

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Evgeny Likhoded (CEO), Andrey Dokuchaev

Audience: Fintechs, Credit Unions, Building Societies

Audience: banks, financial institutions, law firms, insurance companies

2016

KEY PEOPLE

2014

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Total: $9.3M Latest: $2.5M Venture Debt April 2019

ON TWITTER

@ClauseMatch

Founder: Nick Ogden CEO: Charles McManus

FOUNDED

KEYWORDS

Banking as a Service, Clearing Bank

KEYWORDS

RegTech, Smart Document Management

ON THE WEB

chainalysis.com

FOUNDED

ON TWITTER

@Chainalysis

ClearBank

HEADQUARTERS

$

UK, London

FUNDING

Total: $9.3M Latest: $2.5M Venture Debt

ON TWITTER

@clear_bank

ON THE WEB

clear.bank

ON THE WEB

clausematch.com

Bringing digital transformation to compliance.

Founded in Switzerland in 2014 by a Danish-led team, Chainalysis designs and develops anti-money laundering software for Bitcoin businesses. Products include REACTOR - an interactive and investigation tool that identifies offenders, visualises data, and shares results with people - and organizations, and API - a transaction based risk scoring solution that contains source and destination of funds to measure risk.

This year ClauseMatch opened in Singapore, secured $2.5M venture debt funding from Silicon Valley Bank, made its first move into the Insurance sector and partnered with Revolut.

In August 2019, Chainalysis launched suspicious cryptocurrency transaction alerts in Chainalysis Know Your Transaction (KYT), the real-time anti-money laundering (AML) compliance solution for monitoring cryptocurrency transactions. It is the first compliance alerts solution available across 15 cryptocurrencies.

The Regtech also moved into insurance, joining Lloyd’s Lab programme to help firms achieve significant cost reductions in the areas of risks and compliance, and improve corporate governance and oversight.

ClauseMatch enables financial institutions to comply with their internal corporate governance documentation (such as standards, procedures, controls).

Banking as a service for Fintechs.

The UK’s first clearing bank in more than 250 years, and brainchild of WorldPay founder Nick Ogden, is creating a new level of open competition and transparency within the UK financial services marketplace. ClearBank’s ‘banking as a service’ offering is focused on payment processing and core banking services for fintech startups, credit unions, building societies and other challenger banks.

In 2019, ClearBank added Dozens, SettleGo, TrustPay, Archax and TigerWit as clients, among others, and announced strategic partnerships with Nationwide and OakNorth. In February 2019, ClearBank, in partnership with Tide, was granted £60 million from the RBS Alternative Remedies Package.

24

ClearScore

Clearmatics

KEY PEOPLE

CEO: Robert Sams

Audience: Financial Services Institutions

FOUNDED

2015

KEYWORDS

Blockchain R&D, Ethereum, Seamless Tractions

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Total: $13.3M Latest: $12.8M Series A, Oct 2018

ON TWITTER

@clearmatics

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Justin Basini (CEO), Dan Cobley, Nigel Morris Audience: 10M+ customers in the UK FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Free Credit Checks / Financial Wellbeing

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London / Offices in Mumbai and South Africa $ FUNDING Total: $55M

ON TWITTER

@ClearScore

ON THE WEB

clearscore.com

Helping 10M+ people to manage their finances.

ON THE WEB

clearmatics.com

Building platforms for seamless and secure transaction.

Blockchain R&D company Clearmatics is designing, building and deploying peer-to-peer platforms for financial industry participants to transact seemlessly and securely without unnecessary intermediaries.

Clearmatics works closely with the Ethereum Foundation, and the company is an EEA Member.

In June 2019, R3 Director Tim Swanson joined the Clearmatics Board as Head of Market Intelligence.

This year ClearScore hit a milestone of 10M customers, achieved in just four years. The financial wellbeing champion helps consumers to better manage their finances, enabling them to access their credit score and reports for free. It also provides guidelines on how to choose the right credit card, mortgage, or loan.

In 2019, ClearScore teamed up with savings marketplace Raisin, allowing ClearScore’s users to access the high-interest savings products of Raisin’s partner banks.

ClearScore is planning to launch a new product, dubbed Resolve, which will warn users when they’re about to go into debt.

Cloud Margin

KEY PEOPLE

CEO: Stuart Connolly Audience: Financial Services Institutions (buy-side, sell-side, and outsourcers) and white-labelled by other technology vendors FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Collateral Management / Compliance / Regtech

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ FUNDING Total: $15M Latest $10M Venture, Apr 2018

ON TWITTER

@CloudMargin

ON THE WEB

cloudmargin.com

World’s first collateral & margin management solution in the cloud.

CloudMargin’s SaaS model helps leading financial institutions globally to meet time-critical regulatory deadlines and reduce costs associated with collateral requirements.

In July 2019, CloudMargin announced a partnership with AcadiaSoft, the leading industry provider of risk and collateral management services for the noncleared derivatives community.

25

Comply Advantage

Cuvva

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Freddy Macnamara, James Billingham

KEY PEOPLE

Audience: Drivers needing short-term insurance

Audience: Financial Institutions / Financial Firms

2014

Founder / CEO: Charles Delingpole

FOUNDED

FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

AML, RegTech, Compliance

HEADQUARTERS

$

London, UK / offices in New York & Singapore

FUNDING

Total: $38.2M Latest: $30M Series B, Jan 2019

ON TWITTER

@ComplyAdvantage

ON THE WEB

complyadvantage.com

Neutralizing the risk of global financial crime.

ComplyAdvantage is building the world’s only global AI-driven database of people and companies to power anti-money laundering and financial crime detection.

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.

In the past year, the RegTech has grown in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 300 per cent, has over 400 customers and employs more than 200 people around the world

KEYWORDS

Short-term Insurance, Travel Insurance, Social Purpose,

HEADQUARTERS

$

Founded: Scotland / HQ: London, UK

FUNDING

Total: $2.42M Latest: $1.82M Jan 2017

ON TWITTER

@cuvva

ON THE WEB

cuvva.com

Clear, fair & flexible app-based insurance.

When Cuvva founder Freddy Macnamara couldn’t get shortterm cover for an essential car journey, he set out to build flexible, accessible insurance, starting with short-term car insurance. Cuvva sold its first policy in 2016 and since then the mobile app has sold over one million policies.

Cuvva connects customers directly with insurers, providing comprehensive cover within minutes, and 24/7 customer support. Pioneering short-term insurance, Cuvva was the first to provide both hourly motor insurance and insurance via an app in the UK. The startup has expanded to offer personal car, learner, van, and travel insurance, thus far. Cuvva offers users accessible, flexible insurance on their terms. They also have technically smart handling image recognition of driving licences and location based pricing.

Cytora

KEY PEOPLE KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Aeneas Wiener,

Andrzej Czapiewski, Joshua Wallace, Richard Hartley (CEO)

Audience: Insurance firms worldwide FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Commercial Insurance, Underwriting, AI

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Total: $41.4M Latest: $25M Series B, April 2019

ON TWITTER

@Cytora

ON THE WEB

cytora.com

Transforming underwriting for commercial insurers.

Cytora’s goal is to help commercial insurers underwrite more accurately, enhance efficiency, and deliver a better experience to insurance-buying customers Working with commercial insurers worldwide, the AI-powered Insurtech is able to shorten the underwriting process from 7 days to just 30 seconds. This enables insurers to underwrite programmatically and build workflows that provide faster and more accurate decisions.

Cytora’s APIs are powered by a risk engine which learns the patterns of good and bad risks over time. This gives insurers a better understanding of the underlying risk of each business and helps them set a more accurate price.

Sweden - Minna Technologies

The subscription management platform that has saved more than €30M on behalf of its users.

“Minna helps consumers across Europe to identify, cancel and improve any form of subscription, ranging from streaming services to gym memberships to utilities. Six months after we launched the first product - subscription cancellation - it generated significant interest from major retail banks to have this product as an integrated offer straight from the mobile banking applications. Today, we are working with major retail banks in 7 countries, selling subscription management software enabling banks to provide this service to their retail customers.”

Joakim Sjöblom, CEO

27

Eigen

Technologies

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Jonathan Feuer, Lewis Z. Liu (CEO)

Audience: Financial Institutions, Professional Services, Corporates FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

AI / NLP / Qualitative Data

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Total: $17.6M Latest: $17.5M Series A Jun 2018

Everledger

KEYWORDS

Blockchain / Machine Learning / Sustainability / Provenance / Trust / Ethical Trade HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ LATEST FUNDING

ON THE WEB

Unlocking data with natural language.

Eigen’s mission is to help individuals and organisations make the right decisions by unlocking the value of their qualitative data.

Eigen automates the extraction and classification of information from documents. Its simple, flexible Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology accurately extracts information from diverse types of documents at scale and can be integrated into clients’ workflows.

The start-up uses state-of-theart 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. Clients include leading names in finance, law, and professional services.

Audience: All industry sectors where provenance and trust matter most, notably diamonds / gemstones / wines / minerals / art / luxury / insurance FOUNDED

ON TWITTER

eigentech.com

KEY PEOPLE

Founder / CEO: Leanne Kemp

2015

@Eigen_Tech

Total: $30.4M Latest: $20M Series A, September 2019 ON TWITTER

@everledgerio

ON THE WEB

everledger.io

Building an ecosystem of trust.

First established to track the provenance of diamonds, Everledger builds innovative solutions in markets where provenance matters and where transparency is key to ensuring ethical trade.

Everledger uses the best of emerging technology, including blockchain, smart contracts and machine vision to help risk and fraud for banks, insurers and open marketplaces. Industry sectors now include art, fine wines, gemstones, minerals and luxury goods.

In September 2019, Everledger raised £20M from investors including Tencent and announced plans to launch the world’s first WeChat Mini Program for blockchain-enabled diamonds to empower WeChat users to buy jewelry with more transparency and security.

Consumers Excluded

Consumers

The FinTech50 2019

This year, we looked outside the standard Fintech verticals - and instead considered “where is the value and what is the benefit - for consumers, business and financial services.

Busin Gig / Freelance

SME

Enter

Financial Services

ness

rprise

Fintechs /

Regulated

Financial institutions

Commercial Insurance

34 30

Feature space

Farewill

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Dan Garrett, Tom Rogers

Audience: everyone in the UK who needs a simple Will, Probate Services FOUNDED

2015

KEY PEOPLE

CEO: Martina King Founders: Bill Fitzgerland, David Excell FOUNDED

2012

KEYWORDS

Adaptive behavioural analytics

UK, London $ LATEST FUNDING

Total: $71.2M Latest: $32.3M Jan 2019

HEADQUARTERS

Fluidly

KEY PEOPLE

Founder / CEO: Caroline Plumb OBE

HEADQUARTERS

Inheritance / Digital wills management / Probate

KEYWORDS

London, UK $ LATEST FUNDING

Total: £8M Latest: £7.5M Series A Jan 2019

ON TWITTER

@Farewill

ON THE WEB

farewill.com

Making personal Wills accessible & affordable.

Over 30 million people in the UK do not currently have a will, according to Farewill, who estimate £1Trn expected to pass between generations in the next few years.

Farewill now writes 1 in 30 wills in the UK, and is forecast to write 1 in 10 by end 2019.

The startup has 50 charity partners including Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer and has raised £100M+ for charity.

A £7.5M capital raise in January 2019 saw further investments from Augmentum, Taavet Hinrikus of Transferwise, and Tracy Terrill ex CTO of LegalZoom.

ON TWITTER

@FeaturespaceLtd

ON THE WEB

featurespace.com

Fighting Financial Crime on all fronts.

Featurespace has developed a PSD2-ready fraud solution that can be quickly deployed by banks to protect their customers and be in immediate compliance with new and pending regulations.

An industry first, Featurespace’s real-time machine learning ARIC platform is now equipped with predefined PSD2-specific data feeds and configurations – including rules and adaptive behavioural analytics – and can be enterprise-ready within three months. More than 20 major financial institutions rely on Featurespace, a world leader in fraud detection and risk management, and the ARIC platform to detect anomalies, fight fraud and protect their customers.

In September 2019, Featurespace secured a with a major contract with HSBC to help identify financial crime.

Audience: Businesses, SMEs, Accountants FOUNDED

2016

KEYWORDS

Business Financial Management, Cashflow, Data Analytics HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $15.5M Latest: €5.6M Grant, June 2019

ON TWITTER

@fluidly

ON THE WEB

fluidly.com

Using AI to transform how SMEs manage their finances.

Cashflow forecasting and management is the gateway to financial decision-making for SME businesses. But models built on spreadsheets take days to build and hours to update. 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 invoicelevel detail.

Fluidly won grant funding of €5.6M in June 2019 and aims to connect 400,000 SMEs to its platform by September 2022.

31

Form3

Financial Cloud

Habito

KEY PEOPLE

Founder: Jeroen Morrenhof CEO: Michael Mueller

Audience: Businesses, Fintechs, Financial Services, UK SMEs

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $24.3M Latest: $6.25M Grant June 2019

Audience: Institutional clients in global securities financing markets

Audience: UK Homeowners, Prospective Homeowners

Lending, Mortgages HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $35.1M Latest: $6M Venture, Aug 2019

Founder: Guido Stroemer

FOUNDED

2017

KEYWORDS

KEY PEOPLE

ON TWITTER

@Form3FinCloud

2015

2016

Payments / Clearing / Settlements

KEY PEOPLE

Founder / CEO: Daniel Hegarty

FOUNDED

FOUNDED

KEYWORDS

HQLAx

KEYWORDS

Payments, Clearing, Settlements, Blockchain, R3

HEADQUARTERS

ON TWITTER

Luxembourg $ FUNDING Total: €10M Latest: €10M April 2019, Corporate Round

ON THE WEB

hqla-x.com

@habito

habito.com

ON THE WEB

ON THE WEB

form3.tech

Building an API-based global transaction platform for UK SMEs. Form3’s mission is to leverage technology to lower barriers and open up payment clearing and settlement scheme access to financial communities globally in order to move money in real-time.

The cloud-native Payments as a Service provides reliable and secure cloud-based access and processing for FPS, BACS, CHAPS, SEPA, SEPA Instant & SWIFT with no hardware or software required by its customers.

In June 2019, Form3 partnered with financially inclusive Fintech Pockit to give their 500,000 UK customers access to faster payments.

Digital mortgage broker to digital mortgage lender.

Digital mortgage broker Habito has helped over 180,000 homebuyers to source a mortgage or switch to a better one and its algorithim sorts through 20,000 mortgages from over 90 lenders.

In July 2019, Habito changed the game further when it was granted permission by the UK regulator (FCA) to become a mortgage lender.

Habito’s first mortgage product is a range of buy-to-let mortgages, claiming to have the widest selection of Loan to Values and fixed-rate periods currently on the market. Habito aims to cut the timeframe from mortgage application to offer in half.

Improving collateral mobility.

New bank regulations for liquidity, mandatory clearing, and margin requirements for OTC derivatives have caused a significant rise in demand for High Quality Liquid Assets (HQLAs).

Luxembourg’s HQLA x provides market participants with a platform that helps improve collateral fluidity by creating a new, more efficient, more transparent and more cost effective marketplace for liquidity transfers. Clients report increased efficiencies and resilience, along with the potential for significant savings. Deutsche Boerse increased its stake in HQLA x in January, reporting “significant progress’ with the initiative to build a blockchain-based frontto-back operating model for securities lending.

36 32

IDnow

KEY PEOPLE

CEO: Andreas Bodczek Founders: Armin Bauer, Felix Haas, Sebastian Baerhold Dennis von Ferenczy Audience: online businesses (including Fintechs), banks and financial institutions

Minna Technologies Modulr

KEYWORDS

Identity Management / Identity as a Service

HEADQUARTERS

Germany, Munich $ FUNDING Total: $12M Latest: Series B, May 2018

Instant verification of id documents.

IDnow’s Identity as a Service now claims more than 250 customers, including N26, Commerzbank and UBS. In August 2019, IDnow launched AutoIdent, which recognizes passports and other id documents.

The program captures both the machine-readable parts of the document, as well as non-machinereadable areas, and includes a biometric video examination and ‘liveness detection’. IDnow has a false acceptance rate of 0.05% far more accurate than the 0.1% required by law.

Audience: Retail Banks, Merchants (benefit to subscribers)

KEYWORDS

Subscription Economy / subscription management platform

HEADQUARTERS

Gothenburg, Sweden $ FUNDING

Total €7.5M Latest: €6.2M Series A, May 2019

ON THE WEB

idnow.io

Founders: Joakim Sjöblom, Jonas Karles, Marcus Lönnberg

FOUNDED

ON TWITTER

@IDnowGmbH

KEY PEOPLE

2014

FOUNDED

2014

ON TWITTER

@Minnatech

ON THE WEB

minnatechnologies.com

Helping subscribers to save money through their online bank.

Minna reports that Europeans now spend €334 per month on seven different subscription services, and that 1 in 3 unknowingly pay for services they no longer use.

The subscription management platform helps consumers to keep track of recurring costs/subscriptions, to cancel subscriptions and improve them.

This year the Stockholm-based start-up launched a pilot with ING in Belgium, and partnered with Visa to to enable subscription management through European retail banks.

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Myles Stephenson, Ritesh Tendulker FOUNDED

2015

KEYWORDS

Business Payments Platform / Payments as a Service

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London (offices in Edinburgh & Dublin) $ FUNDING

Total: $43.15M Latest: $12.5M Capability & Innovation Fund, August 2019

ON TWITTER

@ModulrFinance

ON THE WEB

modulrfinance.com

Replacing Business Bank accounts for payments.

Modulr accounts come with sort codes, access to payment schemes allowing businesses to Instantly open as many as they need and automate how they get paid, reconcile and make payments.

In February, Sage outsourced all their payments and payroll to Modulr to simplify the task of managing accounts payable and payroll payments for millions of UK businesses.

One of the first Fintechs to be directly integrated into the Bank of England Payment Rails, Modulr has transacted over £10Bn through their platform and has grown from 40 to over 100 people in the past year.

33

Monese*

KEY PEOPLE

CEO / Founder: Norris Koppel Audience: 1M customers FOUNDED

2013

KEYWORDS

Digital Banking / Financial Inclusion

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ FUNDING

Total $80.4M Latest: $3M June 2019

ON TWITTER

@MyMonese

ON THE WEB

monese.com

In the 2019 top ten, Monese was originally founded

to help those with no UK credit history open a bank account in the UK. Today, the digital bank has expanded to 31 countries and has translated its app into 12 different languages. This year it hit 1M customers - and 70% of incoming funds are salary payments (where people have their salary paid in each month).

In July 2019, Monese launched a joint service with PayPal, allowing Monese customers to buy and sell to any of the payments firm’s 277M consumers and merchants around the world. In September 2019, Monese announced a partnership with pan-European deposits marketplace Raisin.

Monzo*

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Tom Blomfield (CEO) Gary Dolman, Paul Rippon, Jonas Huckestein, Jason Bates

FOUNDED

KEY PEOPLE Founder / CEO: Matthew Hodgson Audience: Financial Institutions

KEYWORDS

2014

Audience: Individuals, Micro and SME businesses

2015

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ FUNDING

Total: $394.7M Latest: $137.35M Series F, June 2019

FOUNDED

Digital Banking

Mosaic SmartData

@monzo

ON THE WEB

monzo.com

In this year’s top three, Monzo now claims 1 in 20 people in the UK as a customer (3M at September 2019). The digital bank onboards 55,000 new customers each week, and in June 2019 raised $137.5M to fund expansion in the UK and overseas.

Read more about Monzo on page 14

Data Analytics / Capital Markets / FICC trading data

ON TWITTER

2019 initiatives include Get Paid Early, whereby Monzo advances monthly salary to customers a day early, and the introduction of business banking. Monzo also expanded its consumer loans service, enabling customers to borrow up to £15,000.

KEYWORDS

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Latest: $9M, April 2019

ON TWITTER

@MosaicSmartData

ON THE WEB

mosaicsmartdata.com

Uniting FICC trading data into one real-time viewpoint.

Mosaic Smart Data allows capital market participants to unite all of their fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) trading data into one powerful, real time viewpoint. This enables each function to see exactly what is going on in the FICC business in real time and at any level of detail, from the macro to the atomic.

Mosaic’s technology uses predictive analytics based on historical trading patterns to allow banks to better understand the behaviour of their own customers and thereby increase market share and maximise profitability.

Denmark - Pleo

Pleo

BANKING > UNBOUND Reinventing business expenses

“We founded Pleo to remove the pain-points of expense management. We democratise business spending with a smart payment card and a mobile app available to any employee who needs to buy stuff on behalf of their employer. Our technology allows the user to smoothly snap a photo of the receipt, while the expense reporting is fully automated, allowing for great overviews of team spending behaviour and trends. Our product supports workplaces built on trust, transparency and autonomy. Earlier this year, we raised a $56M Series B – the largest for any Danish startup ever. We are a 150-strong team from 38 nationalities.” Jeppe Rindom, Co-Founder: Pleo

35

N26* KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Valentin Stalf (CEO) Maximilian Tayenthal CEO: N26 bank: Markus Gunter, Richard Groeneveld Audience: 3.5M customers

FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Digital Banking

HEADQUARTERS

Berlin, Germany $ FUNDING Total: $670M Latest: $170M Series D July 2019 ON TWITTER

@n26

ON THE WEB

n26.com

In this year’s top ten, N26 now has 1,300 employees

and more than 3.5M customers in 26 countries across Europe - and now also US. Since launching in the UK last November, N26 has onboarded more than 1,000 new customers each day. In July 2019, the digital bank won a fresh round of funding from investors including China’s Tencent, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, and Allianz X. It also launched its initial US offering which includes an N26 account via a federally regulated and FIDC-insured bank, Axos Bank, and a Visa Debit Card.

Nivaura KEY PEOPLE

Founder: Avtar Sehra Audience: FOUNDED

2016

KEYWORDS

Digital Capital Markets / Direct Issuance / Tokenized Securities / Digital Investment Banking HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Total: $20M Latest: $20M, March 2019 ON TWITTER

@nivaura

ON THE WEB

nivaura.com

Bringing primary markets into the digital age.

‘Next Generation Capital markets’ firm Nivaura is a digital platform that streamlines and automates the entire end-to-end process of issuing financial instruments and their ongoing administration and lifecycle management.

Nivaura’s Direct Issuance Platform is a deployment that an advising bank can offer to their issuers as a client-branded self service solution for them to manage the deal lifecycle. The innovator behind the world’s first automated cryptocurrency-denominated bond issuance closed a $20M seed round late last year with an investor group led by London Stock Exchange Group Plc and included Banco Santander SA, Aegon NV.

36 40

OakNorth*

2015

Lending platform, Debt finance for fast-growth businesses

HEADQUARTERS

ON TWITTER

@OakNorth

ON THE WEB

oaknorth.com

Ranked in this year’s top ten, OakNorth is redefining

lending to small and medium-sized businesses globally.

Its platform is available to financial institutions to implement alongside their own proprietary systems and is being used by nine banks globally, including OakNorth Bank in the UK and NIBC Bank in the Netherlands.

Since inception, OakNorth has secured over $1billion from several investors, including: Clermont Group, Coltrane, EDBI of Singapore, GIC, Indiabulls, NIBC, Toscafund, and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The business is valued at $2.8bn and is one of the only fintechs to have maintained a sustained profit.

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Husayn Kassai (CEO) Eamon Jubbawy, Ruhul Amin FOUNDED

2012

KEYWORDS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $1Bn Latest: £440M Series B Feb 2019

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Rishi Khosla (CEO) Joel Perlman FOUNDED

Onfido*

Compliance, Risk & Regulation, AML, KYC, ID Verification

KEYWORDS

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK - offices in San Francisco, New York, Lisbon, Paris, New Delhi, Singapore $ FUNDING

Total: $110.3M Latest: $50M Series C April 2019

ON TWITTER

@Onfido

ON THE WEB

onfido.com

Our top ranked Fintech, Onfido now helps over 1500 companies - including Revolut, Bitstamp and Remitly - to onboard customers safely using its AI powered technologies.

A “new identity standard for the internet”, Onfido saw 342% sales growth in 2018 and fields a team of 250 people across the world.

In April 2019, the RegTech secured $50M Series C from SBI, Salesforce Ventures and Augmentum Fintech.

Read more about Onfido on page 13

PensionBee

Founders: Romi Savova (CEO), Jonathan Lister (CTO)

KEY PEOPLE

Audience: Individuals with multiple pensions FOUNDED

2015

KEYWORDS

Personal pensions, Savings

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Latest: December 2017 ON TWITTER

@pensionbee ON THE WEB

pensionbee.com

Helping people to simplify their personal pensions.

With approximately £1Tn of direct contribution pension assets in the UK, PensionBee’s aim is to help people who often move jobs to bring their pensions together into a single online platform.

PensionBee has changed a lengthy pension transfer process to a fiveminute sign-up via a smartphone, and provides each customer with a dedicated account manager.

The pension consolidation platform now claims 200,000 customers and $600M+ assets under management.

37

Pleo

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Jeppe Rindom, Niccolo Perra Audience: Businesses FOUNDED

2015

KEYWORDS

Smart Payment Cards, Automated Expense Reporting, Business Processes

HEADQUARTERS

Copenhagen, Denmark + offices in London $ FUNDING

Total: $78.3M Latest: $56M Series B May 2019

ON TWITTER

@pleo

ON THE WEB

pleo.io

Reinventing business expenses.

Their own experience led Jeppe Rindom and Niccolo Perra to the view that ‘out-of-pocket’ purchasing and expense reports were broken concepts. Their solution, Pleo, removes the pain point for employees left out of pocket waiting for expenses to be reimbursed. The ‘business spending platform’ combines a pre-paid Mastercard with an app and has over 3,500 business clients across the U.K., Denmark, Germany and Sweden. A $56M funding round in May 2019 will allow the business to expand to 400 people by 2020.

Pleo also plans to accelerate product development, with the aim of servicing “the entire purchase process” for SMEs across Europe.

Previse

KEY PEOPLE

CEO / Founder: Paul Christensen

Audience: SMEs FOUNDED

2016

KEYWORDS

Payments, Trade Finance, SMEs

ON TWITTER

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Tamaz Georgadze (CEO), Frank Freund, Michael Stephan

Audience: Individual savers, banks and fintechs (partners) FOUNDED

2013

KEYWORDS

Savings, Deposits, Marketplace, Pan-European

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $10.7M Latest: $7M Series A, Aug 2018 Lead investor: Augmentum FinTech / Bessemer Venture Partners

Raisin*

@getsmepaid ON THE WEB

privi.se

Tackling slow payments on behalf of SMEs. SMEs sell approximately $31.5Tn to large firms globally – and in Europe 88% report frequent late payments.

Previse’s AI-driven payment technology analyses invoice data from large corporations to tackle the persistent problem of slow invoice payments to SME suppliers and enables payment as soon as an invoice is received.

In July 2019, Previse announced a collaboration with Beat Syndicate 4242 of Lloyd’s to provide an added level of assurance to the institutions which fund its instant payment schemes. By reducing the risks to their capital, Previse is able to further bring down the costs of instant invoice payments, widening access for the SME suppliers who need this service most.

$

HEADQUARTERS

Germany, Berlin FUNDING

Total: $206M Latest: $28M June 2019 ON TWITTER

@raisin_EN

ON THE WEB

raisin.com

In this year’s top five, Raisin is the #1 online

marketplace for term deposits worldwide, with more than 200,000 customers and in excess of €16 billion in assets invested via its platforms.

This year, Raisin announced a partnership with Monese, also ranked top ten, giving Monese customers access to Raisin’s cross-border deposits marketplace.

Raisin launched in Ireland in October 2019, giving Irish savers the opportunity to earn up to three times more on their savings.

Read more about Raisin on page 16

38

42

Railsbank

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Nigel Verdon (CEO), Clive Mitchell

Audience: businesses regulated and unregulated / partner banks

Revolut*

KEYWORDS

Banking as a Service, Open Banking HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $15M Latest: $10M Series A, Sept 2019

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Nikolay Storonsky (CEO), Vlad Yatsenko Audience: Consumers (7M), Freelance, SMEs FOUNDED

2015

KEYWORDS

Digital banking alternative, Money transfer

FOUNDED

2016

@railsbank ON THE WEB

railsbank.com

Access to global transactional banking in 5 lines of code.

Having founded one Fintech giant, (Currencycloud: see The FinTech50 Hall of Fame p18), Nigel Verdon co-founded Railsbank in 2016 with Clive Mitchell.

Railsbank is an API based financial innovation and growth platform, designed for developers and product managers to rapidly conceptualise, prototype, build, launch and scale a financial services business, whether it be in one country, or around the world. Railsbank has won a haul of awards for its product, including being named winner of PITCH 2018 at MoneyConf, Web Summit’s fintech conference.

ON TWITTER

@RevolutApp ON THE WEB

revolut.com

FOUNDED

2015

KEYWORDS

Employee finance, Lending, Social purpose, Financial wellbeing

$

In this year’s top three, Revolut is unrecognisable from its early iteration in 2015 as a single-service money exchange that helped travellers access the interbank rate. Now reporting 7M+ customers, the banking alternative is an international, multi-service platform with a global ambition. In the past 12 months, Revolut has launched in Australia, introduced share trading and in October 2019 announced a partnership with Visa which will see it expand into 24 new markets worldwide.

Read more about Revolut on page 15

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Asesh Sarker (CEO), Dan Cobley, Daniel Shakhani Audience: Employers (now benefitting over 1M employees)

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ FUNDING

Total: $336.4M Latest: Venture round, March 2019

ON TWITTER

Salary Finance

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK FUNDING

Total: $118M Latest: $32.8M Series C April 2019

ON TWITTER

@Salaryfin

ON THE WEB

salaryfinance.com

Helping 1M+ UK employees to pay off debt faster.

Social impact was a key factor on the panel’s selection criteria this year and fitting that bill is the financial wellbeing of employees - now becoming a priority for employers.

Founded with a desire “to do good”, Salary Finance helps employees to manage debt, build a savings habit and access earned pay - rather than resorting to payday lenders. Salary Finance reaches more than one million employees across various industry sectors. Customers include BT, EON, Virgin Active, Capgemini, Carlsberg, Dixons Carphone, L&G and NHS Trusts, councils and schools.

Simudyne

KEY PEOPLE

solarisBank*

Audience: Financial Institutions, Regulators, Exchanges

Founders: Justin Lyon

FOUNDED

2017

KEYWORDS

Enterprise Simulation, AI Agent-based modeling, Market simulation

$

39 39

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK FUNDING

Total: $10.1M Latest: $6M Series A April 2019

ON TWITTER

@Simudyne

ON THE WEB

simudyne.com

Simulating future scenarios to help banks understand their world.

Simulation technology specialist Simudyne offers organisations a new way to harness the power of agent-based modelling, AI and machine learning to test drive their decisions and drive growth.

Simudyne’s enterprise-ready software is currently used by large financial institutions to simulate an unlimited number of future scenarios and measure their impact in a safe, virtual environment. A member of Barclays Accelerator (2018) Simudyne’s revenue is now growing 600% year on year.

Clients say: “Simudyne’s platform will ultimately help cultivate a stronger, more efficient techenabled financial services sector.”

KEY PEOPLE

CEO: Roland Folz Founders: Marko Wenthin Andreas Bittner Audience: businesses who wish to offer financial services / Fintechs / Banks FOUNDED

2016

KEYWORDS

Open-banking, Banking platform HEADQUARTERS

Berlin, Germany $ FUNDING

Total: €95.1M Latest: €56M, Series B 2018

ON TWITTER

Sonect KEY PEOPLE Founders: Arindam Bajpayee, Rik Krieger, Sandipan Chakraborty FOUNDED

2016

KEYWORDS

Cash, Payments, Deposits / Virtual ATM network, Financial inclusion HEADQUARTERS

Zurich, Switzerland $ FUNDING Latest: Venture, Nov 2018

@solarisBank

ON THE WEB

solarisbank.com

In this year’s top ten,

the German fintech’s APIaccessible banking platform allows partners to access the modules in the field of e-money, instant credit and digital banking as well as services from third-party providers integrated on the platform via API. In March 2019, solarisBank announced its partnership with Alipay. As a licensed acquiring partner, solarisBank will provide Alipay with the infrastructure to expand its network of acceptance points in Europe.

ON TWITTER

@sonect

ON THE WEB

sonect.net

Building a virtual ATM network.

For many in Europe, cash is still king. Sonect converts shops into a “virtual ATM”, reducing the cost of cash distribution for banks and easing in-store cash management for merchants via a location-based on-demand service.

Users of the platform can withdraw cash, deposit and transfer cash at any participating shops using a smartphone - be it a café, a pharmacy, or any other place that accepts cash, globally.

Sonect builds a community around local businesses and helps them to generate physical leads. Banks save up to 50% in running their ATM operations and expand their services into new regions and increase financial inclusion without significant capital investment.

Luxembourg - Tokeny Solutions

Digital capital markets

“There are inefficiencies in capital markets due to complex and manual processes. In 2017, I saw the opportunity to utilize new technology to streamline these processes, so I started Tokeny to build solutions for market players to digitise their assets on the blockchain.

This allows companies to reach a global audience, enforce compliance obligations, enable automation and increase operational efficiency to alleviate existing problems and benefit from the advancement in technology.�

Luc Falempin, Founder/CEO: Tokeny Solutions

41

Starling Bank

KEY PEOPLE

Founder: Anne Boden (CEO)

Audience: Individual consumers, SMEs, Partner Fintechs FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Digital Banking, Marketplace

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $283.09M Latest: $121M Grant, Feb 2019

ON TWITTER

@StarlingBank

ON THE WEB

Tessian

In March 2019, Starling was named Best British Bank at the British Bank Awards for the second year in a row. And in July 2019, it launched multi-owner accounts for business, with a clear objective to reshape the SME banking market. Starling’s partnership with the Post Office also allows customers to deposit physical cash.

Audience: Enterprises across the financial, legal and technology sectors FOUNDED

KEYWORDS

AI, Cyber Security, Enterprise Email, Machine Learning

HEADQUARTERS

London, UK $ FUNDING

Total: $58.7M Latest: $42M Series B, Feb 2019

Mobile-only bank Starling now claims just under 800,000 customers, of which around 60,000 are small business accounts. Total deposits are on track to reach £1Bn by year end and Starling is in the process of applying for an Irish banking licence to widen European expansion.

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Edward Bishop, Thomas Adams, Tim Sadler

2013

starlingbank.com

The digital bank championing SMEs.

ON TWITTER

@Tessian

ON THE WEB

tessian.com

Building the first Human Layer Security System.

Tessian protects leading enterprises across the financial, legal and technology sectors from being compromised by spear phishing, misdirected emails, unauthorized emails and other threats executed by humans.

The cyber security specialist is building the world’s first Human Layer Security platform to fulfil its mission to keep the world’s most sensitive data and systems private and secure. Tessian is seeing 300% year on year growth, has 100+ employees and offices in London (HQ) and New York.

42 46

Thought Machine

KEY PEOPLE

Founder / CEO: Paul Taylor

Audience: Financial insititutions, clients include Lloyds and Atom Bank FOUNDED

2014

KEYWORDS

Core Banking, Retail Banking Platform, Cloud Native

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING Latest: $22.3M Nov 2018

ON TWITTER

@ThoughtMachine

ON THE WEB

thoughtmachine.net

Reinventing Core Banking.

Thought Machine’s mission is to cure the banking industry’s reliance on outdated IT infrastructure.

Their solution, Vault, is a complete retail banking platform capable of being configured easily to suit the needs of any bank.

Vault can run any type of banking product, from mortgages to current accounts, and has a workflow engine which defines how the bank operates.

All data runs in real time within the system, in contrast to batch processing found in traditional platforms, which require banks to go offline. The cloud native architecture enables Continuous Deployment, so banks can roll-out multiple upgrades a day, if needed, with no interruption in service.

Tink*

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Daniel Kjellén (CEO) Fredrik Hedberg

Audience: Retail Banks, Businesses FOUNDED

2012

KEYWORDS

Open Banking, Account Aggregation, Payment Initiation, Data Enrichment and Personal Finance Management

HEADQUARTERS

Sweden, Stockholm $ FUNDING

Total: $90.5M Latest: €10M Corporate round, June 2019

ON TWITTER

@Tink

ON THE WEB

tink.com

In this year’s Top Five, Tink launched its cloud-based

platform in five new markets this year. Currently consisting of Account Aggregation, Payment Initiation, Personal Finance Management and Data Enrichment – Tink’s products can be used to develop standalone services or be integrated into existing banking applications.

In February 2019, Tink closed a 56M EUR funding round to scale its offering across Europe. Tink also recently announced new customers NatWest and PayPal, who join companies such as Klarna, ABN AMRO and Nordea as users of their technology.

Read more on page 17

Tokeny Solutions

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Luc Falempin (CEO), Daniel Coheur

Audience: Investment banks, Funds, Mid-cap companies, Distributors

FOUNDED

2017

KEYWORDS

Capital Markets,

Tokenization, Asset Management HEADQUARTERS

Luxembourg + operations in London, Paris, Barcelona $ FUNDING

Total: €5M Latest: €5M corporate round, July 2019

ON TWITTER

@TokenySolutions

ON THE WEB

tokeny.com

Taking capital markets digital.

Tokeny enables mid-cap companies, investment banks, funds, asset managers and distributors to issue, manage and transfer tokenised securities as fullycompliant smart contracts on public blockchains. Named start-up of the year at the 2019 FinTech Awards in Luxembourg, Tokeny asserts that institutions can digitise financial assets, such as equities, loans, bonds, funds and other securities, and streamline their administration to provide clients with a digital-first service through tokenization In August 2019, pan-European exchange Euronext invested €5M in Tokeny, acquiring a 23.5% stake.

43

Truelayer Tractable

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Adrian Cohen (CEO), Alexandre Dalyac,

Razvan Ranca Audience: Insurers worldwide, Disaster relief, Government Agencies, NGOs

KEYWORDS

Insurance, AI, Machine Learning HEADQUARTERS

UK, London + offices in New York, Tokyo, Munich, Madrid. $ FUNDING

Total: $34.9M Latest: $28M Series B July 2018 ON TWITTER

@Tractable_ai ON THE WEB

tractable.ai

Using AI to accelerate disaster recovery insurance claims.

Annual damage to assets (cars and homes) as well as crops and lives is estimated at around $1Tn. The insurtech believes that when disasters hit, the response could be ten times faster.

Tractable develops artificial intelligence for accident and disaster recovery, building deep learning tools for visual inspection that can perform more accurately than humans and in a fraction of the time. This slashes costs for its insurer clients, in turn minimising disruption and boosting customer satisfaction.

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Francesco Simoneschi (CEO) / Luca Martinetti

Audience: Fintechs, Online lenders, Personal finance apps, Accounting applications software, Crowdfunding platforms

FOUNDED

2014

Zego

FOUNDED

KEYWORDS

2016

Open Banking

Total: $46.8M Latest: $35M Series B, June 2019

ON THE WEB

truelayer.com

Instant access to Open Banking.

Truelayer offers a toolkit to build financial apps that connect to bank data, verify accounts, and access transactions in real time. In 2019, it announced partnerships with notable Fintechs, including Zopa, ClearScore, Plum, CreditLadder, Canopy, and ANNA Money.

Already operating in Germany, France, Italy and Spain, Truelayer raised a $35M Series C in June 2019 to further its expansion globally. In July Truelayer integrated with Revolut in a move which will allow new Open Banking-based fintech services, such as Emma, to be offered to Revolut’s 7M+ custosmers.

KEYWORDS

Insurance / New enterprise, Shared usage

HEADQUARTERS

UK, London $ FUNDING

Total: $51.7M Latest: $42M Series B July 2019 ON TWITTER

ON TWITTER

@TrueLayer

Audience: Gig economy drivers, SMEs, New Enterprise, Fleets

FOUNDED

HEADQUARTERS

KEY PEOPLE

Founders: Harry Franks, Sten Saar, Stuart Kelly

2016

UK, London $ FUNDING

@zegocover ON THE WEB

zego.com

Aiming to be the largest insurance provider for new enterprise.

As directors at Deliveroo, Sten Saar and Harry Franks struggled to onboard new delivery riders, who had to provide proof of an expensive annual insurance policy before their first interview. Their solution was pay-as-you-go cover with low upfront fees.

On this year’s 50 having featured on the 2018 Hot Ten, Zego now provides simple, flexible policies via app, web and phone, covering all kinds of enterprise.

In addition to the UK, markets include Spain and Ireland.

In August 2019, Zego announced a partnership with Drover to insure its private hire vehicle subscriber base.

Hall of Fame Hall of

24 FinTechs have blazed a trail over the years, pioneering in their particular fields. We promoted them to the Hall of Fame in recognition of their contribution to the Fintech story and continued innovation.

This year, we promoted one more. *includes debt financing.

Fenergo

Transforming how financial institutions manage clients Founded: 2008 fenergo.com Total funding: $154.5m Dublin, Ireland

Adyen

For global payments Payments Founded: 2006 adyen.com Total funding: IPO June 2018 Amsterdam, The Netherlands

BehavioSec

Biometrics-as-a-Service Behavioral biometrics Founded: 2007 behaviosec.com Total funding: $25.7m Sweden / San Francisco

BIMA

Fueling financial inclusion Mobile insurance emerging markets Founded: 2010 bimamobile.com Total funding: $170.6m Stockholm, Sweden

Crowdcube For > 670 funded raises

Equity Crowdfunding Founded: 2010 crowdcube.com Total funding: $48.4m Exeter, UK

CreditBenchmark Consensus credit ratings Financial data analytics Founded: 2012 creditbenchmark.com Total funding: $34m London, UK

CurrencyCloud

Powering global payments Global payments platform Founded: 2012 currencycloud.com Total funding: $80.2m London, UK

DarkTrace

Cybersecurity superstar Cybersecurity Founded: 2013 darktrace.com Total funding: $230.5m Cambridge, UK

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: $222.9m UK, London, Limassol, Tel Aviv

45

FundingCircle

Kreditech

RateSetter

P2P lending marketplace Founded: 2010 fundingcircle.com Funding: IPO Sept 2018 London, UK

Online lending to individuals Founded: 2012 kreditech.com Funding: $497.3m Hamburg, Germany

P2P lending Founded: 2010 ratesetter.com Total funding: $52.6m London, UK

LendInvest

Spotcap

For funding business ... to the tune of ÂŁ5.4bn

GoCardless

For making recurring payments easy

For improving financial freedom

For speeding up digital mortgages

For its pioneering Provision Fund

For empowering SMEs with tailored finance Business lending Founded: 2014 spotcap.com Total funding: $112.9m Berlin, Germany

Online payments/direct debit Founded: 2011 gocardless.com Total funding: $122.3m London, UK

Property lending & investing Founded: 2013 lendinvest.com Total funding: $993m* London, UK

Iwoca

MarketInvoice

TransferWise

Invoice finance Founded: 2010 marketinvoice.com Total funding: $56m London, UK

Digital Money Transfer Founded: 2010 transferwise.com Total funding: $772.7m* London, UK

Making working capital instant Credit facilities for SMEs Founded: 2011 iwoca.co.uk Total funding:$364.8m London, UK

iZettle

The MPos pioneer Payments Founded: 2010 iZettle.com Total funding: Acquired by PayPal in 2018

Klarna

For simplifying buying and selling Banking & payments Founded: 2005 klarna.com Total funding: $1.2bn* Stockholm, Sweden

Getting businesses paid faster

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

For services to the Revolution

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.co Total funding: $296.7m London, UK

46

The legal view - Linklaters

What makes a location a ‘hub’?

We’re asking FinTech founders and champions around the world to define the special qualities that make their city a FinTech City .

In the second two of the series, Katharine Lueth, Head of Europe at Raisin, outlines Berlin - and Don Ginsel, CEO of Holland FinTech, puts the case for Amsterdam.

KATHARINA

THE IMPACT OF AI IN FINANCIAL SERVICES

A record €4.3 billion in venture capital reportedly poured into Germany in 2017, with 70% of it disseminated in Berlin.

The almost 90% increase over 2016 is as clear a sign of investor confidence as you Improvements to revenue and customer experience mean financial services firms could ask for: FinTech backers believe are serious about AI. Richard Hay, UK Head of in Fintech at globalcapital. law firmSince Linklaters the German the Brexit explores the competitive advantage. vote, many are also looking to Berlin as the new European start-up capital but whether or not Berlin overtakes London, Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely seen as the of financial products from the provision of robowe can boast some unique competitive key to competitive advantage by businesses advice to trading decisions. Given the long history advantages.

With German and governments across the globe. In financial of pioneering datathe analytics in the sector, financial government backing Berlin as a FinTech services, the benefits of running AI across the huge services firms are very much primed to take hub, the city is situated as simply of it volumes of data firms hold include: achieving a advantage of this technology and theone benefits best in the world to advance two core better understanding of customers – allowing more theoffers. challenges of the FinTech sector: finding informed and tailored products and services; internal and accessing large Should we believe themarkets. hype? process efficiencies; enhanced cybersecurity and talent reduced risk (especially around fraud and malicious activity).

AI is increasingly used in the delivery of a variety

AI certainly has the potential to supercharge financial services and transform the way services are delivered to customers.

47

“AI certainly has the potential to supercharge financial services and transform the way services are delivered to customers.”

However, to properly understand the impact of AI, and the extent to which it really does herald the creation of a fourth industrial revolution, it is necessary to consider what AI really is and what it is capable of. It is also necessary to address the regulatory and ethical challenges associated with its use.

the processing of customers’ personal data by machines. Whilst this creates tremendous opportunities for business, it needs to be balanced against potential unwelcome outcomes for customers.

If AI tools are not effectively designed, monitored and controlled, this may lead to unfair, unethical or even unlawful results.

How intelligent is AI?

These outcomes are not only unwelcome for customers but have the potential for complex legal, ethical and practical consequences and, ultimately, liability for the responsible party. Those looking to exploit this technology actively need to address these issues, many of which are new and need new responses.

AI is not actually “intelligent”. No AI system has consciousness or even the shadow of the general flexible intelligence humans use to solve a wide variety of disparate puzzles we grapple with on a daily basis. Essentially AI is just a different way of creating a computer programme. Traditionally, a human would type out a long series of instructions for the computer, which it would follow faithfully and reliably. In contrast, with most varieties of AI, the computer is given access to vast amounts of data, or the ability to conduct vast numbers of simulations, and it “learns” from that data.

This new paradigm has helped solve problems that have eluded traditional programming techniques for years, such as language translation or voice recognition.

While this new technology is powerful, it is also unpredictable. An AI algorithm works inside a “black box”. While the inputs and outputs can be seen, the inner workings will often be potentially chaotic and largely unknowable.

AI – a board room issue For firms looking to deploy AI solutions in financial services, there is plenty to consider from a legal point of view and should be addressed at a board room level and part of overall risk management. Firms must comply with both their broader industry regulatory obligations as well as any AIspecific controls. They should also ensure that their approach to artificial intelligence anticipates any emerging regulatory requirements placed upon them and the many developments in the space mean that interesting questions are arising. They also need to be aware of their potential liability under generally applicable law.

Challenges and ethics The deployment of AI solutions in financial services will involve machine-led decision making affecting financial customers and

Linklaters’ full report, ‘Managing machines in an evolving legal landscape’ is available at Linklaters.com/fintech.

48

This year’s Hot 10

11:FS Foundry

London: “Fit for the Future” Digital Banking Services

Apiax

Zurich: Compliance at the Click of a Button Apiax enables financial institutions to map existing regulatory requirements and quickly adjust changing licensing regimes for different legal entities.

Created by challenger consultancy 11:FS, Foundry is a complete banking architecture that offers a modular, ledger-first set of components to deliver secure, digitally-native propositions quickly and In March 2019, to scale.

Apiax opened in London and hired Using cloud-based RegTech expert, Alan technology and a Blanchard. Apiax was modular approach, named early stage Foundy allows startup of the year customers to deploy an at the Swiss FinTech entire banking stack, Awards 2019. or select services, depending on their Nicolas Blanchard, strategy.

Philip Schoch,

Ralf Huber, Leda Glyptis, CEO Thomas Suter 11fs.com

Apiax.com

Aryze

Copenhagen: Digital Cash ARYZE want to solve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal Number 10 by lowering the global average cost of sending money abroad from 7.% to 3%.

Backed by 283 investors from 15 different countries in a private token sale, ARYZE bridges the gap between conventional money and digital currencies by creating a true digital representation of cash.

There is always room to celebrate more stand-out innovators. Meet our 2019 Hot Ten - early contenders for The FinTech50 2020.

Bankifi

Manchester/Amsterdam: API fuelled Micro Services for Banks Bankifi’s data-driven distributed banking model allows financial service providers to manage, consume, distribute and monetise data through a suite of API driven micro services. BankiFi offers its solutions as a managed service that can run either in a private or public cloud.

This set of consumable services has been designed so as to store as little data as possible outside the bank environment.

Gardenia Technologies

Luxembourg: Working Capital Finance Gardenia provides cloud based, end-toend software solutions that deliver innovative, pragmatic and practical Working Capital Analytics and Liquidity solutions to enterprises of all sizes and scale.

The winner of this year’s NadiFin Accelerator Program in Luxembourg, selected by their cohort peers, Gardenia’s actionable analytics help a company improve their working capital position without the need for additional liquidity capital.

Jack Nikogosian, Morten Nielsen, Carl Jenster

Mark Hartley / Conny Dorrestijn

Rupert Schneider

Aryze.io

Bankifi.com

Gardeniatech.com

49

Globechain London:

Neufund

Circular Economy Champion

Berlin: Real-world Assets on the Blockchain

Globechain is a reuse marketplace that connects corporates to charities, SMEs and people to redistribute unneeded items, generating ESG data.

Globechain has over 10,000 members working with some of the world’s largest brands and a growing network of charities nationally and internationally. Last year 5,100,000 kilos were diverted from landfill items being redistributed within the UK, US ,West Africa and Ukraine, providing savings of over £2m to charitable causes.

Neufund’s mission is “Enabling ownership for all” by making it more transparent, accessible and efficient. The Berlin start-up’s open-source set of protocols allows anyone to give real-world assets a representation on the Ethereum Blockchain in the form of legallybinding security tokens. Neufund advises governments on DLT regulation, supports open-source dev projects and educates financial communities around the world.

OKO Finance

Tel Aviv: Inclusive Insurance With 500 million unbanked smallholder farmers in the world, the market is worth $7.5 billion globally and it is growing at a rate of 20% per year.

OKO creates and distributes crop insurance to smallholder farmers in emerging countries, helping them to secure their income. The service is accessible to anyone with a phone, and automates claim verification using satellite data and images.

Swoop Funding London: Virtual CFO

Swoop’s technology platform matches SMEs in the UK and Ireland with funding, serving as a virtual chief financial officer connecting SMEs to the best solutions for their business needs.

In 2019 Swoop closed a £1.5 million seed round from investors including Enterprise Ireland. And in September 2019, the start-up partnered with Revolut for business.

May Al-Karooni

Zoe Adamovicz

Simon Schwall

Andrea Reynolds Ciaran Burke

Globechain.com

Neufund.org

oko.finance

swoopfunding.com

Tully

Nottingham: Digital Debt Manager Tully launched in April 2019 to help the UK’s consumer debt problem: specifically the 23 million people in who are worried about money. Tully uses Open Banking technology to give people a fast, accurate, realistic picture of their financial position in minutes – all done online and completely free.

Every user receives a personalised financial plan, tailored advice and the option to choose a flexible debt repayment plan that adjusts to the user’s financial situation every month.

Stuart Bungay Steve Bradford tully.co.uk

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 & accounts

•

GDPR

•

Tax

•

Risk management

•

HR & payroll

•

Staff engagement

•

Fundraising & M&A

•

Regulatory reporting & advice

•

Legal services

Tom Moore, Head of Financial Services

www.mks.co.uk

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