Global payments processor reaches $40 billion valuation, raising total of $1.8 billion to date

- Primary investors include Altimeter, Dragoneer, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Insight Partners, the Qatar Investment Authority, Tiger Global, the Oxford Endowment Fund and another large west coast mutual fund manager

- Funds will be used in three key areas: US market growth, marketplaces solution launch, and to strengthen leadership in Web3

On the heels of a highly successful year processing hundreds of billions of dollars in payments for some of the world's largest merchants, Checkout.com today raised $1 billion in its Series D funding round at a valuation of $40 billion.

Primary investors include Altimeter, Dragoneer, Franklin Templeton, GIC, Insight Partners, the Qatar Investment Authority, Tiger Global, the Oxford Endowment Fund, and another large west coast mutual fund management firm. Several of the company's other existing investors^[1] also participated in this round.

Checkout.com offers a full-stack online platform that simplifies payments processes for large global enterprise merchants. This supports its mission to enable businesses and their communities to thrive in the evolving digital economy.

Given the company has been profitable for several years, the Series D capital will strengthen an already solid balance sheet and drive three key initiatives: its ambitious growth plans for the US market; the continued evolution of its proprietary technology platform and solutions; and its goal to remain on the cutting edge of Web3.

The news sees Checkout.com more than double its valuation since Series C a year ago. In that time, it has grown rapidly in its home market of EMEA, tripling the volume of transactions processed for the third year in a row. Today the company serves large-scale ecommerce and services merchants like Netflix, Farfetch, Grab, NetEase, Pizza Hut, Shein, Siemens and Sony; fintech unicorns such as Klarna, Qonto, Revolut and WorldRemit; and many of the world's largest crypto players, including Coinbase, Crypto.com, FTX, and MoonPay.

Over the past year Checkout.com opened new offices in six countries across four continents to cater to surging merchant demand. It also expanded its executive leadership team in the US and Europe with a new CFO, CHRO, CMO, CPO, CRO and CTO—all while growing its overall employee base to more than 1700 people in 19 countries.

"At our core, we help enterprise merchants to navigate the complexity of moving money around the world, whether in fiat currency or bridging the gap to Web3," said Checkout.com founder and CEO, Guillaume Pousaz.

"By combining an elegant technology stack with industry expertise and an 'extra-mile' approach to service over the past decade, we've built deep partnerships with some of the world's most innovative companies. Our Series D is validation of that work—but given we're still in 'chapter zero' of our journey, it will also fuel our efforts to unlock the enormous untapped opportunity ahead."

Scaling up to meet US demand

With the US as one of the largest ecommerce markets in the world, Checkout.com has invested heavily in its domestic technology infrastructure, and today offers a complete proprietary end-to-end payment processing platform in the US.

This delivers the same unrivalled performance, improved authorization rates and feature parity as the market-leading platform the company offers to merchants in other countries. It also makes Checkout.com one of the only providers in the US offering a fully cloud-based platform directly connected to local networks in all key geographies and for all major alternative payment methods.

"We have long-faced substantial demand to serve the US market, and with our Series D we're doubling down on our commitment to scaling our platform, partnerships and products for customers here," said Checkout.com's New York-based CFO, Céline Dufétel.

"Much like our approach in EMEA, we will maintain our focus on the enterprise—especially fintech, software, food delivery, travel, e-commerce and crypto merchants. We're looking to help our US customers grow domestically and internationally, and to help our non-US customers expand into the market here. We're excited about the potential, and expect our North American employee base to grow by 200% this year alone."

Platform evolution for marketplaces

After comprehensive testing with multiple global merchants over the past several months, Checkout.com plans to launch its solution to service marketplaces & payment facilitators (payfacs) later this year. This will expand the company's capability to service payments within online marketplaces—a sector that has seen a dramatic increase in transaction volumes given the shift to digital during the pandemic and the expansion of the gig economy for several years prior.

These new solutions will comprise identity verification technologies, split payments and treasury-as-a-service, as well as the existing capabilities of Payouts—which Checkout.com launched last year to help merchants send funds to cards and bank accounts globally via a single integration. Since then the company has successfully processed billions of dollars in payout transactions for the likes of TikTok and MoneyGram.

"The expansion of our product roadmap is the result of years of dedicated work by our global platform and engineering teams," said Checkout.com CTO, Ott Kaukver. "As a product-first company with almost half our total headcount dedicated to technology roles, we'll continue to drive this cadence of innovation. It unlocks additional opportunities across the entire payments value chain, which in turn helps us meet the needs of our merchants around the world."

A generation-defining opportunity in Web3

With global ecommerce expected to keep outpacing the growth of traditional commerce—especially with the adoption of emerging technologies like crypto currencies and NFTs—Checkout.com is continuing to strengthen its position in the Web3 space.

The company's payment rails already power the world's leading crypto exchanges, representing almost 80% of the global trading volume. Its modular products and resilient platform are also used by fan token providers like Socios.com and blockchain-based wallets like Novi from Meta. In addition, the company is privately beta-testing an innovative solution to settle transactions for merchants using digital currencies.

"Checkout.com is a leader in the massive market for next-gen payment solutions and the key digital payments partner for many of the world's leading companies. As a long-term investor, we are impressed by the company's product innovation and customer-centric approach," said Choo Yong Cheen, Chief Investment Officer of Private Equity at GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund. "That's why we've been committed to its long-term future since Series A and why we're part of Series D. We believe Checkout.com is still just getting started. And we look forward to leveraging GIC's global network and our Bridge Forum platform to support Guillaume and his exceptional team for many years to come."

For more information on Checkout.com and the Series D round, please visit www.checkout.com.

 Azentio Software (“Azentio”), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that iMAL™ R14.5, the latest version of the company’s Islamic core banking platform, has successfully completed the annual certification review for the year 2022 by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), the world’s leading Islamic finance standard-setting body.

This certification is tangible proof of Azentio adhering to existing and newly issued AAOIFI Shari’ah and Financial Accounting Standards for the recently acquired iMAL™ R14.5 by Azentio.

“AAOIFI is here to protect the integrity of the global Islamic finance industry through the means of standardization of best practices in the areas of Shari’ah, accounting, auditing, governance, and ethics. We are pleased to complete the review of the version 14.5 of iMAL™ for the year 2022 to ensure its compliance with AAOIFI’s Shari’ah and Financial Accounting Standards”, commented Omar Mustafa Ansari, Secretary General, AAOIFI. “By following and implementing AAOIFI standards in the right manner, we believe iMAL™ is mitigating Shari’ah non-compliance risks. Our continued collaboration is a testament to Azentio’s ongoing commitment of following best practices not only for itself but also for its clients which are the world’s leading Islamic financial institutions”, Ansari concluded.

Mohammed Kateeb, Global Head of Islamic Banking and President of Middle East & Africa at Azentio, said, “For our core banking platform iMAL™ new version to be certified by AAOIFI, the world’s principal standard-setting body for Islamic finance, reflects our ongoing commitment to creating a truly differentiated value proposition. The latest advancement in financial technology has posed unprecedented challenges for incumbent Islamic banks to remain competitive. We are combining advanced technologies with deep knowledge of Islamic finance and embedding this into our new platform to help our clients transform, accelerate innovation, and achieve operational efficiency, while providing Shari’ah compliance assurance to the Islamic financial services ecosystem. We ensure a compliance mindset in our design and development efforts, and continuously challenge ourselves to provide a unique platform that meets or exceeds the needs and expectations of our clients, always complying with the AAOIFI and Shari’ah rules”. 

iMAL™ core banking platform is the world’s leading and preferred Shari’ah-compliant, digital-first, advanced and scalable software with open banking capabilities for modern Islamic financial institutions. Designed to allow Islamic banks to scale quickly using cloud or traditional infrastructure, the proven and trusted platform that is both flexible and cost efficient is the first choice for major Islamic banks setting up for growth. iMAL™ helps Islamic banks of all sizes reduce risk and improve profitability with the ability to launch a diverse range of innovative products rapidly, well ahead of the competition.

ThycoticCentrify, a leading provider of cloud identity security solutions formed by the merger of privileged access management (PAM) leaders Thycotic and Centrify, today announced new and expanded capabilities for its award-winning PAM solution, Secret Server. With the addition of new security controls, automation, and design updates, Secret Server builds on its industry-leading secrets management capabilities and ease-of-use to offer greater protection and higher productivity.

According to the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, credentials are the primary means by which threat actors hack into an organization, with 61% of breaches attributed to compromised credentials. To reduce this threat, all organizations independent of size, location, or industry need robust, easy-to-use solutions in place to protect the accounts and credentials that allow access to these privileges.

Stronger security controls reduce risk 

The latest Secret Server release allows organizations to rotate Secret Server’s master encryption key on demand. Rotating individual secrets housed within the digital vault provides an additional layer of protection to block external actors from gaining access to it. 

Secret Server also streamlines the connection process for organizations that use jump boxes to protect access to critical resources. Rather than taking time to inject unique credentials at every connection point, users can now use a single key to navigate an entire route from launch, to jump box, to destination within a single session. Users can launch the end-to-end route via Secret Server or the interface of the Connection Manager session management tool. 

“Our continued focus on decreasing the steps required to safeguard secrets reduces the workload on security administrators and the attack surface area,” said Jon Kuhn, SVP of Product Management at ThycoticCentrify. "As an example, our master encryption key rotation capability is simple to implement and provides an additional layer of protection to block external actors from gaining access to all the other keys stored on the platform."

Checkout enhancements remove bottlenecks 

To enhance auditing and compliance, Secret Server ensures that only one privileged user at a time can use a secret. When secrets aren’t checked back into Secret Server after use, critical maintenance operations can’t be performed and productivity slows. The latest release automatically checks in secrets for API connections after expiration. 

Additionally, users now have more visibility into remaining time on a secret checkout and can extend the checkout if required. 

The latest release also includes enhancements to the Secret Server interface, logging, and reporting to increase usability and accessibility through improved keyboard navigation and screen reader hints.

Organizations can try the latest version of Secret Server for free at https://thycotic.com/products/secret-server/.   

Setting out on a multi-stage acquisition of US-based Athena Systems, United Fintech continues its rapid expansion in pursuit of becoming the global banking industry’s ‘one-stop-shop’ for innovative capital markets products, broadening the scope to target an asset management industry in urgent need of technological innovation: “Banking and buy-side tech is starting to overlap and we are seeing very similar existential challenges”, reasons Danish CEO.

As a first step in a multi-stage acquisition, United Fintech has obtained a 25% stake in US-founded Athena Systems (“Athena” or the “Company”) for an undisclosed amount, aiming to obtain another 26% in two years and the 49% remainder in three years, in a transaction onboarding the Company, its clients and employees onto United Fintech’s digital platform. Athena, operating from offices in the US, Spain and Vietnam, services asset managers and hedge funds worldwide through its renowned Portfolio Order Management System (“POMS”) Athena Spark.  And according to United Fintech CEO Christian Frahm, Athena fits hand-in-glove with his strategy of acquiring attractive and state-of-the-art Capital Markets software products ready for scaling and global roll-out on United Fintech’s platform:

“From early conversations with founders Luis Otero, Steano Guarnieri and Scott Sykowski, key staff as well as core clients, it was clear to us that Athena Systems has amazing technology, world class people and in-depth technical understanding of their customers’ needs. Making Athena part of United Fintech felt like a great match from day one and we are convinced we can scale the Company globally and together become leaders in the space within the next 3-4 years”, 

says Christian Frahm.

A fintech ‘one-stop-shop’

Just recently in November, United Fintech announced the acquisition of London-based FairXchange. Over the next few years it is United Fintech’s ambition to complete multiple strategic acquisitions of ready-to-scale fintechs with proven Capital Markets products, positive cash flow and growth potential; to build a fintech ‘one-stop-shop’ that global banks and financial institutions can benefit from - and become market leader in this niche. The ambition is to help big banks and financial institutions accelerate the implementation of innovative digital technology and with the acquisition of Athena Systems, United Fintech adds a new product offering within asset management to roll out across its platform, prompting excitement from Athena Systems CEO Luis Otero as the outlook for global expansion of Athena Spark widens:

“United Fintech has the vision of creating a financial services network to serve all the biggest banks and institutional funds with a set of tools that will allow them to perform all kinds of activities without the need of any other provider and as you can imagine, this is a great opportunity for all of us. We are now part of a bigger company whose purpose is to help us scale and convert Athena into the best POMS provider in the world”,

says Luis Otero, CEO of Athena Systems.

Adapt or die

With around 130 employees spread out across Europe and the United States, and having already completed four acquisitions in just fourteen months, it may come as a surprise that United Fintech was launched little over a year ago in November 2020. However, United Fintech has been a long way coming for Danish-born Christian Frahm, who in 2016 sold his first fintech firm CFH Group to British-listed Playtech Plc., and although the deal made Frahm a familiar face in the top echelons of fintech, it didn’t fulfil the native Dane’s ambition to “save big banks from Big Tech” - a phrase which has become the informal mission statement of United Fintech. And according to Frahm, big banks are just now waking up to the reality and necessity of implementing innovative digital technology not just for their own use but to help their own customers digitize their operations and remain relevant in a fast changing industry, referencing Goldman Sachs’s recent acquisition of boutique wealth management custodian Folio as a key example of big banks buying technology solutions to help their own clients:

“The financial services industry is waking up to a reality demanding not only that they digitize, but also help their clients digitize - to survive, that is. Just like banks, the managed money space is seeing huge disruption from free stock trading, robo advisors and new fintech startups, and this is where fintech -and in particular Athena- can make a huge difference. You must keep in mind that wealth creation is at a record-pace: The sophistication levels required by asset managers today are skyhigh. If you’re a portfolio manager, you’re not just required to handle stocks and bonds; clients are demanding handling and understanding of multiple assets. Thus the managed money space is growing and expanding and it is ever-more business critical that the service providers adapt with the right tools. Banking and buy-side tech is starting to overlap and we are seeing very similar existential challenges and the choice is simple: Adapt or die”, ends Christian Frahm.

First ever acquihire by the B2B SaaS as it looks to add 100 people by December 2022

B2B ecommerce and supply chain enablement platform Bizongo, announced today the acquihire of Bengaluru based Hexa, a cloud platform for college placements.  This is the first ever acquihire by the B2B SaaS platform, as it gears to innovate and launch new products in the made-to-order segment in the coming months.

Hexa co-founder Shubam Goyal, Head of Product, will join Bizongo as Senior Product Manager and Sushmita Chavan, Head of Business Operations at Hexa will join as Product Intelligence Specialist along with six other team members.

Ankit Tomar, Co-founder and CTO at Bizongo said, 

“Bizongo has been on a high growth journey over the last year thanks to our people and the continuous product innovation. Hexa’s team has demonstrated a unique ability to stay true to their core – build technology solutions that bring a complete transformation to hitherto manual and time consuming processes. We are excited to have Shubam, Sushmita and the team to drive Bizongo’s vision of championing digital transformation in the B2B customized goods segment. Their passion and entrepreneurial mind-set is a perfect match for our team.”

Ankit further added, 

“We are happy to create opportunities for young founders and entrepreneurs that give them a chance to work with the teams they nurtured and continue to work towards a common goal.”

Bizongo aims to add close to 100 people across its product, engineering and sales team by December 2022.  The technology company is actively looking at acquihire as a way to strengthen its workforce.

Shubam Goyal, Co-founder at Hexa said, 

“We are very excited to become a part of Bizongo, an industry leader in the B2B platform category. We have always believed in building products that solve some critical human challenges, and with Hexa we have been fairly successful. We believe our team will add a lot of value to Bizongo.”

Started in April 2020, Hexa is a cloud platform to increase placement ratio at the colleges. The startup prepares students with industry ready skills and powers colleges to connect with more companies for campus hiring.

“We are very happy to join Bizongo’s team. Hexa has always believed in being a cohesive bunch of innovators and the acquihire has given us a chance to continue working as a team together,” 

added Sushmita Chavan, Co-founder at Hexa.

In their 10 month journey Hexa has partnered with over 25 colleges, over 10 partner companies and onboarded 15,000 students on its platform.

Bizongo’s acquihire follows its fund raise of $110 mn in its Series D round led by New York based Tiger Global Management. The B2B SaaS has underlined strengthening its product and engineering team as one of the core areas to deploy the fresh capital.

Strengthens leadership team to support vision of insuring 10 million by 2024 

Plum, an employee health insurance platform, has announced the appointment of five senior leaders - Akshay Golechha as Head of Partnerships, Avinash Nagla as Head of Enterprise Marketing, Ramya Lakshmanan as Head of Account Management, Shreyas Achar as Head of Digital Marketing and Vinod Chandramouli as Vice President of Sales.

The diverse set of leaders, with vast experience in their fields will strengthen Plum’s leadership as it accelerates adoption of group health insurance in India; making it accessible and affordable for companies, startups and SMEs alike. The leadership team will incorporate their vast experience to innovate and challenge the status quo of the insurance industry.

Meet the leaders:

●        Akshay Golechha, Head of Partnerships, joins with a strong background in private equity investing. Prior to this, he worked at Singapore-based Temasek where he focused on investing in India’s leading insurance and consumer majors.

●        Avinash Nagla joins Plum as Head of Enterprise Marketing and will be responsible for setting up its demand-generation strategy. Prior to Plum, Avinash headed Marketing for the EMEA region at HighRadius and also scaled the Global Account-based Marketing function. Avinash comes with over 10 years of experience in B2B and B2C marketing.

●        Ramya Lakshmanan comes with over 14 years of experience across multiple disciplines from software development, project management and consulting to global customer service. As Head of Account Management at Plum, she will be responsible for customer retention, satisfaction, engagement and delivering value.

●        Shreyas Achar has over 12 years of experience in building and growing marketing teams at companies such as Razorpay and CleverTap. As Head of Digital Marketing, he will oversee the entire marketing strategy, branding and positioning campaigns and performance optimisation across channels; from acquisition to engagement and retention.

●        Vinod Chandramouli, joins Plum as Vice President - Sales and will be responsible for implementing Plum’s growth strategy. Vinod headed the ASEAN Business at Freshworks and helped set up its Asia region operations. In his six years at Freshworks, he also ran its Global Presales organisation.

Plum Co-founder and CEO Abhishek Poddar said, "We are delighted to have onboard a diverse leadership that believes in our mission of insuring 10 million lives by 2024. Together, we will accelerate the pace of health insurance adoption across businesses; large or small alike. The depth of experience and insight they bring will help invigorate our organisation and sustain the growth momentum as we expand our presence among corporates and startups across the country. The new leaders join our 100-plus strong team — the only defensible moat in our business and the long-term differentiator between us and our competitors.”

Plum aims to emerge as an advisor to corporates to effectively plan their employee health and wellness initiatives. The new-age insurtech startup, has successfully brought together like-minded individuals and built a team of over 100 employees since its inception in late 2019.

Plum Co-founder, CTO and Head of Wellness, Saurabh Arora said, “I am delighted to welcome our new leadership team and look forward to working with them towards our shared vision of providing health insurance to the maximum number of people in India. I have no doubt they will help take the company to new and uncharted territories of growth and create lasting value for its customers.”

Plum is building an ecosystem to cover India’s ‘missing middle’ that does not have access to affordable health insurance. Further, as it scales, the company is building a comprehensive platform that combines health insurance and also offers comprehensive health and wellness to all companies that care for their employees and think health-first. The company has witnessed a strong pull from fast-growing startups and is currently working with over 1,000 organisations including unicorns, such as Unacademy, Slice and Groww.

With the successful certification of POS terminals, global acquirer EVO Payments and global payment service provider Computop (http://www.computop.com/) are taking their cooperation to a new level. By making a joint offering they enable merchants to use unified POS terminals across Europe and connect them to their e-commerce business on a unified payment platform.
 
Uniform acquiring for 46 countries
Omnichannel and internationalisation are at the top of the agenda for many merchants. But especially in physical retail outlets their plans can be challenged by national regulations, for example in the selection of the acquirer. Thanks to the certification of the Next terminals from CCV, acquiring by EVO Payments is now available to Computop customers in 46 countries and overseas territories. With the terminals certified according to the PCI P2PE standard, payment data is highly encrypted "end-to-end" which improves security and relieves merchants from the need for their own PCI certification.
 
Customers of EVO Payments, whose payment processing already ran via Computop Paygate, can use these terminals to merge transactions from all channels - their physical trade as well as their online business. This way, they can be processed and analysed in combination with the data from the settlement files. This makes offers such as Click & Collect or Return-in-Store possible, not only on the ERP side but also on the payment side.
Stephan Kück, Managing Director of Computop, said: "We are pleased to be able to offer our customers a powerful acquirer for the Europe-wide rollout of our POS terminals with EVO Payments. This extension is particularly attractive for our Non-European customers.”
 
"The certification is an important step with which we not only deepen our existing successful cooperation with Computop, but also create valuable synergy which will benefit equally our customers and Computop's customers. Integrated technology solutions like this simplify the transaction processing of merchants across all sales channels and are an important step towards strengthening our international network," explains Anna Bejaoui, General Manager at EVO Payments International.

DeFinity, an institutional digital asset ECN and DeFi marketplace for foreign exchange, digital assets and CBDC, announces the world’s first settled cash FX trade written to its permissionless layer-1 WeOwn blockchain.

Michael Siwek, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of DeFinity Markets, says “The opportunities for DeFinity across both digital and traditional asset classes are vast and underpinned by the adoption of blockchain technology. The timing to print settled cash FX and digital asset transactions to the blockchain infrastructure has come at an opportune moment in line with our recently announced Cobalt partnership.”

The OTC foreign exchange market has been opaque since its electronification in the late ’90s. Prices vary across venues, which can make it difficult to establish an even execution benchmark. 

Ashwind Soonarane, co-founder and COO of DeFinity Markets, says “We are immensely proud of deploying our technology at such an exciting time for the digital asset and blockchain space, helping our institutional clients achieve and retain full transparency around best execution practices.”

Anonymised or fully disclosed data can be recorded in real-time, or on a delayed basis to protect proprietary strategies. Clients can customise certain components of the service to meet their needs around internal and external reporting requirements. 

DeFinity offers counterparties the ability to trade and record the full lifecycle of transactions on the layer-1 blockchain. With the unique hybrid architecture of the WeOwn layer-1 blockchain, users of the service can opt-out of the permissionless channel and instead retain full privacy with a permissioned blockchain, sharing data with select counterparties, regulators and third-party analytics vendors. 

Manu Choudhary, co-founder and CEO of DeFinity Markets, added, “DeFinity is incredibly fortunate to operate on one of the fastest third generation, layer-1 blockchains, which affords the platform the ability of being highly-scalable, performance-driven and focussed on transparency & decentralisation.”

Chris Park, co-founder and CFO of DeFinity Markets, concluded, “The willingness from counterparties to report transactions on a permissionless blockchain demonstrates the preparedness of the market to lift the veil around some traditional FX market friction points, which will add benefit to the buy-side and sell-side communities. Off the back of these developments, we are truly excited that DeFinity went revenue positive in December 2021 with the first live trading client.”

DeFinity is institutional custody agnostic and its ecosystem allows for a wide range of custodians to interact with its buy-side and sell-side participants, whilst also allowing those participants to be fully flexible as to execution venue. DeFinity has always held the vision of creating the environment to realise the inflexion point for institutions as FIAT & crypto converge. Establishing a market leading position with our partners in both individual asset classes will position us to accelerate the delivery of our roadmap.

 Maven 11, the blockchain and crypto asset investment firm, has officially released its 2022 predictions for the crypto industry. The ten predictions cover a wide range of topics, from airdrops and decentralized storage to regulatory environment and DeFi 2.0. The firm is releasing the new predictions after its accurate 2021 forecasts.

Spot-on 2021 Predictions
During 2021, the firm made 10 projections, many of which came to fruition. The most recognizable is NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, going mainstream. Celebrities, athletes and sports teams, rappers, and artists launched tokens in considerable volume. Additionally, institutions entering the crypto industry was another spot-on prediction, with major names like BlackRock, PayPal, and Tesla offering services in and around crypto. Besides these two significant trends, Maven 11 also forecasted decentralized finance surpassing USD 100 billion of total value locked, the first decacorn decentralized applications arising, the exploitation of smart contracts, and the transformation of the venture model in the industry. All of which were validated over the course of 2021.

Read Maven 11’s 2021 Recap. 

DeFi Derivatives
The firm’s top predictions for 2022 include Coinbase rolling out derivatives on their platform, options in DeFi significantly expanding its market share, and NFTs having an even bigger year than in 2021. In terms of Coinbase, Maven 11 predicts that the centralized exchange will start with perpetual swaps which will make the derivatives market among centralized exchanges even more competitive. DeFi options protocols, they forecast, will grow and take a significant portion of this market share as DeFi derivatives move from niche to becoming more mainstream.

Financialized NFTs
Digital art dominated the NFT push in 2021. “Yet”, says Maven 11 Chief Investment Officer Balder Bomans, “despite art and collectables accounting for the lion’s share of marketplace volume, the applications for NFTs go well beyond that. There are instances like royalty rights, intellectual property, such as music, and NFT-collateralized loans that serve as fantastic applications. This last product is a part of the larger category of financialized NFTs—these will really take off in 2022.

• Partnership forms key pillar of Cushon’s new impact-led investment strategy with 10% allocation to corporate bonds
• Bond investments are focused on the most promising companies that are accelerating toward net zero, aiming to increase long-term sustainable returns
• The investment strategy will invest in environmentally protective projects benefiting people and planet including alternative energy, reforestation and social housing
• Cushon’s updated investment strategy will include the largest Master Trust allocation to private markets - 15% - making Cushon the first DC pensions provider to deliver climate and social impact across 100% of its portfolio

Cushon Master Trust, the world’s first net zero pension, is partnering with fund managers Wellington Management and Lombard Odier Investment Managers as part of its new investment strategy launching in early 2022.

Wellington Management and Lombard Odier Investment Managers will manage listed bonds focusing on the most promising companies that are accelerating towards net zero with the aim of supporting that transition – aiming to deliver safer long-term returns. Wellington will manage impact bonds with both a climate and social focus whilst Lombard Odier Investment Managers will manage bonds focussed on positive climate impact and funding companies working towards a green society.

Examples of projects that the fund managers will invest in include companies working towards creating a greener society, such as those pursuing innovations in alternative energy, and funding academic institutions that are developing tools and research to support social inequality reduction goals, such as Howard University.

As Cushon’s research shows that 62% of employees would engage more if they knew their pension was having a positive impact on climate change, both partnerships are integral to Cushon’s new investment strategy goals to further improve member engagement levels, and ultimately outcomes, by sustainably navigating investment risk as the world transitions to a net zero economy.

Roger Mattingly, Chair of the Cushon Master Trust said: “The expertise of two of the largest global players will be integral to delivering excellent retirement outcomes for our members whilst demonstrating our commitment to sustainable investing. We’re looking forward to working closely with both Wellington and Lombard Odier to continue leading the pensions industry in reducing emissions to benefit both people and the planet – and improving members’ long-term risk-adjusted returns.”

James Bradbury, Head of UK Defined Contribution at Wellington Management, said: “Wellington Management is delighted to be partnering with Cushon to drive innovation in the UK Defined Contribution market. We believe our strength in impact and sustainable investing across asset classes makes us uniquely positioned to put Cushon’s members’ capital to work to address some of the world’s biggest social and environmental problems, whilst focusing on strong investment returns.”

Nathalia Barazal, Co-Head of Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM), added: “At LOIM we recognise the importance of fostering sustainable investment outcomes for clients, and in Cushon we have found a partner that shares this philosophy. The environmental transition is the industry’s most pressing challenge, but also presents a significant investment opportunity. We are delighted to be working with Cushon to provide scalable opportunities to position capital into an environmentally-friendly economy, and help investors looking to benefit from the sustainability transition.”

Cushon’s new strategy aims to increase the potential for greater investment returns by focusing on greener companies which are generally expected to perform better in the longer term - forecasts suggest that green investments will hit $1tn in 2023, up from $297bn in 2020^[1]. Cushon’s 200,000 members’ pensions will be invested in environmental projects such as the planting of new sustainable forests and in financing new wind and solar farms. It will reduce risk and enhance long-term returns by improving diversification across a portfolio of sustainable and responsible investments.

In addition to these impact bonds, the new investment strategy offers the largest Master Trust allocation to private markets (15%) and the first in the DC sector to deliver climate impact across 100% of the portfolio. This allocation will be managed by Schroders Capital, with focus on projects including sustainable infrastructure, clean tech, natural capital and climate insurance, as well as social and affordable housing.