Penfold, the digital pensions platform, today announces the launch of its latest crowdfunding round, following significant growth of the business and the launch of its workplace pension platform in late 2021. Individuals can register now for early access on 25^th July 2022 via Penfold’s crowdfunding page, with the round opening to the general public on 26^th July 2022.  

As a modern pensions provider, Penfold is on a mission to disrupt the industry and provide savers with a next-generation platform that delivers a better user experience and gets people saving more for retirement.  

Since its inception, Penfold’s customer base has grown to more than 25,000 savers with over £90m of assets and the business has successfully quadrupled its customers’ savings since its last crowdfund last year, which sold out in 24 hours. 

This round of crowdfunding, which is aiming to raise £5m, is being opened to expand the pension provider’s workplace pension division, which has signed more than 150 businesses since its launch nine months ago including some of the UK’s biggest scale-ups such as Cuvva, Elvie and Attest.  

Chris Eastwood, Co-Founder at Penfold, comments: 

“Our mission is to give people a modern way of accessing and saving into their pension and challenge the outdated practices that have been holding onto for far too long in this industry. More and more savers want a pension that they can easily use and understand, as demonstrated by our growth over the last year.  

“We have launched this latest round of crowdfunding to continue this growth, particularly for our workplace pension platform as we aim to provide greater control for pension savers while improving efficiency and reducing costs for businesses. Our last crowdfunding round was a huge success and it’s fantastic to have a community of engaged investors who support our goal to get people saving more so they can have the retirement they deserve.” 

Wealth Dynamix today announces Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch and Wealth Dynamix, have extended their working partnership for a further five years, heralding a decade-long commitment to the delivery of end-to-end client lifecycle management for HNW and UHNW individuals.

This extended partnership is a move that cements Wealth Dynamix as a core technology provider within Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch’s technology infrastructure. 

Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch centres its banking activity in two areas of specialisation that encompass a wide offer of products and services: Private Banking and Corporate Banking and has used WDX1 from Wealth Dynamix already for five years to manage client lifecycle management for its HNW and UHNW clients in the US.

Wealth Dynamix product WDX1 is a secure, scalable, and fully digital Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution. It fully supports Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch’s goals by delivering a digital end-to-end experience for client engagement, client on-boarding and CRM that enhances the productivity of relationship managers as well as operations and compliance specialists.

WDX1 enables digital engagement with end clients to ensure the Bank cements its reputation as a provider of best-in-class account processing and client service from prospecting, to onboarding and ongoing management ensuring a seamless, efficient, and compliant journey, for both clients and advisers.

Gary Linieres, CEO and Co-founder OF Wealth Dynamix said: “We are absolutely delighted that Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch have re-signed with Wealth Dynamix for a further five years after an original five-year contract with us. As such, we will be working for over a decade together. This underscores their commitment to Wealth Dynamix and further endorses the power of our WDX1 solution and its benefits within their business."

“We hugely appreciate this commitment as it demonstrates Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch’s commitment to us, the benefits we bring, our collaborative way of working and our ability to keep pace with the demands of a modern private banking business.  In addition, the demands of their customers, by bringing a digital-first solution with proven efficiency and support in growth”.

Carlos Fernandez at Banco Sabadell, Miami Branch said: “We have been working with Wealth Dynamix for the last five years and they have proven to be an effective partner for the Bank. The integration of WDX1 facilitates our delivery of adaptable and personalised experiences for our clients reflecting their individual requirements and investment strategies. We look forward to our continued working relationship with Wealth Dynamix”.

Founded in 2012 by wealth management technology experts Gary Linieres and Brent Randall, Wealth Dynamix are the first wealth management technology firm to revolutionise the Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) processes with innovative applications of data modelling. Wealth Dynamix digitises the entire client lifecycle for private banks and wealth managers, from client acquisition and onboarding through to ongoing relationship management and client servicing. Wealth Dynamix identifies opportunities for boosting operating efficiencies and growing revenue, whilst enabling a significantly higher degree of client insight and due diligence.

Wealth Dynamix operates globally with offices in the UK, France, Switzerland, Singapore, United States of America, Lithuania and Vietnam.

StormPay, a UK-headquartered fintech company which is building an ecosystem that combines financial and lifestyle services in one place, today announced it has signed a distributorship agreement with Safenetpay, an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) which is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). As such, StormPay can now unveil the first phase of ‘StormPay Business’. Early adopters – such as small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs), micro-businesses and start-ups – may register their interest and start benefiting from its new multi-currency accounts, with payments in GBP and EUR, via a web app. 

As Covid-19 and the measures taken to prevent its spread were having a negative impact on the well-being of young individuals, Otabek Nuritdinov and Aziz Makhmudov set about building a new ‘finance as a lifestyle’ offering that would address the general wellness and happiness of both GenZ and millennials; and StormPay was born behind-the-scenes. Two years later and with the rising cost of living another concern for people, StormPay is determined to help customers better manage their finances.

Over the past two years, StormPay has hired 25 experts in the payment space, including CTO George Mavchun and Head of Product Sam Boboev to develop its solutions for both business and personal customers. StormPay is a member of FINTECH Circle, Innovate Finance and Level39, allowing the team to learn from and share best practices with other fintech start-ups. In addition, StormPay has partnered with open banking service vendor Ozone API. 

Otabek Nuritdinov, CEO and Co-Founder of StormPay, said: “Money concerns are among the top causes of stress and anxiety in our daily lives. We are determined to change that. I believe we are on the brink of a major disruption that is going to revolutionise financial management as we know it and the team I’m building is 100% focused on doing things differently. We’re excited about today’s unveiling and what the rest of 2022 has in store for next-generation customers who desire a hyper-personalised experience.” 

Motive Partners ("Motive"), a leading specialized private equity firm focused on financial technology, today announced the successful final close of its second flagship fund, Motive Capital  Fund 2 (the "Fund"), with total capital commitments of $2.54 billion for the  Fund and its affiliated co-investment vehicles.  

The Fund employs the same investment strategy executed in Motive Partners'  inaugural flagship fund. The Fund focuses on growth and buyout investments in software, investment and information services businesses located in North  America and Europe. The Fund has already partnered with ten companies - InvestCloud, Insurify, Wilshire, Trumid, Motive Capital Corp II, CAIS, FNZ, Forge  Global, BetaNXT and Backbase. 

Commitments to the Fund were secured from a geographically diverse group of investors, including public and private pensions, sovereign wealth funds,  foundations, financial institutions, institutional fund managers, family offices and high net worth individuals. Existing investors from the inaugural fund were joined by a significant group of new investors. 

Rob Heyvaert, Founder & Managing Partner at Motive Partners,  commented: "We are deeply grateful for the support from our existing investors and are delighted to welcome a roster of new partners to the  Motive family - thank you for your trust. We will continue to be laser-focused on partnering transformational capital with world-class  management teams."

During the fundraising period, Motive continued to invest behind its integrated approach, building out the Motive team to include over 180 Investors,  Operators and Innovators. 

Bob Brown, Founding Partner & Head of Investor Relations,  commented: "We greatly appreciate the support of such an esteemed and diverse group of investors, and we take seriously the responsibility that our investors have bestowed upon us. We continue to invest into  our distinct operating capabilities, allowing us to identify attractive  investment opportunities and support our portfolio companies in the  next stage of their growth."

ION, the largest global provider of trading, analytics, business information, and risk management solutions for capital markets, commodities, and treasury management has appointed Carlo Purassanta as Executive Vice President for Strategy and Corporate Development.

Andrea Pignataro, ION’s Founder and CEO, said, “Carlo’s extensive experience in leading top global teams at the forefront of technological innovation is strategic for ION as we continue to expand and innovate in a growing number of segments.”

Carlo Purassanta, ION’s Executive Vice President, said, “I am thrilled to join ION. The company holds a unique, strategic position in a constantly expanding global sector. I am enthused by its model to combine the financial sophistication, skills, and speed of execution of large private equity funds with the depth, stability, and long-term approach of an industrial operator at scale. ION’s growth over the past 20 years is outstanding and I look forward to contributing to support it further.”

Carlo has been President of Microsoft Italia (2013–2017) and Microsoft France (2018–2021). Before this, Carlo worked for IBM and has been Business Development Executive for Southwest Europe, and Director in France and in EMEA. He holds an Engineering degree from Politecnico di Milano in Italy and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Henley Business School in the UK.

Carlo currently is a member of the Strategy Advisory Board for the Graduate School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, a member of the Advisory Board for Only The Brave (OTB), and a member of the Investment Board of the French Touch Fund.

Today Libeo, a fully integrated and automated business-to-business invoice management and payments platform, bridging the gap between invoice management, payments, reconciliation and accounting, announces the opening of its office in Hewett Street, Shoreditch - a vibrant area of East London in the heart of the SME community. 
 
The office opening follows on from the announcement of Libeo’s launch in the UK led by Glen Foster, Managing Director for the UK & Northern Europe - a former Xero Sales Director for UK and EMEA.  
 
Since the outbreak of the pandemic and the introduction of hybrid working, a recent survey by Microsoft shows that 43% of leaders reported relationship building as their biggest challenge. Integral to the official opening is Libeo’s commitment to its culture of wellbeing, motivation and teamwork. With a firm footing across Europe, the office opening seeks to respond to the post-pandemic challenge of relationship-building due to remote working. All employees will also be offered a comprehensive private healthcare package. 
 

Glen Foster, Managing Director for the UK and Northern Europe, Libeo said: “The UK office provides a base for Libeo to pool its tech talent in the heart of London’s thriving start-up and scale-up community. The office’s collaborative workspaces will enhance the company’s focus on teamwork while being at the centre of art, culture and creativity.”

ABB and Red Hat today announced a global partnership to enable industries using ABB’s process automation and industrial software to scale rapidly and flexibly leveraging Red Hat’s industry-leading enterprise platforms and application services built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The collection, management, and analysis of industrial plant data are critical to improving the efficiency of operations while addressing safety, security and productivity needs. This is consistent with ABB’s strategy for the evolution of process automation.

The partnership enables virtualization and containerization of automation software with Red Hat OpenShift to provide advanced flexibility in hardware deployment, optimized according to application needs. It also provides efficient system orchestration, enabling real-time, data-based decision-making at the edge and further processing in the cloud.

Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its foundation, provides ABB with a single consistent application platform, from small single-node systems to scaled-out hyperconverged clusters at the industrial edge, which simplifies development and management efforts for ABB’s customers.

Red Hat OpenShift increases the deployment flexibility and scalability of ABB Ability™ Edgenius™, a comprehensive edge platform for industrial software applications, together with ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite, an enterprise-grade platform and applications suite that leverages industrial AI to drive Industry 4.0 digital business outcomes for customers. ABB’s Edgenius and Genix can both be scaled seamlessly and securely across multiple deployments. With this partnership, ABB will have access to capabilities like zero-touch provisioning (remote configuration of networks) which can increase manageability and consistency across plant environments.

Today, Detected, announces the launch of its core product which has been built specifically to transform the onboarding process for the payments industry. 

Detected’s unique algorithm utilises over 1700 data sources to create a detailed and accurate profile of any business in the world. It supplements this with information that can be added by the business that is being onboarded. Testament to the technology's success, Detected has already partnered with one of the world’s largest payments providers, Visa.

Detected was founded in July 2020, and since then it has become clear that the technology has a huge and immediate value to add for enterprise payments companies, who stand to benefit enormously from an automated onboarding workflow. Currently, the manual processes involved in onboarding mean it takes an average of 8 weeks - and in some cases 18 weeks - for payments companies to get the right information for Know Your Business (KYB) verification, however, Detected can do this in two minutes. 

The technology is based on in-depth market research and technical R&D, which Detected invested in following its successful £1.5 million funding round in February, bringing its total raised so far to £3.5 million.

Beyond ensuring a frictionless customer experience, the product enables firms to meet their KYB and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. At its most simple, entry of only the company name and the registered city provides comprehensive business data; business, credit, finance, director, PEP & sanctions screening and adverse media data in one single place. The workflow can also include integrated ID verification, UBO entry and document uploads as well as custom data capture localised per country. 

Liam Chennells, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Detected, said:

“Finally, frictionless onboarding. We invested in a deep analysis of the KYB market. The result is entirely unique technology that brings eCommerce conversion best practices to a process that hasn’t changed for many years - we know what payments businesses need. To illustrate our ambition, we will partner with existing KYB providers to enhance our data even further. It is our technology that will be the interface between payments companies and the businesses they want to onboard - you’ll just never know because it is white-labelled.”

“Right now, the payments ecosystem is held ransom by the inefficiencies of onboarding. We’ve seen it time and time again, and we are changing it to allow revenue to be realised rather than locked in manual process delays.”

Peter Youell, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Detected, said:

“We have approached our technology with the mindset that it can be brilliant because we started with a clean slate. The functionality we have created is underpinned by a focus on security and scalability as first principles. Everything we do is meticulously documented and all releases are regression tested to ensure optimal operability. Our SOC2 accreditation and AWS Security Hub rating are testament to that approach.”

“We have built a very strong foundation to continue to grow, enhance, and scale our product to continually support payments providers, and beyond.”

CASHe, India’s preferred AI-driven financial wellness platform, today announced the appointment of Mr. P.S Jayakumar, the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Baroda, as a non-executive director with effect from July 5, 2022. The erstwhile chief of Bank of Baroda has been appointed to the board of Aeries Financial Technologies, the holding company of CASHe’s NBFC arm.

Mr. Jayakumar, a veteran banker with an extensive experience of close to four decades is widely recognised for his pioneering work in the digital transformation of the retail financial industry. Following his selection by the Government of India in 2015, Jayakumar served at the helm of Bank of Baroda, as its MD & CEO for four years, including a year’s extension to the initial three-year term. Acknowledged as the first thoroughbred private banker to head a state-run bank, Mr. Jayakumar is credited for successfully steering the bank’s transformation journey across all aspects – business, digital and technology, compliance and controls, organization and people. During his tenure at Bank of Baroda, he successfully completed a three-way amalgamation between Bank of Baroda, Vijaya, and Dena Bank to create the third-largest lender and second-largest public-sector bank in the country.  

Prior to Bank of Baroda, Mr. Jayakumar spent over 23 years with Citibank across India and Singapore markets, starting in 1986. While at Citibank, he held various senior strategic positions - Managing Director for Citi financial Ltd, Managing Director and Head of Citibank Consumer Loan for several APAC countries, Country Head – Citibank Consumer Business, and Head of Balance Sheet Management, Asia Pacific. He also served as a Board Member in many of Citibank’s subsidiaries in India.

After his stint at Citibank, he kick-started his entrepreneurial journey in 2008 and launched two ventures - Value Budget Housing Company and Home First Finance, both of which immensely contributed to the efforts of building demand-supply equilibrium for low-cost and affordable housing.

Hailed as a change-maker all his life, Mr. Jayakumar continues to be involved in several entrepreneurial activities in the financial services space. He currently serves on the Boards of over twelve companies as an Independent and Non- Executive Director and advises and mentors many others.

A Chartered Accountant by qualification, Jayakumar also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from XLRI Jamshedpur. He also has the distinction of being a Chevening Gurukul Scholar through the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2018, he was awarded the ‘Banker of the Year’ by The Financial Express. 

CASHe recently announced its foray into the wealth management space with the acquisition of Sqrrl, a Gurgaon-based wealth-tech platform. Additionally, it also launched an industry-first credit line service using its AI-powered chat capability to provide customers seamless access to instant credit lines on WhatsApp. On the operational front, the company announced that it has crossed the significant milestone of having disbursed 1.2 million loans worth Rs. 4,000 crores and is eyeing fresh disbursals worth Rs. 3,600 crores in FY22-23, projecting a cumulative loan disbursement of Rs. 7,600 crores (1Billion USD) by end of this financial year.

wefox, the Berlin-based insurtech, has successfully closed a Series D funding round of $400m (comprising equity and debt) and increased its post-money valuation to US$4.5bn.

Mubadala Investment Company led the equity raise with participation from Eurazeo, LGT, Horizons Ventures, OMERS Ventures and Target Global.

The round sees wefox increase its valuation from US$3bn to US$4.5bn in 12 months, bucking the trend currently experienced in the insurtech market and more broadly across the tech sector. 

Julian Teicke, CEO and founder of wefox, said: “This new valuation of US$4.5 billion is a clear validation of our business model, which focuses on indirect distribution via agents rather than direct. This makes our business one of the most credible insurtechs in the market right now.”

“We continue doubling our revenues with last year reaching US$320m. Within the first four months of this year, wefox generated more than US$200m in revenues, which keeps us on track to achieve our revenue target of US$600m by the end of 2022.

“wefox now has more than two million customers and we aim to reach three million customers by the end of this year. It is further proof that wefox is trusted and testament to our focus on prediction and prevention, rather than the traditional approach of repair and replaces. We are making insurance 10 times better through technology. As a result, our customer experience is simple and fit for purpose for the way we live today,” added Mr. Teicke.

wefox intends to use the funding for product development and expand across Europe and thereafter Asia and the US.

Fabian Wesemann, CFO and founder of wefox, said: “wefox is in the strongest position ever.  In successfully closing this funding round we reinforce our strategy and enable faster acceleration on our path to greater revenues and profit.” 

“This additional investment is a strong validation from the investor community of our indirect model, which allows us to be cash efficient and is another testament to our continuous performance even in turbulent times. wefox has a proven model and a sustainable track record to replicate globally, for which the additional funds will be used. 

“Our model ensures we deliver a stronger financial profile with a clear path to profitability. This is vital at all times but especially in the current economic climate which demands greater financial discipline,” added Mr. Wesemann.

Ibrahim Ajami, head of Mubadala Ventures, said: “Unlike most direct-to-consumer insurtechs, wefox acts as an ecosystem enabler - empowering the various distribution channels instead of competing with them. This model has allowed wefox to scale quickly and sustainably, providing brokers and customers alike a platform that seamlessly digitizes the insurance market.”

Despite the current economic climate, wefox remains one of the very few tech companies still recruiting, with more than 1300 employees in the company today up from 550 employees in 2021. wefox expects to reach 2000 employees by the end of 2022.

wefox is a fully licensed digital insurance company that sells insurance through intermediaries and not directly to customers, which has resulted in significant growth. Earlier this year, wefox appointed Prince Max von Zu Liechtenstein to the board alongside former Klarna executive, Hanna Jacobsson. In December of last year, wefox appointed the former president of Samsung Electronics, Young Sohn as chairman of the board.