Global early stage Funding in Wealthtech, AI for Private Finance, Capital Market Tech and Neobanking week 5/11 to 11/11

Overview / Aided by Claude2

This week saw notable funding rounds for several emerging fintech companies aiming to transform wealth management, private markets investing, trade finance, and fixed income. In the Neobank segment Monument Bank, a digital bank focused on the mass affluent snared more funding from existing investors led by Dubai. Arch, which provides software to simplify private investment administration, secured new investment in its series A from Menlo Ventures. ?Accelex Technologies, offering analytics and visualization for limited partners bagged a new corporate investor, Factset, as it raised US$15ml in its Series A. Eilla AI which is also using AI raised early stage funds to help analyst with research, decision support and document generation.? In wealth management, Era AI closed a new round led by Northzone for its augmented AI platform that is aimed at transforming advisor productivity. Performativ, a Copenhagen-based firm that is componentizing wealth management service needs of family offices obtained new early stage financing from Fintech Collective. Finally Prosper, a new player asiming to disrupt wealth management for the masses raised seed funds from fintec veterans in the UK and elsewhere.? In the Defi Capital Markets world, Untangled Finance, which is creating a collateral financing solution for tokenizing invoices to offer access on chain to small business loans captured investment from Fasanara Capital. Meanwhile, In fixed income, Bondblox exchange added 6 million in Series A led by Beacon Capital Ventures for its fractionalized bond exchange.

This wide range of investment underscores the potential across fintech to transform finance through emerging capabilities in AI, blockchain, digital platforms and more.

Untangled Finance – London/Vietnam $13.5ml – Fasanara Capital – Capital Markets & Decentralized Finance

Article: London-based fintech Untangled Finance has raised $13.5 million to accelerate efforts to bring institutional-grade credit with a built-in liquidation mechanism on-chain. Fasanara Capital was the lead investor in the round. The platform’s protocol focuses on tokenizing real-world private credit assets, such as invoices and small and medium enterprise loans, into on-chain structured credit pools. These pools, in turn, facilitate the issuance of collateralized debt notes to both decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi) investors, Untangled noted in a statement. The protocol concentrates on private credit markets, where it sees the most utility for DeFi. Untangled plans to access over 130 verified asset originators spanning 60 countries through the funds.

Claude’s assessment --? Here are 100 words on how Untangled Finance's defi solution can help SMB companies:

Untangled Finance offers a decentralized finance (defi) platform designed to provide SMBs access to fast, flexible capital through crypto-backed loans. Their solution allows SMBs to post invoices or other assets as collateral to receive a loan instantly from lenders around the world. Repayment terms can be customized based on the SMB's needs. By harnessing the transparency and security of blockchain technology, Untangled Finance removes geographic restrictions and minimizes the need for traditional credit checks. SMBs can access defi loans at lower interest rates without giving up equity. Untangled's dashboard also helps SMBs manage payments and track assets. Overall, Untangled Finance's defi platform opens up new working capital options for SMBs globally through an efficient, decentralized marketplace.

Prosper – London, ￡3.2ml, Fintech Angels – Wealth Management & Alternative Investing

Co-founded by Tandem alumni Ricky Knox and Nick Perrett, along with Nutmeg’s former COO Phil Bungey, Prosper has drawn support from a stellar lineup of FinTech founders. Prosper is poised to challenge the status quo in wealth management, targeting inefficiencies in foreign currency exchange and offering competitive returns. The platform aims to deliver the ‘highest interest rates’ on cash balances, combined with zero-cost index funds from major asset managers. Moreover, Prosper plans to facilitate access to private market investments, historically reserved for the ultra-wealthy, promising higher potential returns. The company’s funding will be channelled towards undercutting traditional wealth management fees while offering lucrative interest on balances. By adopting a model similar to Wise’s approach in the foreign exchange sector, Prosper is set to carve out its niche in the WealthTech landscape.? Prosper’s leadership is vocal about the lack of transparency in traditional wealth management fees. The firm is not only challenging fee structures but also the scope of investment opportunities available to the average consumer. Knox, Prosper’s co-founder and chairman, pointed out the evolution of investment opportunities and the limitations faced by non-wealthy investors. “Unless you’re ultra-wealthy, and have enough money to essentially buy access, you’re at a disadvantage,” Knox declared.

Claude’s assessment -- Here are 100 words on the key wealth management issues Prosper, co-founded by Ricky Knox of Tandem, is trying to solve:

Prosper aims to tackle several pressing issues in the wealth management space. They are focused on improving accessibility so that middle-class families, not just the ultra-wealthy, can benefit from financial advising and investment expertise. Their goal is to provide personalized, holistic financial planning and education to a wider demographic. By leveraging technology and automation, Prosper hopes to lower the traditionally high fees and minimums required to obtain wealth management services. Their innovative platform works to give clients affordable, tailored solutions for investments, taxes, budgeting, estate planning, and more. Overall, Prosper strives to open up high-quality wealth management to more individuals and families by addressing core issues like cost, personalization, education, and ease of use under Ricky Knox's leadership.

Eilla.ai – US$1.5ml / Eleven Venture & Fuel Ventures – NLP & Generative AI for Finance

Today,?Eilla AI, a generative AI platform for financial decision-making in private markets, announced that it has raised $1.5m in Seed funding.? The platform assists M&A, venture capital, and private equity professionals with financial research, analysis, and document creation, making it easier to make money.? Eilla AI's technology automates these processes by mirroring industry professionals using generative AI. The platform also unlocks new insights and supports complex decision-making through aggregation and analysis of large amounts of information from various sources in significantly less time than is currently possible. To date, Eilla AI has been used by advisors and investors from more than 50 M&A banks and VC and PE funds to help optimise specific tasks by researching, aggregating, and analysing information from key industry sources and internal data. The funding round was led by?Eleven Ventures?and supported by?Fuel Ventures, with additional investment from Mark Pearson, Founder & Managing Partner at Fuel Ventures, in an individual capacity.? The funding will help the company expand its technical team and product offering, positioning the business for growth across the M&A, venture capital, and private equity markets.

Claude’s assessment -- Here is a 100 word summary of how Eilla.ai can help investment banking and private equity analysts:

Eilla.ai is an AI-powered virtual analyst created to help investment banking and private equity analysts work faster and smarter. Eilla acts as a tireless virtual colleague who can analyze financial models, synthesize data, create presentations, and generate insights 24/7. This allows analysts to focus their time on higher-value work and accelerate deal flow. Eilla also provides easy-to-understand explanations for her conclusions, enabling analysts to quickly validate her work. By automating repetitive, low-complexity tasks, Eilla augments analysts' capabilities and lets them concentrate on high-impact strategic thinking and client interaction. This makes analysts more productive and gives them greater capacity to take on more work.

Performativ/Denmark - E5.5ml /Fintech Collective – Wealth Management, Reporting & Aggregation

Performativ, a Copenhagen-based fintech startup specialising in wealth management technologies, has raised €5.5 million in a Seed funding round. The investment is earmarked to fuel the company’s growth, both in terms of offer on the table and client base. The €5.5 million Seed round was led by FinTech Collective, and the firm has previously raised $700,000 in a Pre Seed round led by Denmark’s VF Venture, a part of the Danish Growth Fund (V?kstfonden).? According to a Microsoft survey, one-fifth of CEE financial institutions alone have not addressed the fact that traditional banks and financial institutions are struggling to keep up in today’s digital-first world, with only about one-third of them having dedicated teams working on it. Often utilising legacy systems dating back to the 1980s through the early 2000s, this issue is only getting worse, with the banking industry alone spending over $200 billion on technology — and 85 percent of this budget is allocated to “running the bank”, that is, infrastructure maintenance and regulatory updates. ?When comprised of some 24,000 firms across the whole of Europe, ranging from large banks to boutique wealth managers, the fiscal problems attached to the woes of legacy begin to compound exponentially.? In line with what a number of incumbents and a recent spike of newcomers have on offer, Performativ steps in to help these financial service players, both large and small, offering a suite of front, middle, and back office tools and optimisations including to ensure a future-forward scalable infrastructure. Leveraging combined experiences at Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, Performativ founders Albert Geisler Fox (CEO) and Peter Barry (CTO) say that their offer can reduce clients’ onboarding time by 200 percent when compared to industry averages, and that once onboarded, reduce operational costs by up to 70 percent.? Performativ is handling in excess of €20 billion in assets, including accounts custodied across various tax regimes, with a portfolio spanning from listed equities, to private equity, to real estate, to infrastructure assets, and more.

Claude’s assessment -- Here is a 100 word summary of the key benefits for family offices using the wealth software from Copenhagen based Performativ:

Performativ provides an AI-powered wealth management platform designed specifically for family offices. By using natural language processing and personality assessments, Performativ can deliver highly customized financial advice tailored to each client's goals, values and interests. The conversational AI interface enables family members to get financial guidance and education through empathetic audio and text conversations. Performativ automates portfolio management, rebalancing and reporting to reduce costs. Family offices benefit from 360-degree views of complex family financials and cross-generational estate planning. Performativ's data-driven recommendations aligned with personalized preferences provide families with optimized, objective advice. This empowers family offices to have aligned, customized wealth management.

Monument Bank/UK - ￡40ml / Dubai Investments – UK based Neobank for Mass Affluent

Monument has raised more than ￡40 million in a Series B funding round, backed by a combination of existing and new investors. The challenger bank says the ‘mass-affluent’ community it targets with its products – which has trillions in wealth in the UK and tens of trillions globally – is currently underserved in the market. The round follows a strategic partnership with Dubai Investments announced earlier in the year, as part of which the company acquired approximately 9% equity in Monument. As part of an increasingly active partnership, the UAE-headquartered investment company has meaningfully increased its investment in the bank, seeking to double its stake subject to regulatory approval.? Since its inception, Monument has raised in excess of ￡100 million in equity capital, consistently achieving successive ‘up-rounds’. Most recently Monument launched Notice savings accounts, which it says were built in six weeks following feedback from clients seeking a wide range of options to meet their various financial goals. ??Assets now exceed ￡700m, with 335% growth so far this year.

Claude’s assessment -- Here is a 100-word overview of how Monument Bank hopes to better attract, retain and serve mass affluent customers:

Monument Bank aims to attract and retain mass affluent clients by providing a digital-first banking experience focused on convenience along with high-touch personalized service. They offer integrated mobile/online platforms with robust savings & property lending products to give mass affluent clients tools for wealth building. Monument positions themselves as an intelligent financial partner by combining digital banking with specialized lifestyle,? advisory services and lending solutions tailored for the mass affluent segment. With in-app chat support and dedicated advisors, Monument delivers the digital capabilities mass affluent clients expect along with human expertise when needed. This mix of digital convenience and customized human assistance aims to help Monument Bank better serve and retain mass affluent customers.

Bondvalue Pte / Singapore – US$6ml/Beacon Venture Capital – Capital Markets - Bond Investing & Trading on Blockchain

Singapore-based Fintech BondEvalue Pte. Ltd. has added new investor Beacon Venture Capital, the corporate venture arm of Thailand’s Kasikornbank, to its cap table as part of a US$6m Series B round, according to official announcement. Beacon Venture Capital joins existing shareholders MassMutual Ventures and Citigroup who also participated in the round. ?Other investors include existing shareholders Potato Productions, a company helmed by entrepreneur Lee Han Shih, and Octava, a Singapore-based family office. ?The latest round follows a Series A raise of US$6m in 2021. This additional funding will allow the Company to scale BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX), its digital exchange for trading fractional and full-size bonds, as well as grow its international expansion to Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) in India, which recently went live. Powered by distributed ledger technology, BondbloX enables investors to buy and sell bonds in denominations of US$1,000 instead of the usual US$200,000, and through a public exchange where prices are highly transparent. ?BBX has seen strong interest from global clients since launching the platform to individual investors last month. BBX also has future plans to list US Bonds (Treasuries as well as Corporate Bonds) on the platform.? This announcement follows the announcement made last month that Citi is the first digital custodian participant of BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX) for the institutional market. The partnership will allow Citi’s clients that meet certain criteria to become BBX participants and begin trading bonds (both fractionalised and full-sized) almost immediately.

Claude’s assessment - Here is a 100 word summary of the key unique selling points of the bondbloX exchange:

The bondbloX exchange aims to provide greater access and liquidity in the traditionally illiquid bond market. Its key unique selling points are fractionalization, automation, and versatility. bondbloX utilizes blockchain technology to break down corporate and municipal bonds into smaller, tradable units, enabling retail investors to participate in bond trading. Their proprietary AI algorithms and data aggregation tools automate the processing of bond baskets, pricing, and order matching to ensure efficiency. bondbloX offers a versatile product mix from a global pool of bonds across sectors, credit ratings, and structures. With its innovative fractionalization model and seamless execution, bondbloX unlocks the bond market for retail investors in a streamlined, transparent exchange.

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Accelex Technologies / UK & USA – US$15ml /Factset – Computer Vision, NLP & Analytics for Limited Partners & Secondary Investors

Accelex, an innovator in AI automation for private market data, has successfully closed a $15m Series A funding round.? The round was spearheaded by FactSet, a comprehensive financial digital platform and enterprise solutions provider, with additional backing from Illuminate Financial, AlbionVC, SixThirty Ventures, and Expon Capital.? The funding marks a significant milestone for Accelex, which is at a critical juncture of expansion. The fresh capital will be instrumental for the firm to broaden its operations, advance product features, and ensure outstanding client service. This investment also cements the partnership between Accelex and FactSet, with Accelex’s technology being integral to FactSet’s strategy for private markets. Investing in private markets presents unique transparency challenges, often hindered by unstructured data and the need for manual, error-prone processes. Addressing this, Accelex is at the forefront, automating complex workflows from document collection to data extraction and analysis, reshaping how investors manage these obstacles. Through cutting-edge data science, Accelex, in collaboration with FactSet, is pioneering the evolution of alternative asset management, equipping clients with robust tools for a deeper understanding of investment performance determinants.? The investment arrives at a pivotal period for Accelex, which has seen remarkable growth over the past 24 months, adding an impressive roster of top-tier asset owners, allocators, and service providers to its clientele, representing over $1.5 trillion in assets across 13,000 private market funds and 4,000 asset managers.

Claude’s Assessment - Here is a 100 word summary of the key advantages that Accelex Technologies brings to limited partners:

Accelex Technologies offers advanced analytics and visualization software designed to help limited partners optimize their private equity portfolios. By synthesizing data from multiple sources into a unified platform, Accelex gives LPs enhanced visibility across all their PE investments. Dashboards, alerts, and predictive modeling enable better tracking of deal flow, cash flows, exposures, and performance trends. This empowers LPs to make data-driven decisions about rebalancing, distributions, capital calls, and new commitments. Accelex also automates quarterly reporting and provides look-through analyzing down to the underlying assets. With Accelex, LPs gain technology-driven insights that enhance portfolio management, streamline operations, and ultimately drive improved returns.

Arch/USA – US$20ml / Menlo Ventures – Digital Admin for Private Investments

US-based fintech start-up Arch, which describes itself as a “digital admin” for private investments, has ecured $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Menlo Ventures.? The round also saw participation from existing investors Craft Ventures and Quiet Capital, and new investors Carta, Citi Ventures, GPS Investment Partners and Focus Financial Partners. Also taking part were founders of a number of tech firms and members of Arch’s client base. The latest funding follows an initial $5.5 million raise in 2021 and brings Arch’s total funding to date to over $25 million.? Founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, Arch helps single and multi-family offices, wealth management firms, accounting firms, banks and financial institutions manage their K-1 workflows, automate operations and provide “reporting-ready” data, allowing investors to manage their investments in one place. It claims to serve nearly 200 such firms, including “one of the largest US banks”. Arch will use the new funding towards developing its product roadmap, with plans to automate more workflows for advisors, accountants, and their clients, provide increased insights and develop tools that help reduce the risk of fraud.

Claude’s Assessment - Here is a 100 word overview of the capabilities and benefits of Arch, a provider of solutions for private investment administration:

Arch offers a centralized software platform to streamline and automate private investment administration. Core capabilities include detailed portfolio monitoring, capital calls and distributions, fund modeling, and investor relations tools. Arch synthesizes complex data into digestible dashboards, providing administrators and investors with transparency across the investment lifecycle. By automating mundane administrative tasks, Arch enables teams to focus on high-value activities. Benefits include increased efficiency, reduced errors, strengthened controls and oversight, and scalability. Arch combines comprehensive functionality with intuitive design to enhance investor experience. With Arch, private investment firms gain a robust, tailored solution to optimize operations, reporting, and performance.

Era.ai/US – US$3.1ml / Northzone – Augmented AI and Wealth Management

Era, an AI-augmented WealthTech company, has successfully closed a seed funding round, raising $3.1 million.? According to Crowdfund Insider, the round was led by Northzone, with additional participation from Protagonist and Designer Fund, marking a significant milestone for the innovative startup.? Operating in the WealthTech sector, Era aims to disrupt traditional financial advisory services. Its unique approach combines human expertise with advanced artificial intelligence. This integration allows Era to offer expert-level financial advice to a broader audience, significantly democratising access to financial guidance.? The new funding will be instrumental in advancing Era’s mission. By leveraging AI, Era plans to streamline many of the mundane aspects of financial advisory, while also providing insightful recommendations and information to its users. The company’s vision extends beyond just offering advice; it’s about creating a seamless, engaging experience for managing personal finances.? Founded by CEO Alex Norcliffe and COO Lindsay Brady, who boast impressive backgrounds with companies like Stripe, Square, Apple, and Google, Era was born out of a necessity identified by its founders. Their journey in financial literacy, which began with basic skills like balancing a checkbook, evolved into the development of Era – a platform they describe as the “GPS for your money.”? In a recent blog post, Era emphasised its commitment to adaptability and user convenience. “No matter where your money is, Era ensures your money works for you,” the post read, highlighting the user-friendly nature of the service. It’s about chatting with your finances as you would with a financially savvy friend, a testament to the platform’s approachability and ease of use.? Era’s journey in the funding landscape has just begun, but this $3.1 million seed round is a promising start, setting the stage for significant strides in the WealthTech arena.

Claude’s Assessment - Here is a 100 word overview of how Era AI intends to use augmented AI for wealth management:

Era AI is developing an AI-powered platform aimed at enhancing human financial advisors' capabilities. By combining natural language processing and machine learning, Era creates a digital assistant that works alongside advisors to automate routine tasks, analyze client data, and generate personalized recommendations. This allows advisors to focus on building client relationships and overseeing complex financial plans versus manual data input and number crunching. Era AI's augmented approach keeps the human advisor at the center while leveraging AI to work behind the scenes doing the heavy lifting. This empowers advisors to be more proactive, productive and provide superior service to each client. By merging AI with human insight, Era AI aims to create an intelligent wealth management solution.

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