Funding Archives - Page 76 of 88

Blooom Announces $4 Million Series A Round Led by QED Investors

By David Penn Posted on October 15, 2015
Categories: blooom, Funding, Fundings

In its first outside-capital raise, personal investment-management platform Blooom has hauled in $4 million. The Series A round was led by QED Investors, a firm that has invested in a variety of fintech startups—and Finovate alums—in recent years, ranging from Braintree and Credit Karma to Prosper and LendUp.

Also participating in the round were DST Systems Inc., Commerce Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and UMB.

Blooom Co-Founders Chris Costello and Randy AufDerHeide demonstrated at FinovateFall 2014.

Blooom operates in one of the more interesting niches in personal investment management, 401(k) accounts. Unlike other investors, many 401(k) account holders never asked for them—they were simply a job benefit. As such, 401(k) investors represent a potentially huge market of investors who need help managing these accounts wisely.

The company’s leadership team includes former investment banker Greg Smith who penned the notorious “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs” piece for the New York Times in 2012. Now president of Blooom, Smith feels he is finally with an organization that “aligns with his values” and the issues of customer service and putting clients first he wrote about in his critical NYT op-ed.

Blooom works by giving investors a short questionnaire about their current financial status, risk tolerance, and investment preferences. Consumers can take advantage of the free 401(k) comparative analysis or sign up for ongoing account management, including rebalancing and allocation adjustments. Price is either $1 a month for clients with account values below $20,000, or $15 a month for larger accounts.

Read more about Blooom in its Finovate debut feature from last fall.

Recent headlines for Blooom include winning a grant last month from LaunchKC. The company has been profiled in Forbes, highlighted as a member of the “Silicon Prairie” in Inc, and referred to as “the future of retail savings” by COOConnect.

Founded in February 2013 and headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, Blooom demonstrated its platform at FinovateFall 2014 in New York .

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Mortgagetech on the Move as Roostify Closes Series A Round Led by USAA

By David Penn Posted on October 15, 2015
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Roostify

While deal-terms were not disclosed, we learned late Wednesday that mortgage-transaction technology innovator Roostify has wrapped up a Series A investment round led by USAA.

“Roostify is innovating the home-buying process for consumers and lenders through a platform that brings simplicity and efficiency to something that sorely needs it,” said Michael Smith, USAA executive director for corporate development.

Roostify CEO Rajesh Bhat asserts the solution “brings a user friendliness to the process that benefits lenders and applicants by streamlining the process. (It cuts) the time to close loans and lessens errors in the applications.”

From left: Roostify Lead Engineer Jonathan Kirst and CEO Rajesh Bhat demonstrated at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose, California.

Also participating in the funding were Colchis Capital and “two tier-1 banks.” Bhat said the funding will help grow the technology and bring more lenders to the platform.

Roostify simplifies the challenging process of buying a home for all parties involved. Home-buyers using the platform benefit from 100% transparency and greater control over the process, resulting in greater accountability and lower costs. Lenders can approve and process more loans faster using Roostify, having processed thousands of applications through the platform since its launch in early 2014.

Founded in March 2013 and headquartered in Burlingame, California, Roostify made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose.

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Kabbage’s Fresh $135 Million to Help Grow Karrot Consumer Lending Platform

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on October 14, 2015
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Kabbage

Alternative-financing provider Kabbage pulled in $135 million in new funding today. We speculated about this round in July, when rumors first circulated.

It is the company’s largest round of equity financing, and brings the company’s total raised to just over $600 million. Perhaps more notably, some sources report that Kabbage is now valued at $1 billion (this has not been confirmed by Kabbage), making it a fintech unicorn.

Reverence Capital Partners led the round, and several global banks also participated, including ING Group, Santander InnoVentures, and Scotiabank.

With this list of globally diverse bank investors, Kabbage plans to use the funds to fuel international expansion. It also aims to grow Karrot, its consumer-lending platform, from 10% of its business to 30% by next year. Watch the video of Kabbage’s debut of Karrot at FinovateFall 2014:

Kabbage also announced it has expanded its credit facility to $900 million. According to the company, the list of investors includes a mix of banks and financial groups, but does not include any of the contributors to the equity round.

CEO Rob Frohwein states that the company is on track to generate $100 million in revenues this year.

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InForcePRO Rakes in $4 Million Following Finovate Debut

By David Penn Posted on October 1, 2015
Categories: Funding, Fundings, InforcePRO

In a round led by LiveOak Venture Partners, insurance technology specialist InforcePRO has closed a $4 million venture capital round.

The investment takes InforcePRO’s total capital to more than $5 million. The company says the new funding will help with expansion both in the United States as well as internationally. InforcePro co-founder Cameron Jacox anticipated growth of 400% over the next two years, saying that such growth would enable the company to “help more than 600 million global policyholders.”

InforcePRO co-founder Karan Kanodia demonstrated his technology’s real-time policy analysis at FinovateFall 2015 in New York City.

Fellow co-founder Karan Kanodia said that InforcePRO’s strategy to “put policyholders first” was a “tectonic shift for an industry which was traditionally built on a ‘gotcha’ mindset.” InforcePRO differentiates itself by providing “post-sale software solutions” that give insurance distributors new up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, as well as improving overall customer engagement. The technology makes it easy for insurance professionals to run instant policy reviews, enabling them to identify potential sale or service opportunities on insurance policies that are as many as three decades old.

Venu Shamapant, general partner at Live Oak Venture Partners, included InforcePRO among the companies it has invested in that are “focused on solving long-overlooked problems resulting in disruption of large and established industries.”

“LiveOak’s investment will help InforcePRO capitalize on the global demand for their solutions, and accelerate the company’s pace of product innovation,” said Shamapant.

Founded in November 2013 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, InforcePRO made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2015 in New York City. The company has more than 25 employees and its platform monitors more than 2 million life insurance policies.

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MX Lands $4 Million from CheckFree Founder Pete Kight

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on September 30, 2015
Categories: Funding, MX

Just days away from its presentation at the FinDEVr developer conference next week, MX received a $4 million investment from CheckFree founder, Pete Kight.

Following this investment, Kight (pictured right) will join MX’s board of directors and will serve as an adviser to the company’s CEO, Ryan Caldwell.

Today’s investment brings the Utah-based company’s total raised to $54 million. In April of this year, USAA led MX’s most recent round, totaling $30 million. Prior to that, in November of 2014, it pulled in $20 million in seed funding.

MX, formerly known as MoneyDesktop, offers data aggregation, data cleansing, auto-categorization, classification, money management, custom APIs, data analytics, and marketing to help more than 550 financial institutions serve up a better user experience.

MX is one of 64 companies that will present its latest tools and APIs to a crowd of developers at FinDEVr in San Francisco next week. Brandon Dewitt, CTO of MX, will lead a presentation titled, How You Build Something Is More Important Than What You’re Building. Tickets for FinDEVr are available through early next week.

The company, founded in 2010, last demoed at FinovateFall 2014 in New York. Check out the video below.

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Ellevest Pulls in $10 Million from Morningstar

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on September 28, 2015
Categories: Ellevest, Funding

Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women—co-founded by Finovate alum Charlie Kroll—raised $10 million this week in a Series A round led by Morningstar.

Other investors in the New York-based startup include:

Ajay Banga, president and CEO of Mastercard
Robert Druskin, executive chairman of the DTCC, former COO of Citigroup, and former chairman of E*Trade
Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz and the former CEO of PIMCO
Karen Finerman, co-founder of Metropolitan Capital Advisers and panelist on CNBC’s Fast Money
Brian Finn, former chairman and CEO of Asset Management Finance Corp. and former president of Credit Suisse First Boston
Andrea Jung, CEO of Grameen America and former CEO of Avon
Jeff Schwarz, co-founder of Metropolitan Capital Advisors
Contour Venture Partners

Ellevest is focused on helping women bridge the investment gap, and seeks to transform investing into a women-specific experience.

The Ellevest investment platform, slated to launch in early 2016, was founded by Sallie Krawcheck (CEO) and Charlie Kroll (COO). Kroll is former CEO of Andera, which debuted its FortiFI solution at FinovateFall 2011. In October of 2011, Andera purchased oFlows, which demoed oFlows for Everyone at FinovateFall 2011. In May 2014, Andera was acquired by Bottomline Technologies.

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Kreditech Raises €82 Million in Series C Investment Led by J.C. Flowers

By David Penn Posted on September 28, 2015
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Kreditech

German consumer-finance technology company Kreditech today announced that it has raised €82.5 million in a Series C round led by J.C. Flowers—and more funding could be on the way. The investment includes a bridge loan from Peter Thiel and Amadeus Capital Partners (Amadeus) from earlier this year that has been converted into equity, as well as word that Kreditech hopes the round ultimately will raise more than €100 million.

Also participating in the round were existing investors Värde Partners, HPE Growth Capital, and Blumberg Capital.

The more than €80 million raised so far boosts the company’s total funding to more than €300 million in debt and equity. Kreditech CFO Rene Griemens noted that more than half of the company’s total funding are unused debt facilities—a revolving credit arrangement—that can be loaned out to help fuel growth.

Kreditech CEO and co-founder Sebastian Diemer demonstrated Kredito24 at FinovateSpring 2014 in New York.

Loren Felsman, managing director at J.C. Flowers who will be joining the Kreditech board as part of the investment, praised the company’s “sophisticated approach to real-time consumer banking,” especially as it relates to the underbanked. “Most lenders, including those built on modern technology, may not crack these markets for years,” Felsman said.

Kreditech leverages big data to create better credit-scoring technology for consumer-borrowers with poor or no credit histories. Kreditech focuses on the current financial health of the borrower, analyzing more than 20,000 data-points to establish potential creditworthiness.

These data-points encompass a wide range of information typically overlooked when analyzing a borrower’s likelihood of repaying debt, and include everything from a borrower’s Facebook friends to semantic analysis, i.e., the writing tone in email messages or social media posts. The goal, as Deimer explained from the stage last year at FinovateFall 2014, was both a more accurate credit rating, better pricing and more personalized lending options for the borrower.

Kreditech has deployed its technology with subsidiaries operating in nine markets: Germany, Poland, Spain, Peru, Mexico, Australia, the Dominican Republic, the Russian Federation, and the Czech Republic. “These are markets with very low or no credit-bureau infrastructure at all,” Deimer pointed out. This was key to both maximizing margins and keeping customer-acquisition costs low.” The company is also “ramping up” operations in Brazil and Romania.

Deimer was named to the Hot Topic 100 list of the most influential people in fintech in August. In May, Inc.com added Kreditech to its roster of the “22 Financial Technology Startups You Need to Know.” This spring, Kreditech announced the hiring of Oliver Prill as its new COO. Prill was previously the CEO of a boutique small-business and consumer-debt-reconciliation firm, Optanus, and before that was the founder and CEO of C&A Bank in Germany.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, Kreditech demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2014 in New York.

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CoverHound Completes $33 Million Series C

By David Penn Posted on September 22, 2015
Categories: CoverHound, Funding, Fundings

Move over robo-advisers and alternative lenders, there’s a new destination for investment dollars in the fintech space.

Digital insurance-comparison and -shopping platform CoverHound announced today that it closed a $33.3 million Series C round. The investment takes the company’s total funding to more than $53 million, giving CoverHound a valuation of more than $100 million.

The round was led by ACE Group and featured participation by existing investors, American Family Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Core Innovation Capital, Route 66 Ventures, and RRE Ventures.

CoverHound CEO Keith Moore emphasized his company’s commitment to the comparison-shopping model as the “fastest and smartest way” for consumers to buy property and casualty (P&C) insurance. The company plans to use the capital to invest in new talent, specifically in product management and engineering, as well as new products for SMEs and entrepreneurs. CoverHound also plans to emphasize adding insurance carriers to its platform and finding partnerships in new states.

2015 has been a banner year in funding for CoverHound. This spring, the company announced a successful $14 million Series B round that included news of its Google Compare partnership. CoverHound currently provides auto, homeowners, renters, and motorcycle insurance from more than 20 carriers including Progressive, Safeco, Travelers, and MetLife. The company says it has experienced new customer policy growth of more than 168% in 2015.

As part of the investment, James D. Robinson III, RRE Ventures’ co-founder and general partner, will join the CoverHound board. Robinson was CEO of American Express from 1977 to his retirement in 1993.

Founded in May 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, CoverHound demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2013 in New York.

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Coinalytics Earns $1 Million in Seed Funding from The Hive

By David Penn Posted on September 21, 2015
Categories: Coinalytics, Funding, Fundings

Feeling sour on cybercurrencies? Coinalytics now has one million more reasons why you should be a blockchain—if not Bitcoin—believer.

The Palo Alto-based blockchain-analytics specialist has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from The Hive. The Hive is an incubator that specializes in working with companies that develop technologies for “data-intensive enterprises.” And these days, when you hear “data-intensive,” think blockchain. According to Fabio Federici, Coinalytics CEO, technologies like those built by his company will play a major role in “break(ing) down a significant barrier for mainstream adoption of the blockchain.”

Coinalytics has developed a platform that helps businesses gain valuable intelligence, analytics, and risk assessment from the blockchain. The platform relies on advanced machine learning, pattern recognition, and distributed systems, providing businesses in industries ranging from online payments to financial services with real-time transaction information that is both secure and private.

The investment takes the company’s total capital to $1.3 million raised in three rounds.

While blockchain is synonymous with Bitcoin for many, Federici pointed out that the virtues of the blockchain extend beyond Bitcoin, potentially to any instance where value is exchanged, including not only financial services, but also supply-chain management and the internet of things.

Founded in 2014, Coinalytics will use the new capital to drive growth, including building out technology and sales teams. Coinalytics will make its FinDEVr debut next month in San Francisco.

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Finicity Acquires Aurora Financial Systems

By David Penn Posted on September 11, 2015
Categories: Aurora Financial Systems, Finicity, Funding, Mergers & Acquisitions

As we were about to publish the Finovate debut feature for Aurora Financial Systems, we were asked to hold off by Chris Melendez, vice president for corporate partnerships. “There may be some big news coming,” he said.

This week, the big news arrived: Aurora Financial Systems has agreed to be acquired by fellow Finovate alum, Finicity.

In a statement released earlier this week, Finicity announced it had acquired “substantially all the assets” of Aurora Financial Systems. Aurora will become part of Finicity’s Data Services Division and will be led by Melendez and Aurora co-founder Michael Ciberey. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

A division of Finicity Corporation, Finicity Data Services provides API services for fintech developers building account aggregation, cash-flow verification, and account-ownership-verification solutions. With the acquisition of Aurora Financial Systems, Finicity will add transaction processing and card program management to its developer stack.

With the acquisition, Finicity is intensifying its promotion of its TxPUSH real-time financial data delivery. Finicity co-founder Nick Thomas highlighted Aurora’s TxPUSH Event Management API and Event PUSH Delivery engine as “standards-based solutions” for delivering card transaction data “immediately, not three days from now.”

“Real-time transaction data opens many new doors for fintech innovators,” Thomas said.

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Finicity’s Data Services division launched its TxPUSH API for fintech apps at FinovateSpring 2015. The company will make its FinDEVr debut next month at FinDEVr 2015 San Francisco (early bird ticket sales end this Friday) where it will demonstrate real-time data delivery via its TxPUSH API.

Aurora Financial Systems made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose, Calif., with the debut of Note, a vertically integrated budgeting solution for FIs. But the Purchase, New York-based company’s pedigree is as a debit processor and program manager specializing in incentive, payroll, and reloadable, prepaid solutions. Aurora has processed millions of dollars of transactions within these categories since its founding in 2009.

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Trunomi Raises $3 Million to Solve KYC Challenges

By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on September 8, 2015
Categories: Funding, Trunomi

Trunomi, a startup that uses consent-based data-sharing to streamline customer-verification for banks, announced a $3 million raise today.

Saturn Partners led the round. Fenway Summer, Persistent Ventures, and SenaHill Partners also participated. This lineup of investors also contributed to Trunomi’s $2.3 million Angel round in 2014, bringing its total funding to $5.3 million.

Trunomi, which launched about a year ago, plans to use the funds to progress its technology.

Here’s the company’s live debut of TruMobile at FinovateEurope this year:

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Fintech Fundings: 18 Companies Raise $160 Million Week Ending 4 Sep 2015

By Jim Bruene Posted on September 4, 2015
Categories: Funding

After a slow start, fundings picked up and finished the week at $160 million raised by 18 fintech companies. That compares to the blistering (and unsustainable) weekly pace of 20 fundings and $575 million in August. Last year during the first week of September 2o companies raised $275 million.

Last week’s total disclosed amount raised was $158.3 million, of which $17 million was known to be debt. Three companies did not disclose funding amounts.

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Unicorn hunting
I completely agree that the term “unicorn” is overused, but it’s still an easy way to communicate an important valuation hurdle. Last week, The New York Times published an article, sourced from CB Insights, predicting the next 50 unicorns. It comes as no surprise that eight (17%) were fintech companies, including four Finovate alums (Betterment, Coinbase, Wealthfront, ZenPayroll) and four others (Avant, Collective Health, Raise, and Zuora). We’ll update our near-unicorn list (published 22 July) to include ZenPayroll, Collective Health and Raise.

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Here are the fundings from 29 Aug to 4 Sep 2015 by size:

Prospa
Australian alt-lender to small businesses
HQ: Sydney, Australia
Latest round: $60 million Series B
Total raised: $60+ million
Tags: Lending, loans, commercial, underwriting, online, SMB
Source: Crunchbase

Shift Payments
Debit card with universal currency access
HQ: San Francisco, California
Latest round: $50 million
Total raised: $50.1 million
Tags: Payments, digital currency, loyalty points, prepaid cards, debit, Y Combinator, Dwolla (partner)
Source: FT Partners

Remitly
Mobile remittance service
HQ: Seattle, Washington
Latest round: $12 million Debt
Total raised: $35 million ($23 million equity; $12 million debt)
Tags: Payments, remittances, P2P payments, mobile, Silicone Valley Bank (lender)
Source: GeekWire

InVenture
Mobile loan underwriting for the unbanked
HQ: Santa Monica, California
Latest round: $10 million
Total raised: $11.2 million
Tags: Lending, credit, consumer, loans, underwriting, unbanked, underbanked
Source: FT Partners

QuanTemplate
Data analytics for the insurance industry
HQ: London, England, United Kingdom
Latest round: $8.0 million
Total raised: $8.0 million
Tags: Insurance, reinsurance, analytics, big data, BI
Source: FT Partners

Electronic Payments
Payment processing
HQ: Calverton, New York
Latest round: $5 million Debt
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: Payments, acquiring, cards, POS, point-of-sale
Source: FT Partners

Quovo
Portfolio analytics and management tools
HQ: New York City, New York
Latest round: $4.8 million
Total raised: $6.2 million
Tags: Investing, trading, wealth management, analytics
Source: FT Partners

Questis
Financial coaching as an employee benefit
HQ: Charleston, South Carolina
Latest round: $2 million Seed
Total raised: $2 million
Tags: Personal financial management, advice, PFM, retirement planning, employee benefits, insurance
Source: WhoGotFunded

Bux
Easy mobile trading for consumers
HQ: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Latest round: $1.9 million
Total raised: $1.9 million
Tags: Investing, gamification, stocks, share trading, mobile, Ayondo (partner)
Source: Crunchbase

MoneyBrilliant
Money management geared towards women
HQ: Darlinghurst, Australia
Latest round: $1.5 million
Total raised: $1.5 million
Tags: Consumer, PFM, personal, financial management, budgeting
Source: Crunchbase

Paymium
Bitcoin exchange
HQ: Paris, France
Latest round: $1.1 million
Total raised: $1.1 million
Tags: Payments, cryptocurrency,
Source: WhoGotFunded

FattMerchant
Payment processor
HQ: Orlando, Florida
Latest round: $850,000
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: Acquiring, SMB, merchants, cards
Source: WhoGotFunded

Mobetize
Mobile wallet and point-of-sale
HQ: Reno, Nevada
Latest round: $750,000
Total raised: $2.1 million
Tags: Payments, mobile, mPOS, merchants, wallet, SMB, consumer
Source: FT Partners

Xendit
Mobile wallet
HQ: San Francisco, California
Latest round: $285,000
Total raised: $400,000
Tags: Payments, remittances, funds transfer, P2P payments, Y Combinator
Source: WhoGotFunded

Wirate
Equity crowdfunding platform
HQ: France
Latest round: $110,000
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: Investing, P2P, person-to-person, marketplace
Source: WhoGotFunded

Kash
ACH at the point-of-sale
HQ: Waterloo, Canada
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: $2+ million
Tags: Payments, API, merchants, mobile, SMB, acquiring, ACH, developers
Source: FT Partners

Platform Black
P2P invoice and supply chain finance
HQ: Basingstoke, England, United Kingdom
Latest round: Undisclosed
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: SMB, financing, credit, factoring, accounts receivables, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer
Source: InsiderMedia

Verifacto
Connecting auto dealers, lenders, insurers and consumers
HQ: Norcross, Georgia
Latest round: Undisclosed Series A
Total raised: Unknown
Tags: Indirect lending, automobiles, car dealers, installment loans, insurance
Source: FT Partners

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Graphic licensed from 123rf.com

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Blooom Co-Founders Chris Costello and Randy AufDerHeide demonstrated at FinovateFall 2014.

From left: Roostify Lead Engineer Jonathan Kirst and CEO Rajesh Bhat demonstrated at FinovateSpring 2014 in San Jose, California.

InforcePRO co-founder Karan Kanodia demonstrated his technology’s real-time policy analysis at FinovateFall 2015 in New York City.

Kreditech CEO and co-founder Sebastian Diemer demonstrated Kredito24 at FinovateSpring 2014 in New York.

—— Graphic licensed from 123rf.com

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Graphic licensed from 123rf.com