BlackFin Tech Weekly — February 6th
Dear Fintech folks, we hope you all had a great week. This week the UK and France were on top closing most deals and total amount raised.
Last week, a total amount of €157.6m was raised across 10 deals! Congratulations to British digital bank and peer-to-peer lending solution Zopa in a £75m venture round followed by British Regtech Risilience in a $26m Series B. Finally, the Portuguese coverflex raised a €15m Series A.
The UK and France are occupying both the first place with 2 deals this week, followed by Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy with one deal each.
Subsector-wise, most deals were in Banktech, Insurtech and Other with two deals each, followed by Wealth Management, Crypto and Payments each generating one deal.
Let’s dive in:
Zopa raised £75m:
- British Zopa raised a £75m venture round with existing investors.
- Zopa is a digital bank for SMEs providing full banking services to their customers, including a peer-to-peer lending solution with their banking licence. The company announced a 100 % YoY growth and has to date contracted over £3b in deposits, has more than £2b of loans on its balance sheet and has issued more than 400,000 credit cards.
- Zopa reached a valuation of over a $1bn in October 2021 after a $300m round led by Softbank. After delaying an IPO a few months ago because of market conditions, they plan to use the funds to meet financial requirements and support M&A deals.
Resilience raised $26m:
- The British Risilience raised a $26m Series B led by Quantum Innovation Fund.
- Resilience provides a platform helping corporates to turns data into actionable insights, enabling organisations to understand and quantify climate risk scope, magnitude, and timescale in their strategies and operations.
- The funds will be used to expand its Saas solution and drive international expansion, particularly in the US.
Coverflex raised €15m:
- Portuguese Coverflex raised a €15m Series A led by Scor Ventures.
- The company based in Portugal provides an employee compensation management solution including benefits, insurance, meal allowance, and exclusive discounts. According to the company, it is currently used by 3600 clients such as Santander, Natixis, Revolut and Bolt with a YoY growth of 400%.
- Coverflex counts more than 100 employees and is aiming to launch on the Italian market with the new funds.
Congrats also to Garantme, carbo, Everscale, baobab, Kintai, plumery and superlayer on their respective rounds.
In addition to the fundraising activity, we also observed an M&A deal this week.
- Radiant Logic, the Identity Data Fabric company, has acquired French Brainwave GRC, an Identity Analysis and Intelligence software platform. The acquisition accelerates the companies’ shared vision for a Zero Trust and Identity-First Security foundation for enhanced data security, reduced audit and compliance costs, and improved understanding and visibility of malicious activity.
And here are the news that caught our eye last week, enjoy:
- Twitter has begun applying for regulatory licences across the US and designing the software required to introduce payments across the social media platform, as Elon Musk searches for new revenues to turn round the business.
- Société Générale, Crédit Agricole and BNP Paribas are studying the acquisition of Orange Bank. Since the launch of its online bank, Orange has already lost €880m.
- Tech Nation, a growth platform for UK tech start-ups, has announced it will be ceasing operations on 31 March 2023 and will look to sell its assets after the termination of its core government grant funding.
- JP Morgan Chase is reportedly looking to launch a new digital bank in Germany, its second international effort following the launch of Chase in the UK in September 2021.
If you haven’t checked out our article on Fintech & Insurtech predictions for 2023, please find the link here and enjoy.
Have a great week & see you next Monday!
