BlackFin Tech weekly | Sept. 3, 2018
A review of the fintech/insurtech/regtech deals, in Europe, week by week. Fake news! “BlackFin Tech weekly” should have been named “BlackFin Tech monthly” today, because it actually covers all the deals of last month (I mean: August, this lovely scorching month when all the French people are running to meet the beaches). Eventhough we, at BlackFin, were on holiday too, many Fintech / Insurtech / Regtech entrepreneurs (and/or PRs ;) ) seemed to be still working and announcing the fundraising they’ve just closed…


Few comments on these 24 fundraising rounds & their trends:
- OK, let’s draw 2 hypothesis: either UK entrepreneurs (and their PRs) are not on holiday in August, or, other hypothesis, they couldn’t console themselves for losing the FIFA worldcup in July in front of Croatia so they tried to show their strenght in other ways_ I don’t wanna know_ but they are on fire this month, and at all stages!!! FloodFlash, Yielders (Seed), Previse (Series A), Quantexa, Swoopos, Smart365, SalaryFinance(Series B), DueDil (Series C) and Zopa (with a Late stage round of 44m£)… Within the deals of August, 50% are based in the UK !!
- Germany have the 2nd place on the podium with Deposit Solutions , Fractal BlockChain and Taxfix.
- The crypto trend seems to be a little bit quiet this summer with few deals, including Fractal Blockchain for ICOs, Superorder.io, a crypto trading platform closing a seed round and LXDX, another crypto trading solution, backed by a Singaporean fund.
- Interesting startups are to be noticed into the insurtech distribution channels space, like FloodFlash using IoT to avoid flood damages.
- We can see few Personal Finance Manager tools and Open Banking platforms, as usual these last months, with Spiff & Deposit Solutions.
- Specific paradigm in town: islamic fintech, with Yielders raising its 1st round with Peach Ventures and Greenshores Capital to launch its crowdfunding property investment platform and claiming to invest “halal”.
- No regtech startup round this month ! :/ KYC, cybersecurity, RGPD startups where are you?
- No French round announced ?! I told you French people were all wandering on the beach
- Roller coaster for Wonga which just announced its 10m£ round in August, and collapsed just then after the announce.
- Finally, a fintech with an intriguing positioning is SalaryFinance which is a SaaS platform that allows employers to offer loans & savings solutions to their employees. The savings deposits & the loans reimbursments are taken directly on the salaries, offering more attractive rates and returns. First time I see such an embedded solution.
Congrats to all these ambitious teams for achieving such significant milestones & continue rocking their journey towards a futuristic finserv industry!
Stay tuned for next week edition ;)


