Our investment in N5 — a dynamic “relationship intelligence” platform tailor made for the FS industry
A systematic platform offering CRM 2.0 features, including a 360-degree customer view, FS analytics, custom campaigns, real-time views of company performance and more, N5 enables businesses to better serve their customers, enhancing relationships, retention, and ultimately revenue. N5 integrates with customers’ IT and financial systems producing tangible results in 100 days — 53% increase in commercial productivity and 16% reduction in distributions costs.
N5 offers solutions that enable clients to achieve full digitization, regardless of their technological starting point.
Relationship management is at the heart of every business. The traditional relationship management market is highly fragmented with established players offering horizontal solutions. Businesses are seeking industry-specific solutions that come equipped with features and templates tailored to their industry and regulatory landscape. We believe that N5 is well positioned to capitalize on such market trends and comprehensively address the needs of the financial sector.
Meet N5
N5 is a modern take on CRM, tailor-made for Financial Service (FS) industry professionals whose work is more nuanced than sales. Success relies on their ability to build and nurture client relationships as well as sell products. N5 is simple and easy to use while being very powerful and highly customizable.
The depth of capabilities, real time insights and verticalized solutions enable N5 to better serve the financial services industry. With N5, businesses can:
- Efficiently manage relationships, teams, multiple products, and tailor campaigns to individual customer needs
- Streamline and optimize financial processes (lending capabilities, insurance, etc.)
- Deliver best-in-class client support
- Adapt strategy to market changes in real-time
N5 helps businesses derive value from relationships. It’s incredibly easy to start building, and empowering users from day one.
N5`s consistent wins are driven by quality of product and ease of implementation (the N5 edge)
- Knowledge/product moat: Built by a team with a deep understanding of the Financial Services and CRM market
- Simplifies complexity: N5 simplifies complexity and allows businesses to efficiently manage processes, products, channels, data, and employees
- Stickiness: Connects legacy systems but becomes the user interface
- Unique features: 360degree customer view, FS analytics, prioritization of CTAs to change sales strategy, tailor made campaigns, real time view of performance across various product lines
That’s why we are excited to announce our investment in N5 today.
We are happy to share that Illuminate led N5’s investment round alongside Madrone, Exor, and other awesome business angels. N5 will use the funding to accelerate product development and expand its go-to-market presence globally.
Our investment thesis
At Illuminate, we believed the time was right to build a better verticalized solution for financial institutions. Traditional offerings felt stagnant and lacked technical innovations that businesses needed. We believe N5 is well positioned to capitalize on the market opportunity and build a category leading business.
A strong, passionate, and capable leadership team
N5 Founder and CEO, Julian Colombo, was an “A player” at Santander (formerly MD of CRM & BI Global) and has spent over 20 years in banking, selling CRMs to financial institutions. He is extremely driven (he left Santander to build N5) and obsessed with building the best systemic platform for FIs. Julian knows the market well, has deep insights into FS markets, and has proven execution capabilities. N5 has brought on global players, including Santander, Mastercard, N26, and Itau, as paying clients without any external funding.
Julian’s strategic vision, operational discipline, and motivational leadership style have been the driving forces behind N5’s success to date. Julian has attracted a passionate and capable team, who are committed to making N5 the best systemic platform for Financial Services. What sets the team apart is that they are continuously learning and evolving the platform. The team has built a mature product that is fit for purpose but they continually strive to improve the platform and add new features.
We are confident that this is the right team to build upon N5's success and scale the business.
Differentiated product with clear value proposition
N5 is building a holistic channel sales management solution both from the view point of the end customer who currently have to deal with a poor and disconnected experience and financial institutions that manage multiple regulatory products and responsibilities.
Our reference calls with customers and industry partners confirmed that N5 has built a highly configurable product that is very strong in terms of capabilities and integration. In fact, N5 was named the ‘Best Platform’ and received the ‘Start-up of the Year’ award from Microsoft over the years.
Customers love the N5 platform. Specifically, the quick and seamless integration, and real time insights are important competitive differentiators. The strength of this combination is what allows the product to be easily deployed and deliver quick and meaningful ROI.
Large market opportunity with tailwinds in the adoption of verticalized solutions
Industry reports estimate that the market size for global digital banking platform is projected to grow from $21.5 billion in 2022 to $132 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 20%. The key drivers for adoption are:
- The uptake of industry-specific solutions is growing as businesses expect to receive tools with features and templates customized for their industry and regulatory landscape
- Digitization of business operations and increased focus on building better customer experiences
- Ease of use, pricing and functionality influence the qualification or disqualification of a software provider from consideration
- Organizations are striving to be more agile, reduce IT costs, and better align technology with business objectives
N5 has built a beachhead in servicing thousands of customers in relationship-driven businesses, leveraging a vertical strategy to drive significant revenue scale, attractive retention, and growth metrics.
We believe the future shines brightly for N5. Illuminate will leverage it`s experience and financial services network to support the team in the next phase in their remarkable journey.
N5 is hiring
The team is hiring across all departments so if you want to join an incredible team to build the future of relationships check out their job pages here.
Finally, if you’re building the next category-defining company in B2B Fintech (digital asset infrastructure, enterprise tech, financial market infrastructure or sustainable finance), definitely give me a shout at ss@illuminatefinancial.com
