Fintech funding round-up: 13 October 2017
Mongolia gets a mention in this concise fintech funding round-up. Features OakNorth Bank, AND Global and TransFICC.
UK challenger OakNorth Bank has secured £154 million investment as it looks to lend a further £1.5 billion to businesses in the country in 2018, and then attempt to move on globally. The funding came from the Clermont Group, Toscafund and Coltrane. The three investors have purchased a c.16% stake.
Launched in September 2015, OakNorth says it has grown its loan book to over £800 million. The funding will be used by OakNorth to launch its Acorn platform to lenders around the world. Rishi Khosla, CEO and co-founder of OakNorth, adds: “Rather than building a technology platform and then going to market trying to sell it, we wanted to build the platform and prove the concept in a highly regulated and highly competitive market – the UK – via OakNorth.”
Mobile in Mongolia
Over in Mongolia, mobile-based microlending start-up AND Global has received another $4 million – after raising $1 million in seed funding in April 2016. According to Forbes, who interviewed the founders, the firm has a $30.8 million valuation in August from backers in Mongolia and Japan.
Forbes states that the company, which has issued over $1.9 million in loans as of this month, plans to use the new investment to fuel expansion into the Philippines and Japan and develop new technology such as a blockchain project while preparing for an initial coin offering (ICO) in December. The firm’s mobile app LendMN lets users select the lending amount and repay time period, and processes the request in a few minutes. Anar Chinbaatar, CEO of AND Global, says its “main target is serving underbanked people who cannot get financial services and who are paying loan sharks”.
TransFICC, a UK provider of “low-latency connectivity for fixed income and derivative markets”, has secured €1 million in early stage investment from capital markets specialists, Illuminate Financial and Frankfurt-based Main Incubator. The firm says it provides banks and asset managers with an alternative to maintaining connectivity to multiple e-trading venues, via a scalable API. Its co-location or cloud-based hosting technology also supports microsecond timestamping of data, “helping to provide an audit trail for best execution requirements”.
Steve Toland, founder, TransFICC, says it will work with its investors “leveraging their knowledge of capital markets and extensive industry connections, to acquire new clients and connect to further trading venues”.
