Fintech funding round-up: 7 February 2018
Following on from the fintech funding round-up on 5 February, welcome to another wave of wondrous wealth. Features Autobooks, Finomial, Rebuildingsociety and a reminder about good news.
Hello Detroit. Integrated receivables platform Autobooks has got a $10 million Series A1 round – and with it, plans to increase hiring. The investment comes from Draper Triangle, Baird Capital, Detroit Venture Partners, Invest Michigan and CU Solutions Group.
Back in March 2017, it closed a $5.5 million Series A. Since that time, it has been deployed into a new bank or credit union every month and the firm reckons it is on pace for 25 more deployments in 2018. Autobooks recently re-located its headquarters to downtown Detroit, and has a presence in Austin, Texas. It added a dozen employees in 2017. Autobooks says it provides business services – including invoicing, payments and accounting.
Staying in the US, Boston-based Finomial, a client lifecycle management platform, says tech fund Silver 8 Capital has made an equity investment in its firm. Financial details were not revealed but Silver 8’s Jose Suarez and Jorge de Mello will be joining Finomial’s board of directors.
According to Finomial, its single Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform supports clients across $540 billion in assets, with over 450 funds using its platform, for regulatory compliance. The money will be used to expand in existing and new markets, including asset managers, private banks and wealth managers, commercial and investment banks – and fintechs, such as alternative banks and crypto asset platforms.
Over the pond, and in the north of England, Leeds City Council (LCC) will begin lending to regional businesses through peer-to-business lending platform Rebuildingsociety. LCC intends to demonstrate its support of SMEs in the region and will review business loan requests from companies with an LS postcode prefix, and pledge funds to contribute to the loan amounts required.
LCC will also consider lending at discounted rates to key industries. Interest earned will be reinvested, and “council representatives will review the performance of their portfolio on a quarterly basis in order to evaluate the efficacy of the committed capital as part of the council’s broader, macroeconomic objectives”. (That’s the usual way councils speak in the UK.)
Don’t forget that today, we also published a separate story on data (and good news) from Innovate Finance, a UK membership association. It revealed VC investment in the nation’s fintech firms was up 153% to a record $1.8 billion in 2017.
In its “2017 FinTech VC Landscape” report, the organisation says investment more than doubled the amount in 2016 of $704 million and surpassed the previous record-breaking total in 2015 of $1.1 billion.
