Fintech funding round-up: 7 September 2017
The fintech funding is on fire. Following on from yesterday’s (6 September) action, here’s another round-up. Features ABN Amro, Cloud Lending Solutions, Dataiku, EY and Innovate Finance.
Amsterdam-based ABN Amro has made an undisclosed investment in US-based Cloud Lending Solutions (CLS) – the second by the bank’s Digital Impact Fund (DIF) and in line with its first investment in Swedish private app provider Tink.
ABN Amro says via CLS it can “develop and go to market faster, with more user-friendly digital credit solutions” for its retail and corporate clients. CLS has offices in San Mateo (US), London, Sydney and Bangalore. Its clients include banks, credit unions, traditional finance companies, online lenders and marketplace platforms.
Dataiku gets $28 million
Analytics software provider Dataiku has raised $28 million in a Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures and supported by FirstMark, Serena Capital and Alven. Dataiku says it plans to hire 100 new team members in the upcoming months, increase global marketing efforts, and accelerate the development of new features and integrations within its platform. It is the maker of Dataiku Data Science Studio (DSS), an analytics and collaborative data science tool.
“Data science is no longer a niche subsector of analytics like it was 20 years ago,” says Neeraj Agrawal, general partner at Battery Ventures. Dataiku is headquartered in New York, and has offices in Paris and London. The company previously raised a $14 million Series A round, led by FirstMark Capital and previous investors, in October 2016.
It’s plainly in their interest, but a census of UK fintech firms by consulting firm EY and UK-based membership association Innovate Finance has painted a generally positive picture. The 2017 UK FinTech Census, based on a study of over 245 firms and conducted on behalf of Her Majesty’s Treasury, found that companies received an average of £15 million in investment to date. Looking at future funding, half of all respondents say they expect their next funding round to be more than £2 million, with 35% anticipating more than £5 million. In aggregate, firms expect a total of £2.5 billion for their next funding round, and 33% of respondents expect an initial public offering (IPO) to be likely in the next five years. (Last year, Innovate Finance sang the praises for VC investment for UK companies – with an increase of 37% to $564 million.)
This is not funding, but the census also reveals that Europe and North America are the two most important regions for future expansion. However, the industry believes it faces challenges in recruiting skilled talent. Respondents feel that coding and software development would be the most difficult skills to find when recruiting (78% of respondents rank this in their top three), followed by product and sales skills. Another key concern for the industry is the worry that customer adoption rates won’t be sufficient to build the size of the userbase. Half the respondents (49%) cited this as one of the biggest challenges facing them in 2017.
Banking Technology Awards 2017 are still open for entry!
Know any innovative products, inspirational projects, skilled teams or visionary leaders that deserve a special recognition this year? Nominate them for a Banking Technology Award!
Deadline for submitting the nominations has been extended to 8 September 2017.
