Fintech Highlights - 05/02/2023
First Republic goes to Chase. Policygenius gets acquired. Summer raises a round. Here's what we're watching this week 👇
Pinned to the Top
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp took control of First Republic Bank over the weekend and immediately sold it to JPMorgan Chase, bringing to an end weeks of questions about the fate of the San Francisco bank, the latest casualty of this year’s banking crisis.
First Republic has a high level of exposure to the technology industry, and many high-net-worth people in the Valley bank there. Some startups had moved their money into First Republic after SVB’s failure. But questions about First Republic’s stability began to mount soon after the SVB failure. Last week the bank reported that depositors had pulled more than $100 billion from the bank in the first quarter, significantly more than expected. That sparked a new run.
With the sale, all branches of First Republic will reopen Monday as branches of JPMorgan Chase with normal business hours. All of the bank’s depositors will be assumed by JPMorgan and will have full access to all of their deposits. Shares of First Republic fell 78% last week to close at $3.51. When a bank is seized by regulators, equity holders are typically wiped out.
The BFD
Finastra Group, a London-based fintech owned by Vista Equity Partners, is in talks with private credit funds about a $6 billion refinancing package, per Bloomberg.
Why it's the BFD: It would be the largest private credit deal ever, topping the $5 billion secured last summer for the leveraged buyout of Zendesk.
- If that record sounds familiar, it's because Carlyle Group was working on a $5.5 billion private credit package for its takeover of health care analytics company Cotiviti, before deal talks collapsed earlier this month.
Details: Finastra, which provides payment infrastructure software, reportedly is in talks with Oak Hill Advisors, KKR, Sixth Street Partners and Ares Management. The company was acquired by Vista in 2012, and has over $4 billion of debt set to mature.
The bottom line: If this deal goes through, don't expect the record to hold for long, as private credit funds were sitting on a whopping $1.4 trillion at the end of 2022.
M&A
Zinnia Acquires Policygenius to Create Front-to-Back Architecture for Insurance Value Chain
Zinnia, a leading life and annuity insurance technology and digital services company, has announced its acquisition of Policygenius. More here ->
Kaspi.kz (LSE: KSPI), Kazakhstan's fintech superapp with a market cap north of $14b, is preparing to file for a U.S. listing. More here ->
Binance.US scrapped its $1.3b deal to buy the assets of bankrupt crypto lender VoyagerDigital. More here ->
Kakao Pay, the digital payment unit of South Korea's Kakao, invested $17m for a 19.9% stake U.S. brokerage Siebert Financial (Nasdaq: SIEB), with plans to buy another 31.1%. More here ->
Direct Line Group Acquires By Miles for Undisclosed Sum
Direct Line Group, the private motor insurer, has acquired By Miles, a pay-by-mile insurance provider for an as yet, undisclosed sum. More here ->
Fintech
Summer, a student debt repayment tool, raised $6m in Series A extension funding. Summer , harneses the expertise of public policy experts to optimize borrower options and provides needed clarity for borrowers who are uncertain about their eligibility and are looking for guidance on their loan repayment.
More here ->
Plumery, a component-based banking tech startup, raised $4.5m in seed funding. It provides a software overlay to legacy banking architecture, enabling banks to speed up the development and roll out of mobile and Web applications to keep pace with fast-moving fintech startups. More here ->
Ansa, an SF-based digital wallet infrastructure startup, raised $5.4m in seed funding. It is designed to help businesses process small payments and offset high credit card fees for smaller transactions. More here ->
Insurtech Capitola has raised $15.6M Series A. Capitola provides a cloud-based SaaS platform to help commercial insurance brokers better serve their clients, as well as a marketplace to connect brokers with carriers. More here ->
Clerkie, a lender focused platform, has raised $33M in Series A funding. address The company is attemtping to fix the broken debt system by enabling lenders to manage and optimize their loan portfolio, reducing time, cost, and headache associated with loan recovery. It also helps users budget, manage money, and pay off credit cards and student loans faster, with an average lifetime savings of $5,300. More here ->
Wealthtech-proptech-fintech crossover Plotify has raised $12.5 million in equity financing. Plotify is a digital platform that provides full and direct single family rental (SFR) ownership opportunities to global investors at scale. More here ->
YELO Funding, a college financing startup, announces $1.2 million in pre-seed funding. YELO’s approach to financing college education is relatively new - rather than offering private loans the company finances student tuition using a financial instrument known as an Income Share Agreement (ISA). More here ->
Actor Ryan Reynolds has bought a position in Nuvei, a Canadian payments company. Nuvei has almost 800 employees and about 50,000 customers who processed more than $35 billion worth of transactions over the company's network in the year up until the end of June. More here ->
Wayhome, a U.K.-based home mortgage alternative, raised £8m in Series A funding. Wayhome offers an alternative to a traditional home mortgage, allowing prospective buyers to purchase a property up to 10x their income without a mortgage. Instead, buyers pay rent for the part that they have not paid for. More here ->
Tembo, a London based digital-mortgage business, £5m. Tembo offers digital mortgages to make it easier for those who have been priced out of the market. More here ->
French expense management firm Mooncard has bagged €37M in series C funding. Mooncard is a corporate payment card that automates the management of expense claims and business expenses. More here ->
Waste management payments startup CurbWaste has raised $4M. CurbWaste is a cloud-based and data-driven cleantech platform that helps waste management companies streamline their operations and save time. It provides features such as real-time dispatch and driver app, order management, and transparency. More here ->
Investtech
DFlow, a decentralized payment for order flow protocol, raised $5.5m. Framework Ventures led, and was joined by Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, Cumberland, Wintermute Ventures, Spartan Group and ZeePrime. More here ->
TiiCKER, a shareholder loyalty and engagement platform, raises $5M in seed round. TiiCKER is another platform that allows users to earn perks from the companies they own, such as exclusive deals, VIP event invitations, and gifts. More here ->
Crypto
Berachain, a Layer 1 blockchain, raised $42m. DFlow is a protocol that enables decentralized order flow markets, allowing market makers to participate in auctions and monetize order flow transparently with no opaque contracts. More here ->
Credora, a New York-based crypto lending creditworthiness startup, raised $6m. Credora is a platform that provides transparent credit risk management for borrowers and lenders, allowing them to maximize, scale, and grow their balance sheet. More here ->
Zodia Custody, a London-based crypto custodian controlled by Standard Chartered, raised $36m in Series A funding. More here ->
Proptech
Residential technology company Habi has raised a $100M credit facility from Victory Park Capital. Habi is a data-driven residential real estate platform that has raised $275 million in equity and credit lines since 2019, becoming the first PropTech unicorn in Spanish-speaking Latin America.The company plans to continue building on its portfolio of residential products and increasing its volume of used home purchases and sales in Colombia, thereby enabling thousands of middle-class families to access housing in an agile, secure and transparent manner. More here ->
From the Stash
The fintech funding crunch in four charts- Few sectors illustrate the massive runup in venture funding that occurred in 2021 as well as financial services and the fintech industry. But as funding slows, there could be a massive shortfall for the fintech sector over the next four to eight quarters, Crunchbase data shows. Plus, here’s a look at the largest VC deals to financial services startups so far this year. More here ->
Clearcover Teams with Experian to Deliver an Embedded Insurance Solution - Clearcover, the digital-first car insurance company, has deepened its relationship with Experian’s auto insurance shopping solution to deliver a seamless embedded car insurance experience. More here ->
Swiss Re Joins Forces with Benekiva to Streamline the Claims Experience - Swiss Re and Benekiva have partnered to revolutionise the claims experience with their Integrated Claims Management Platform. More here ->
Fintech accelerator moved assets to First Republic in March - Fintech accelerator Expert Dojo, a former client of Silicon Valley Bank, moved some of its deposits to First Republic Bank in March to strengthen the bank’s deposits and help avoid a similar fate to SVB — which was ultimately unsuccessful. More here ->
Reports / Webinars
PitchBook’s Q1 2023 B2B fintech investment report shows that investment into enterprise fintech was $11.8 billion. Though it is a decrease from the same quarter in 2022, it was above the first quarter of 2021. And compared to the shrinking of quarter-to-quarter investments for the rest of 2022, the $11.8 billion shows a boost of confidence from investors, and dare we say a comeback?