Fintech Highlights - 12/14/2021

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This week we're watching the real-estate / protech sector - because, well there's been some interesting technology developments, and some DRAMA 🍿 👇

Pinned to the Top

If you’ve ever had to apply for a mortgage, you know that it can be a time-consuming, expensive and often painful process — both in terms of just filling out the application and then waiting for the transaction to close.

Enter Staircase. The Philadelphia-based startup has developed an API based platform that aims to bring together the various parties involved in the mortgage origination process. By integrating all these different parties, Staircase is pledging to provide a better — and significantly faster — experience for the borrowers and the companies that are providing the mortgages.

It currently takes an average of 45 days to obtain a mortgage loan, and according to a recent report by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), total loan production expenses totaled an average of $9,140 per loan in the third quarter of 2021. Staircase says that its API can give every participant in the process a way to talk to one another “in just a few clicks” and thus, will bring down the time to get a mortgage to 10 days, and the cost to originate a loan to $1,000.

The company recently raised $18M with Bessemer leading the round.

“It’s just all about product development, and maturation, and then going into the market and making sure the technology is helping borrowers,” founder Adam Kalamchi said.

The BFD

Better, the New York-based home mortgage startup backed by SoftBank and Alphabet, is delaying the close of its $7.7 billion reverse merger with Aurora Acquisition Corp.

Why it matters: The move comes after the company fired around 900 employees, or 9% of its workforce, via Zoom. Yes, via Zoom. And, just to add insult to injury, that video conference from hell came 24 hours after Better received an accelerated $750 million infusion from investors in the SPAC merger.

Cap table: Prior to the SPAC deal, Better had raised around $950 million from firms like SoftBank, CapitalG, Ping An, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Fenway Summer Ventures, IA Ventures, 1/10 Capital and Goldman Sachs.

The bottom line: Officially, the merger delay is to allow Better and Aurora to get regulatory approvals for their amended SPAC investment terms. Unofficially, it's to give the company time to extinguish its raging dumpster fire.

Fintechs

Mambu, a Dutch provider of embedded financial services and banking APIs, raised €235 million in Series E funding. The investment is the latest bet on European technology providers that are taking advantage of the switch to digital-banking services by consumers and businesses. More here ->

Resolve, an embedded BNPL solutions provider that spun out of Affirm in 2019, raised $25 million. Unlike Affirm — which is more focused on the consumer — Resolve is exclusively focused on business-to-business billing by automating the process of billing and purchasing on credit. What it’s doing is basically allowing businesses to defer payments digitally and on better terms than what they’ve seen historically via an automated underwriting process. More here ->

Receeve, a no-code SaaS startup that makes it easier for companies to collect and recover debts (such as overdue claims), increased their seed funding to $16 million. With Receeve, company teams can automate processes across the credit management value chain. Its customers include banks, alternative lenders, utilities and telcos. More here ->

Hummingbird, which sells anti-money laundering software to banks and fintechs, announced today that it raised a $30 million Series B. Hummingbird’s clients today include payments firms like Stripe, crypto exchanges like Coinbase and banking-as-a-service provider Evolve Bank & Trust. More here ->

Pontoro, a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital asset securitization and liquidity platform, raised $6 million in seed funding. The company is creating the first institutional-grade digital asset securitization and liquidity platform. More here ->

Tradeshift, an SF-based procure-to-pay platform, raised $200 million in equity and debt funding. Founded in 2010, Tradeshift has become a leading B2B e-invoicing and accounts payable automation company. With more than 1.5 million companies connected on its platform, Tradeshift has processed more than $1 trillion in cumulative value since inception. More here ->

Rho, ​​a New York-based corporate spend and cash management startup, raised $75 million in Series B funding. Rho sees SMBs looking for frictionless workflows across banking, cards and accounts payable. “The company is laser-focused on automating the back-office and building the platform to enable ‘self driving’ finance in the enterprise,” said Sam Fort, partner at DFJ Growth. More here ->

Pleo, a Danish provider of expense management software and smart company cards, raised $200 million. The company develops expense management tools aimed at SMBs to let them issue company cards and better manage how employees spend money. More here ->

Passbase, a German digital identity startup, raised $10 million in Series A fundung.  The company offers SDKs for running remote identity checks. More here ->

Sympl, an Egyptian BNPL startup, raised $6 million in seed funding. With no pre-registration required and payment plans approved at checkout, Sympl allows merchants to sell directly to consumers on short-term, fully interest-free (zero-interest) payment plans. More here ->

Posh, a Boston-based conversational AI platform for financial services, raised $27.5 million in Series A funding. "The pain points and needs of financial institutions changed from the pandemic to our benefit, including needing to better manage customer service on a 24/7 basis, managing increased call volumes from closed branches, and doubling down on self service solutions,” More here ->

Insuretechs

Bumper, a British car repair financing platform, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Founded in 2013, Bumper was initially known as Auto Service Finance. The company lets car owners spread the cost of repairs over installments, and also works with car manufacturers such as Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover. More here ->

AgentSync, an insurance-focused API business, has raised another round. This time - $75M. AgentSync is going to double its sales org in the next year, quadruple its marketing team, and double its product and engineering efforts. That’s a lot of folks, and having more cash will make such a hiring ramp simpler. More here ->

From the Stash

MoEngage, a San Francisco and Bangalore-based startup that helps firms understand their customers and improve app engagement, has raised $30 million just four months after closing its previous funding round. MoEngage enables its customers to gain deeper insights into the way they are engaging with apps and websites. These insights include customer preferences, the way they navigate the app and the offerings of the app that are attracting users’ attention — and those that are struggling to do so. More here ->

Can Digital Companies Make Banking Affordable for Canadians? — content.11fs.com Banking in Canada is expensive. But these digital startups are on a mission to make it more affordable. Let’s find out how.

Monthly Funding Recap: November Smashes Another Record As Financial Services Leads In New Unicorn Creation — news.crunchbase.com As we head into the final months of 2021, global funding is not showing signs of slowing down. In fact, November set another new record for global venture funding, with $65 billion raised.

Nubank IPO: Sequoia And The Other Big Winners In The LatAm Mobile Banking Decacorn’s Public Market Debut — news.crunchbase.com São Paulo, Brazil headquartered Nubank is one of the largest fintech companies to go public in 2021. We take a look at the winners backing the company in advance of it's public market debut.

The Peculiar Investment Management Industry — techcrunch.com Asset management is a highly unusual and somewhat baffling industry. Here are six main examples of just how peculiar this industry is.

Reports / Webinars

The Leadership In Insurance Podcast with Jenny Cohen Derfler — preview.mailerlite.com We had a great conversation this week where Jenny and our host Alex Bond discussed all things from the impact of Covid-19 on AirDoctor and the pandemic highlighted the need for AirDoctor and telemedicine to the need for innovation and the willingness to take risks.

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