Fintech Highlights - 3/8/2022

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Here’s what’s worth watching this week….. 👇

Pinned to the Top

Kin Insurance, the Chicago-based homeowners insurance startup that recently canceled a SPAC merger, has raised a new funding round.

The insuretech raised $82M in Series D funding and the round was lead by QED Investors, and was joined .n.d was joined by Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Alameda Research, ConsenSys Mesh, KR1, Hypersphere Ventures, Stratos Technologies, AVG Blockchain Fund, GSR Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Definancex, Candaq, Vendetta Capital, Illusionist Group, NGC Ventures, Cabin VC, Gate Ventures, OneBlock Capital and Automota Network.

After raising $80 million in Series C funding last April, Kin Insurance was poised to merge with Omnichannel Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, to go public. However, in January, the company decided not to move ahead with the deal, Harper said.

“Part of it was that the public market conditions were not great,” he added. “We went all the way through the SEC process, but weren’t seeing the kind of market for tech companies that was there a year ago. There will be a time in the future when the market is good for tech companies again, and Kin will go public.”

As the company was deciding whether to remain private, venture capital firms were lining up in case it didn’t.

The BFD

Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD) agreed to buy Memphis-based First Horizon (NYSE: FHN) for $13.4 billion in cash.

Why it's the BFD: This would make TD the sixth-largest U.S. bank in terms of assets, significantly expanding its footprint into the Southeast. It's also TD's largest-ever acquisition, despite a history of inorganic growth.

Details: TD will pay $25 per share, representing a 37% premium over Friday's closing share price, with an expected close by late November. If the close occurs after Nov. 27, the purchase price increases to $25.65 per share.

The bottom line: Canadian banks keep pushing big into the U.S. market, as this deal comes just months after Bank of Montreal agreed to buy San Francisco-based Bank of the West for $16.3 billion.

M&A

Buy now, pay later company Zip plans to buy rival Sezzle in a deal valued at roughly $352 million, the companies said Monday. The proposed acquisition is the latest in the buy now, pay later space, which is showing signs of maturation after investors poured billions of dollars into funding companies that offer such services. More here ->

Embedded Financial Services

Weavr, a London-headquartered technology provider that enables businesses with Plug-and-Play financial solutions, today announced the close of a $40 million Series A funding round led by Tiger Global. The company is disrupting the current banking-as-a-service (BaaS) model — which can serve only a limited audience because of its heavy costs, compliance and technical burdens as well as long implementation times — by making embedded financial services available to any business with a digital presence. More here ->

Fintechs

Atomic, a Salt Lake City-based payroll connectivity startup, raised $40m in Series B funding.  The Salt Lake City, Utah-based company’s API-delivered product, which focuses on payroll data, powers 70 banks, credit unions and fintech companies such as Coinbase, Dave and Propel. Atomic said it now serves more than 120 million Americans, or more than 60% of the country. More here ->

Shares has closed a $40 million Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures. The company has been working on a mobile app that lets you easily buy and sell shares, but with a social twist. You can follow your friends’ moves and talk with other users directly from the app. More here ->

Vietnam’s M_Service JSC, which operates Warburg Pincus LLC-backed fintech app MoMo, crossed $2 billion in valuation after raising about $200 million from investors led by Mizuho Bank. More here ->

M-KOPA, a Kenyan asset financing platform for the unbanked, raised $75m.  M-KOPA’s financing platform has proved helpful to this set of users since launching as an energy provider in 2011. The company, which enables underbanked customers in select African markets to access a broad range of products and services without collateral or a guarantor. More here ->

Nosso, a British family finance startup, raised $2.8m. Founded in 2020 by Youssef Darwich and Sigurjon Isaksson, the app offers children investment accounts that two parents can track and manage together. The platform provides each user with a unique contribution link they can share with anyone. More here ->

British Columbia Investment Management Corp. invested in Zedra, a Swiss wealth management and fund solutions firm that’s majority owned by Corsair Capital. Founded in 2016, ZEDRA delivers tailored, high-quality solutions to clients, who include high net worth individuals, entrepreneurs and families seeking diversified active wealth solutions, as well as multi-national companies of all sizes, corporate pension schemes, asset managers and their investors. More here ->

Sudo Africa, a fintech that provides a card-issuing API for developers and businesses in Nigeria, has raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding. The opportunity to build Sudo was due to a problem they faced while attempting to issue cards at their previous startup: a mobile wallet system allowed users to aggregate existing financial institutions into a single platform and perform transactions. More here ->

Crypto

Electric Capital, a Palo Alto-based crypto VC firm, raised $400m for its third early-stage fund and $600m for a digital token fund, Axios’ Kia Kokalitcheva reports.

Thetanuts Finance, a crypto derivatives platform, raised $18m in seed funding. DeFi protocol Thetanuts Finance said it will use its fresh injection of capital to build two new proprietary products for the crypto options market. More here ->

Nested, a Paris-based DeFi social trading platform, raised $7.5m in Series A funding.  Nested differs from his previous investments in that it sees itself as a social trading platform for DeFi. After connecting with a supported wallet, Nested allows users to build portfolios of tokens which are themselves minted as NFTs. In a parallel of the "copy trading" features developed by online broker eToro, Nested says these "Nested NFTs" are easily discoverable on the platform and can be used by creators to share DeFi investment strategies.  More here ->

Rarify, an API for adding NFTs, raised $10m in Series A funding. Rarify currently offers commerce API infrastructure for marketplaces and applications to build end-to-end NFT experiences. The company also provides real-time API access to historical data for NFT assets across multiple blockchains that companies can use when building decentralized finance and marketplace products. More here ->

Tenderly, a startup that aims to make it easier for web3 developers “of all skill sets” to build blockchain products, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding. Tenderly is a platform designed to develop, test and monitor the health of decentralized applications with its dashboard and API, the company maintains. It is says that it is more focused on smart contracts. More here ->

Insuretechs

Plum Life, a Berkley Heights, N.J.-based digital life insurance sales platform, raised $5.3m in seed funding. Plum Life offers agents a fully digital selling experience enabling an efficient life insurance sale. The platform is designed to be a one-stop-shop for agents to manage the entire sales process: from application submission to case management and commission reconciliation. More here ->

Covie, a platform providing insurance records in real-time, directly from the issuing carriers, raised $3.65M of venture funding. Covie develops a platform that connects innovative businesses to insurance data. More here ->

Proptech

Veev, a San Mateo, Calif.-based prefab homebuilder, raised $400m in Series D funding. Veev’s mission is straightforward: address the nation’s housing crisis “head-on.” In California alone, there is an estimated deficit of 3 million units. The company says that it has brought a system to market that is “4x faster than traditional means, at a lower cost and with a much lower carbon footprint.” More here ->

Interesting Companies

1) Home Ownership

When Matthew Canzoneri set out to move from daydreaming on Zillow to taking action on buying a home, he found the process was difficult with information scattered, biased, or generalized. He and Sam Carow set out to make the home buying process seamless. DwellWell offers a guided experience with education, decision-making tools, and connections to experts to help you buy a home.

Once a buyer closes on their home, they’re left to make it on their own, too. As Liz Young points out, “from the day you buy a home… you’re faced with a series of expensive and confusing decisions: how much to spend on renovations, when to refinance, which projects will increase home value, is it time to move?” Realm helps users navigate home-ownership by making sense of data, enabling you to make smarter decisions about how to invest in your home.

2) Renting

As web developers in the real-estate space, Dave Freund and his co-founders have seen how important in-person leasing is for converting apartment hunting leads to leases. LeaseLeads is a virtual leasing tool for multi-family property owners and operators. It offers virtual (bot-less) property tours, in-person tour scheduling, and ideal-floor plan matching for renters.

For renters seeking a secondary address, there’s Split Lease. An uptick in remote and hybrid work has led to more people seeking non-traditional lifestyles with bi-coastal living or workcations. Split Lease lets you rent certain days of the week each week, or weeks of the month each month. You only pay for the nights you need.

On the hunt now? Check out Relo, a tool to organize your apartment research in one place, and Playhouse, an actionable “TikTk for real estate.”

From the Stash

11 Stupidest Things Banks Do — content.11fs.com 11 Stupidest Things Banks Do Here at 11:FS we talk a lot about how Digital Banking is only 1% Finished , jobs to be done, and many other topics on how big…

Distributed Banking Gives Banks Opportunity To Redesign The Customer Experience — www.pymnts.com Distributed banking, Ingo Money CEO Drew Edwards said, allows banks to evolve capacities in the constantly changing digital financial services ecosystem.

Why Banks Are Slow to Embrace Cloud Computing — www.nytimes.com Cloud computing is slowly changing how Wall Street banks handle their business, but concerns with security remain.

Life Stage Products, Not Life Stage Marketing — newsletter.fintechtakes.com Fintech is forcing banks to put down their marketing budgets and build more tailored products. This is a win for everyone.

Leveling The Playing Field — newsletter.fintechtakes.com Banks' lobbying efforts and current digital transformation initiatives won't save them.

Reimagining Mortgage Servicing — newsletter.fintechtakes.com It's not technically broke, but we badly need to fix it.

Inside The Australian Open’s Successful Integration Of NFTs And The Metaverse — news.crunchbase.com Crypto and blockchain expert Ahmed Shabana recaps the Australian Open's launch as the first crypto-embracing international sporting event.

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