It’s The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Tuesday 19 December 2023.
Partnerships
Savings company SAVR has partnered with FNZ, the global wealth management platform, to elevate its digital investment platform for the Swedish market. SAVR will upgrade its current platform to FNZ’s scalable solution, enabling an expansion into investment products such as equities and ETFs. The upgrade will also offer SAVR customers a range of new features and capabilities to make investing easier and faster.
Cloud-native digital banking services provider Constellation Digital Partners has forged a reseller partnership with Pulsate, to provide users of the Constellation digital banking platform with access to Pulsate’s mobile-first, personalised member engagement platform.
Alto, a platform that enables individuals to invest in alternative assets using their retirement funds, has teamed up with VC firm Alumni Ventures. Alumni Ventures is making the fourth iteration of its AI Fund available on the Alto Marketplace, allowing accredited investors to diversify their portfolios with venture investments in artificial intelligence companies.
Liquidnet, a technology-driven agency execution specialist, and bondIT, a provider of next-generation investment technology, unveiled a partnership to integrate bondIT’s Scorable Credit Analytics into Liquidnet’s Fixed Income electronic trading platform. The collaboration aims to empower traders to anticipate market trends, mitigate credit risk and make informed investment decisions faster.
e-finance Investment Group, an Egyptian developer of digital payment infrastructures, has signed an agreement with Software Group, a global technology company specialised in digital banking solutions and financial inclusion, to encourage the adoption of digital financial technologies, agent banking, along with cloud computing services and artificial intelligence.
Additional partnerships
Allfunds Tech Solutions, the bespoke digital solutions arm of Allfunds, and Ardan International, a wealth platform designed for international advisers, have announced an extension of their collaboration to further enhance the capabilities of Ardan’s investment platform. As part of the agreement, Allfunds Tech Solutions has developed a cutting-edge multi-asset research centre exclusively for Ardan’s advisors.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has signed a partner agreement with du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, to expand its digital transformation solutions offering. The partnership with HPE will enable du to modernise and scale their capabilities, create new services to solve local market challenges and requirements, and support customers throughout their digital transformation journey.
Funding and investments
AbbeyCross, a wholesale FX platform focused on improving the payment market infrastructure for emerging market currencies, has raised $6.5million in its seed funding round. The funding round led by Valar Ventures alongside investors including BNY Mellon, Third Prime and Gaingels follows a pre-seed funding round led by Third Prime last year of $2.47million. The funds will be used to further develop and deploy AbbeyCross’ ABX Sync platform.
Tamara, a fintech platform in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC region, has become the Kingdom’s first homegrown fintech unicorn by securing $340million in a Series C equity funding round. The round was co-led by SNB Capital and Sanabil Investments. Tamara has raised a total of $500million in equity funding, and well above $400million in debt financing since its inception in late 2020.
Appointments
Unlimit, the global fintech company, welcomes Colin Neil as its new global chief sales officer. Neil has held senior leadership and commercial roles at Adyen, Burberry and Kingfisher Group. Neil will be responsible for building and leading sales teams across EMEA, LATAM, North America and APAC, and implementing strategic initiatives that will contribute to the continued growth of Unlimit.
UK fintech Pockit has appointed Garreth Griffith as its chief operating officer. Griffith will oversee Pockit’s day-to-day operations and assist in developing and delivering the next phase of Pockit’s growth strategy. He previously worked at Amazon, PayPal and eBay with roles covering marketing, risk management and customer experience. Before joining Pockit, Griffith served as COO at fintech mortgage broker Habito.
Workplace pension and savings fintech Cushon appoints Ellen Louw as chief financial officer. She joins from commercial news publisher Reach plc. Prior to this Louw was head of commercial finance and corporate development at money transfer fintech WorldRemit. Louw has been tasked with driving Cushon’s continued growth plans and managing the financial actions of the company.
Compare the Market has unveiled the appointment of Andy Hancock as its chief growth officer. He was most recently CEO at FutureLearn, previously held the position of COO at Moneysupermarket Group and was also managing director for MoneySavingExpert. Hancock joins the business in January, subject to regulatory approval.
Cross-border advisory firm Quantuma has appointed Rob Moore as a senior consultant in its London-based disputes, investigations and valuations team. His appointment is part of a response to demand for Quantuma’s experience in insolvency, restructuring and forensic accounting assignments. Recent engagements include AAX Holdings, Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd, Eqonex, Vauld, Torque and Jigsaw Capital.
More appointments
Argentex, the payment and currency risk management company, has appointed Daniel Ross as managing director. Ross will work alongside the wider leadership team to develop the business’s product offering and expand its customer base across key markets in the UK, the Netherlands and Australia.
MDOTM Ltd, a global provider of AI-driven investment solutions for banks, insurance, asset and wealth management companies, hires Peter J. Zangari as partner and head of Americas. Based in New York, he will be responsible for accelerating the company’s expansion with a key focus on the US market.
