Fintech, Finance, Technology, Banking Highlights – 4 December 2018
Insurance app Lemonade prepares for European expansion
Great digital brands transcend borders. Whether in Chicago, Paris, or Singapore, today’s consumers listen to music on Spotify, ride with Uber, and stay at Airbnb.
Consumers are increasingly cosmopolitan, socially aware, and tech-native – everything Lemonade was built to be.
That’s why going global feels natural for us.
So we’re thrilled to announce that Lemonade is coming to Europe – our first major market outside of the United States.
Europe, the birthplace of modern insurance, is one of the largest insurance markets globally, and is home to the two largest insurers worldwide – AXA and Allianz. (Both are investors in Lemonade and dear friends. We’re kinda hoping they’ll see our European launch as a boost to their investment, rather than as the challenge to their business we hope it becomes.)
Beyond its insurance bonafides, Europe is home to thriving tech ecosystems, and to countless people who wrote to ask that we come to their country.
ReachX gets FCA authorisation
ReachX, an emerging financial technology platform looking to transform corporate finance services and access to primary research in a post-MiFID II environment, is pleased to announce the commercial launch of its operations after receiving its authorisation from the UK Financial Conduct Authority.
The company is working to shake-up traditional financial market research and corporate finance services via its technology enabled platform connecting independent industry and finance professionals with corporations, institutional investors and leading organizations. ReachX’s mission is to offer bespoke, on-demand financial services and access to knowledge to decision makers without conflict of interests.
ReachX also publishes bespoke global market focussed content, analysis, research, podcasts and videos on unique investment opportunities via its portal.
The company was founded in December 2017 by Rafael S. Lajeunesse and Olivier Beau de Loménie. The idea was born out of creating an unbiased research, knowledge and services hub fit for a post-MiFID II environment.
Rafael is a former Senior Portfolio Manager with J.P. Morgan and former Management consultant with McKinsey & Co. in the US and Europe, while Olivier has founded several start-ups within the online retail, data analytics and fintech sectors, including Emolument and Techtopus.
Stackr launches AI-powered savings tool
Stackr, the complete global long-term savings solution, introduces a personalized trust structure that allows investors to hold both capital and digital assets.
The intersection of traditional finance and modern-day financial technology has enabled the Stackr Group to pioneer a secure and flexible savings solution in a regulated environment.
Many savings solutions today are facilitated by traditional financial institutions, which pose limitations, from outdated technology and high fees to investment choices that don’t address investors’ biggest concern – the risk of losing money. With Stackr, saving for the future or for “retirement” is more efficient and streamlined by cutting out the middleman and combining traditional finance principles with modern day financial technology to give investors a secure and flexible long-term savings solution.
Stackr users can benefit from a range of innovative capital and digital asset choices that have varying risk profiles, which are designed with capital loss mitigation at their core to help users make better investment decisions and reduce the risk of losing money. Each of the choices has a maximum capital loss level objective.
CommerzVentures joins $30m OpenLegacy funding round
OpenLegacy, the leader in microservices-based API integration for back-end applications, has closed a funding round of $30 million. The investment will further strengthen its premier market position of enabling established enterprises to go truly digital.
OpenLegacy is mission critical for organizations with complex legacy environments, as experienced by its global tier 1 customers. It helps organizations quickly launch digital innovations by automating and standardizing the process of creating digital services using microservices-based APIs. With OpenLegacy, legacy systems can be integrated, leveraged, and extended in a fraction of the time compared to other solutions, all without changing the underlying systems.
The funding round brings together major global investors with added value in both funding and promoting the technology. Round participants include: Silverhorn Investment Advisors (lead investor); CommerzVentures, the VC unit of Commerzbank; C. Entrepreneurs, the VC created by BNP Paribas Cardif with Cathay Innovation; Leumi Partners; O.G. Tech Ventures – Eyal Ofer’s VC arm; Prytek-GFS Group; and RDC, a major investor from the seed stage, which is a joint venture between Elron and Rafael.
“We have a clear perspective on OpenLegacy’s advantages,” said Patrick Meisberger, CommerzVentures Managing Director. “We understand the size of the potential market because we can see first-hand the challenges of adopting new technologies in legacy environments. OpenLegacy helps with a variety of use cases, from creating APIs quickly for any backend system all the way to a full, phased cloud migration.”
