Welcome to The Fintech Times Bi-Weekly News Roundup on Thursday 30 March.
Job moves
Mark Body, a financial management professional and director, recently joined the advisory board at Birmingham-based fintech GFA Exchange. He is the former global CFO of HSBC ServCo, an £18billion business unit within the largest bank in Europe. Body’s involvement with GFA Exchange will support its focus on transforming inclusive finance across the UK financial services industry.
Lyfeguard, a life planning assistant and document management platform, has appointed Ronel David, strategic sales and DE&I leader at FIS, to its advisory board to accelerate financial management, go to market and growth strategy. David leads transformational business projects for some of Europe’s largest insures at FIS.
Freedom Finance, a digital lending marketplaces and embedded finance provider, has appointed Nick Jones as director of freedom for intermediaries. He leads the growth and development of Freedom Finance’s intermediated division through service dedicated to intermediaries who are looking to support their clients with specialist lending requirements. Jones joins Freedom Finance from West One Loans.
Commercial bank Piermont Bank appoints Rodrigo Suarez as its chief banking and innovation officer. Formerly the head of innovation banking at Piermont Bank, Suarez has built and scaled the Bank’s innovation banking program, including payment solutions, fintech partnerships and processor integrations. Suarez is now responsible for ensuring the bank stays ahead of the curve in innovation as well as product delivery.
FLEETCOR Technologies, a global business payments company, has named Tom Panther as chief financial officer. Prior to joining FLEETCOR, Panther served as the CFO at EVO Payments prior to its acquisition by Global Payments Inc. Following his appointment, interim CFO Alissa Vickery returns to the role of chief accounting officer.
Additional appointments
Fyn Mobility, India’s EV-as-a-service platform, names Niroop Janardhannan as chief business officer. Prior to that he worked with Unacademy as a VP where he was responsible for helping the company venture into the offline test prep market by efficiently driving growth plans and rapid expansion. Niroop has also served in various other leadership roles, including launching Olacabs in the UK.
Quavo Fraud & Disputes, a provider of dispute management solutions for issuing financial institutions, announces Brittany Usher as its inaugural chief revenue officer. She is the first female member of the company’s c-suite. As CRO, she oversees Quavo’s marketing, sales, client success, and dispute processing teams.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) makes several key leadership appointments. Susan Cosgrove, DTCC’s chief financial officer since 2013, is named president, clearing & securities services. Timothy Keady is appointed chief client officer. Renee LaRoche-Morris joins DTCC as chief financial officer.
Web3 investment company CoinFund names Jenna Pilgrim as head of portfolio growth. Pilgrim will partner with CoinFund portfolio companies to leverage the power of the firm’s capabilities and network for their most critical needs, including strategic development, team growth and further fundraising.
Sachin Shetty has joined Varo Bank, a consumer techbank in the US, as chief technology officer. Lisa Violet is also named senior vice president, strategic partnerships. Shetty joins the bank to take Varo’s techstack to the next level, while developing technology to support greater scale and innovation. Former Varo Bank chief auditor, Violet is appointed to the newly-established role to spearhead the bank’s strategic partnerships, driving incremental revenue and accelerating growth.
Funding and investments
LeapXpert, the responsible business communication pioneer, secures a $22million Series A+ funding round led by Rockefeller Asset Management. The round was joined by Uncorrelated Ventures, the Partnership Fund for New York City, a new strategic investor as well as existing investors. LeapXpert will use this new round of funding to meet increasing demand from the financial services industry.
Fintech Paytrix has raised $18.3million in Series A funding to drive product development and international expansion. Unusual Ventures, Motive Partners and Bain Capital Ventures co-led the Series A investment. Bain Capital Ventures also participated in an earlier funding round in May 2022 with Fin Capital, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Hambro Perks, ClockTower Ventures, The Fintech Fund and D4 Ventures.
Climate and fintech company Agreena announces a Series B raise of €46million. Led by HV Capital, the round also included AENU and fintech-focused Anthemis. The equity raise is also supported by a doubling-down from existing shareholders.
Translucent, the accounting platform, has raised a £2.7million pre-seed round led by London-based VC firm LocalGlobe, Europe’s number one seed investor and backers of Wise, Zoopla and Improbable. The company aims to become the platform for running, managing or advising multiple iterations of accounting software.
Additional funding and growth news
Finverity has raised $5million in a heavily oversubscribed equity funding round from new and current investors. New investors include London-based fintech specialist Outward. The funding raised in this round will be used to immediately increase the headcount from the current 40 to 60 employees.
P97 Networks, a mobile commerce and digital marketing platform provider, has raised $40million in equity financing led by Portage, a global investment platform focused on the fintech and financial services sectors. The capital will fuel strategic growth initiatives at P97.
Tenity, the global innovation ecosystem and early-stage investor, has announced the first closing of its Tenity Incubation Fund I. Investments come from SIX Group, UBS Next, Julius Baer and Generali’s House of InsurTech Switzerland. The Tenity Incubation Fund I will invest in fintech and insurtech companies at angel, pre-seed and seed stage.
Partnerships
Fintech scaleup Credolab has forged a transnational partnership with Provenir The partnership aims to unlock the potential of behavioural data for better and faster credit risk, marketing and fraud detection decisions for financial organisations. Credolab’s mobile SDK will be available in the Provenir Data Marketplace.
Pinwheel is now a Visa Ready-certified participant to more seamlessly work with merchants, financial institutions and fintech companies. Pinwheel’s enterprise-grade-API allows its customers to connect easily with consumer-permissioned income and employment data.
Alkami Technology, a cloud-based digital banking solutions provider for banks and credit unions in the US, has teamed up with Liberty Bank. The move to the Alkami Platform is a “crucial step” in Liberty Bank’s full technology stack overhaul with the objective to bring the most innovative products and seamless user experience.
Juni, a financial platform built for digital commerce, says Amazon sellers can now integrate their stores with the Juni platform. The integration enables businesses to make better financial decisions with unified insights into all their Amazon stores’ financial data in one, real-time overview.
There’s also a partnership for Cogo and Eliq. Their combined data, insights and market-specific approach to carbon emissions and energy consumption, will provide banks with unique intelligence to provide tailored financing to improve energy efficiency in homes through retrofitting, with support from green loans and green mortgages.
Singapore-based expense payment platform ipaymy forges a partnership with crypto payment gateway TripleA. This partnership will enable ipaymy’s customers in Singapore to pay their rent, invoices, taxes, and employee salaries with cryptocurrencies, even if their recipient doesn’t accept crypto.
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