OakNorth set to close Fluidly following 2021 acquisition

The landmark acquisition for OakNorth came 18 months after it shared it was on the lookout for “synergistic” opportunities,

Cashflow forecasting fintech Fluidly will be closing down in April as it moves to fully integrate with parent company OakNorth.

The lender acquired Fluidly at the end of 2021, and in what the companies see as a natural progression as the teams grow closer, Fluidly will stop providing access to customers at the end of April, as first reported by AccountingWeb.

When OakNorth took over Fluidly, the cashflow management fintech's CEO and founder Caroline Plumb said the two businesses were “strongly aligned in [their] mission to support SMEs”. 

“Since the acquisition of Fluidly, the teams have been working more and more closely with OakNorth over the last few months and we now feel that it’s the right time to further integrate Fluidly’s business with OakNorth,” Fluidly VP Commercial Gavin Fell told AltFi.

“This move will see us expand our tools for businesses on a go-forward basis, as well as accelerate our ability to support ambitious SMEs with future-looking finance that can drive their growth.”

Launched in 2017, Fluidly brought more than 1100 accounting partners and 500,000 connected businesses to OakNorth in its all-in-one cashflow management platform.

Integrated with the lender, Fluidly says it is “fundamentally rethinking” how businesses plan and manage finances, and it does so with real-time software connecting to Xero or QuickBooks accounts using the data to create forecasts and model scenarios.

“This is an exciting moment for us,” OakNorth group CEO Rishi Khola said at the time of the acquisition.

“We have always said that we will be opportunistic in evaluating acquisitions which have a strong strategic fit with our mission. We have found that with Fluidly.”