The fund will invest in disruptive financial services technologies for the Australian and New Zealand market. Specifically, Reinventure plans to focus Fund 2 on investments that tackle the horizontal layers that make up financial services, such as credit, security, identity, data and trust.
Fund 2 will also continue to look for opportunities in adjacent industries, such as health, real estate, retail, services, and agriculture, where financial services are embedded within the product.
From its first $50m fund, launched in September 2014, Reinventure has invested in 10 ventures, including US-based bitcoin marketplace Coinbase, peer-to-peer lender SocietyOne, and data exchange trust framework Data Republic. Most recently, the fund invested in Valiant Finance, a platform matching small to medium businesses to the most suitable loan products from more than 26 alternative lending partners.
Reinventure Co-Founders and Managing Directors Danny Gilligan (pictured above) and Simon Cant are enthusiastic about the continued opportunity for FinTech in Australia. “Given our country’s strong financial services sector and increasingly progressive regulatory regime and FinTech policy settings, we have a great opportunity to drive an agenda for FinTech that places us on the map as a powerful global epicenter," said Cant.
Gilligan added: “With Reinventure’s second fund, we will continue to take a long-term view of where financial services and adjacent industries are going, and ensure we are supporting the entrepreneurs that will be the builders of the significant growth businesses of tomorrow. Westpac’s commitment to supporting this agenda ensures the development of strong strategic partnerships between the incumbents and emerging players, which will be key to the success of the industry more broadly.”
