By Daniel Lanyon on Friday 6 September 2019
Of the 23 firms joining Tech Nation’s Fintech growth programme include 40 per cent non-London 'scale ups'.
Tech Nation has revealed the 23 growth stage firms accepted on to its 2019 Fintech growth programme with a heavy showing from firms based outside of London across areas such as SME finance, payments, capital markets and financial inclusion.
The programme, in its second year, is delivered as part of HM Treasury's Fintech Sector Strategy to maintain the UK’s place as a world leader in the sector.
Firms must be in 'scale-up' stage and at either Seed or Series A level and are selected by judges including Eileen Burbidge, Partner at Passion Capital & Chair of Tech Nation; Anne Boden, CEO of Starling Bank; and Richard Theo, CEO of Wealthify and Fintech Envoy for Wales.
Tech Nation says at least 40 per cent of companies have at least one female co-founder.
Eileen Burbidge, Chair of Tech Nation, HM Treasury’s Special Envoy for Fintech, Chair of the Fintech Delivery Panel and Partner at Passion Capital said: "The UK has a fantastic leadership position of producing globally renowned fintech companies, by being number one in the world for scaleup investment into fintech firms between 2015 and 2018, attracting an impressive £4.5 billion in total funding. I'm pleased to see another diverse group of companies on this year's programme, with 40 per cent of companies being based outside the capital."
Below is a complete list with a bio supplied by the company in italics.
Tumelo - South West - Bristol
Tumelo gives visibility and influence to investors who want to have a positive impact with their money. They create socially responsible investments, provide visibility so investors in funds and pensions can see exactly where their money is going, and help shareholders have influence to create lasting change.
Anna Money - Wales - Cardiff
ANNA combines a business account and debit card with invoicing and tax reminders. For freelancers and small businesses, it’s ideal for SMEs that use light commercial vehicles (“LCVs”) for their work.
Honcho Markets - North East - Durham
Honcho Markets operates a reverse-auction electronic marketplace for the distribution of financial services products. Product vendors compete in real-time, open and transparent auctions to win a consumers' business. Honcho charges vendors a nominal fee, removing expensive sales commissions from the distribution chain.
Paid - North East - Durham
Paid allows micro businesses to flourish without falling victim to key challenges. Addressing the increase in the gig economy, people working independently and late payment of invoices crippling small companies, Paid have created simple workflows and business management that sits alongside the ability to get paid as soon as work is completed.
Incuto - Yorkshire - Ilkley
Incuto is a technology platform for credit unions, community banks and lenders, transforming them into community-focused challenger banks. Making ethical lenders relevant, accessible, sustainable and efficient, Incuto is tackling the poverty premium by ensuring everyone can gain access to affordable, responsible financial services.
Duesday - South West - Liskeard
Duesday has reinvented direct debits and regular bill payments, giving more control and rewards to the payer. They help utilities, leisure clubs and the housing sector with bill collections and loyalty offers and their core payments platform is integrated with the UK and Mexico payments networks.
Tickr - North West - Liverpool
Tickr is transforming impact investment for Europe’s next generation of investors. For people who want to invest, but want to have a positive impact on society and the environment at the same time, tickr's app allows users to invest in socially responsible companies with as little as £5.
PrimaryBid - London
PrimaryBid democratises the capital markets by allowing retail investors access to new share issues from listed companies at the same discount as institutions. Their deposit saving tool also helps users choose the best savings accounts and predicts the time it will take to save the required amount.
Nivaura - London
Nivaura provides digital investment banking solutions that are revolutionising capital markets by optimising efficiency, transparency and accessibility for market intermediaries. Their primary initiative is to defragment and vertically integrate capital markets by automating the issuance, administration and the entire life cycle of financial instruments.
Trade Ledger - London
Trade Ledger is the world’s first open digital banking platform that gives banks the ability to assess business lending risk in real time. Using Machine Learning, open APIs, Robotic Process Automation and AI, they enable banks to address the global undersupply in trade finance lending, while providing high-growth companies with the working capital needed to sustain growth.
TradeCore - London
TradeCore is a platform-as-a-service provider that enables fintechs to build next-generation banking and investment products. TradeCore’s full stack offering does all the heavy lifting, allowing companies to focus on launching unique fintech customer experiences.
Fractal Labs - London
Fractal is an API based intelligence platform focused on Small-Medium-Enterprise (SME) banking. They aggregate permission-based SME data used to score risk, enhance it using AI, and provide a targeting engine for financial institutions to empower them to better service their clients.
Molo Finance - London
Molo is the UK’s first fully-digital mortgage lender. By bringing together a real-time mortgage decisioning engine with an easy online application process designed by and for customers, they deliver a proposition focused on speed, ease and transparency.
Heliocor - London
Heliocor is a regulatory compliance software business that wants to change the way the world does business; restoring trust. Their tune-able products (AI, Machine Learning and Deep Learning enabled) help financial services companies to risk manage, tailor and automate onboarding clients (Dokstor) and then monitor their transactional activity in real time (Robolitics) to ensure regulatory compliance.
9fin - London
9fin uses artificial intelligence to extract key data & insights from financial documents. They consume, organise and understand the world’s fixed income financial data, making it easier for investment professionals to search, filter and analyse.
SteadyPay - London
SteadyPay is a socially aware credit service with a vision to provide financial wellness to those paid by the hour/gig. They do this by smoothing out workers’ income, giving them consistency across pay cycles which allows them to budget, save and pay for expenses.
HighCastle - London
HighCastle is a UK blockchain-based share registrar and investment marketplace, which provides the end-to-end technological infrastructure and legal framework for compliant offering, issuance, distribution, management and trading of private securities.
Credit Kudos - London
Credit Kudos is a newly established Credit Reference Agency selling credit scores to UK lenders (B2B). They use newly available open banking and PSD2 data to increase accuracy, whilst widening the pool of borrowers to those previously excluded by traditional credit scoring methods.
GoodBox - North West - Manchester
GoodBox serves the charity sector by providing a single point of entry to a full range of fundraising solutions. From award-winning contactless hardware, to a platform enabling charities to analyse and improve their fundraising, GoodBox provides the third sector with the tools needed to thrive in an ever-changing digital landscape..
Kani Payments - North East - Newcastle
Kani Payments has built a fintech reporting and reconciliation platform, which uniquely consumes data from a client’s transactional processor, card scheme, bank account and more; transforming these complex streams into tangible outputs. Users can run 24 distinct reports, including those needed for regulation, as well as create bespoke automated reconciliations.
Smarterly - London
Smarterly aims to turn the UK into a nation of investors. By promoting the benefits of healthy savings habits, they make investing simple, easy and accessible for the mass market. Smarterly works with employers to allow people to save directly from their pay, often with a contribution boost as a more accessible complement to pensions.
Paybase - London
Paybase is a flexible payments solution for marketplaces/gig economy platforms, fintechs and cryptocurrency businesses. It combines payments, compliance and risk management, allowing businesses to reach market quickly and seamlessly. Their structured flexibility accommodates a wide array of use cases, enabling businesses to build better, more competitive products.
Apexx Fintech - London
Apexx is a payment platform that connects enterprise to multiple acquiring banks, APMs, and PSPs as well as optimising the payment flow to drive up payment acceptance and lower costs. APEXX consolidates these providers into a single integration point offering complex merchants the flexibility to operate a payment stack that reflects the needs of their business.
