Octopus completes £10m takeover of wealthtech provider Seccl

A month after announcing the acquisition of Seccl, a technology provider for financial advisers and the wealth management industry, the FCA gave Octopus the greenlight to complete the takeover today.

The £10m deal will see Seccl become part of the Octopus Group’s “off-the-shelf” wealthtech offering, where wealth managers can quickly update their existing tech.

Seccl’s custody service, for example, is available via an API and charges just 0.1% of assets on the platform, with no set-up costs.

“The industry is ripe for another round of disruption. The technology that we’re developing at Seccl has the potential to drive down costs and improve the customer experience by making it easier than ever for systems to integrate,” said Hugo Thorman, co-founder of Seccl.

“Being part of Octopus also means we have the financial backing and complementary expertise to make this happen much more quickly.”

Now that the acquisition is complete Octopus said it will look to expand Seccl’s 13-strong Bath-based team with new engineering, product and design staff.

“We want to transform the customer and client experience across retail financial services – and Seccl’s technology genuinely has the potential to do that,” said Sam Handfield-Jones, Director of Growth and Innovation at Octopus Investments and now Co-Head of Seccl.

The response following our first announcement has been incredibly positive and served to demonstrate that the industry is crying out for some new competition.”