UK fintechs Finexos and Wombat land funding

Finexos and Wombat are among the latest fintech start-ups in the UK to have raised funds.

Finexos raises £695,000

Finexos, a start-up that aims to improve access to credit for consumers, has raised £695,000 in an investment round led by Growth Capital Ventures. The round was oversubscribed by almost 40% from the initial target.

Finexos says its solution combines open banking with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to measure financial capability without the need for a credit score. “Where a traditional credit score uses approximately 12 pieces of information, the Finexos solution currently uses more than 220 pieces of data to give an accurate assessment of how a consumer or SME manages its cashflow,” it says.

Finexos estimates there are two billion people globally unable to access financial services, and 138 million people in Europe estimated to be excluded from mainstream credit, so “there is a clear requirement to improve financial inclusion by redefining credit scoring”.

The company’s CEO is Areiel Wolanow, an adviser on AI and blockchain to the UK parliament, speaker on financial inclusion at the G20, and designer of the credit scoring engine for M-Pesa, which doubled Kenya’s GDP and lifted 2% of the population out of poverty and forms the template for the Finexos solution.

The CTO is Kefirah Kang, who led the design and launch of platform for Hong Kong’s first licensed virtual bank, WeLab.

Finexos was founded in 2018.

Wombat raises £4.2m

Micro-investing platform Wombat has closed its Series A funding round, raising £4.2 million.

The round was led by long-time backer Fuel Ventures, which first invested in the business in 2020. A four-week crowdfund also gave Wombat users and the broader community access to the round and closed 300% over target.

Since its inception in 2019, Wombat says it “has experienced rapid growth as novice investors – its core demographic – have flocked to access its range of theme-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and curated UK, US, and EU fractional shares”.

It has also launched several initiatives including its instant investing account offering commission-free trading with a cashback reward on all buys.

The money will accelerate its international expansion plans, the company says, starting with Europe.

“Against a hugely challenging macroeconomic backdrop, we felt it was appropriate to seek funding with a fair valuation,” says Kane Harrison, CEO and co-founder of Wombat.