London-based Smart is a global savings and investments technology platform provider with the mission to transform retirement, savings, and financial well-being worldwide. Today, the company announced that it had closed a £165 million Series D funding round.
Global growth plans
The investment round was led by Chrysalis Investments, one of the UK’s leading crossover investors. It pumped in £75 million equity investment along with additional investors to be announced in the coming weeks. The overall round will comprise £110 million of primary and £55 million of secondary equity.
Notably, Chrysalis’ portfolio includes Klarna, Wise (formerly TransferWise), Starling Bank, The Hut Group, Graphcore, and wefox. With this investment, Smart will further grow its retirement technology platform offering in the UK, the US, Australia, and the Middle East, with additional territories to follow.
Apart from the investment, Chrysalis Investments joins Legal & General, J.P. Morgan, the Link Group, Barclays and Natixis Investment Managers, the strategic investors to date in Smart.
Commenting on the investment, Richard Watts, Head of Strategy and Co-Manager of Chrysalis Investments said: “Smart is an innovator and continues to establish itself as the leading retirement technology platform provider globally. In just a few years it has disrupted the retirement savings industry, working with some of the world’s most well-known financial services providers to create a better way to save toward retirement and access funds during retirement.
“The world has changed. Just as companies like Wise and Klarna add huge benefits to their users via best-in-class financial technology, Smart offers user experience and technology to transform retirement for savers around the world. What Smart has achieved in the last 12 months alone was a real catalyst for our support, and we believe that together we can help Andrew and Will achieve their global ambitions.”
The co-founders of Smart, Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, said: “Chrysalis Investments joins us at a really exciting time. Smart’s achievements over the last 12 months are testament to our amazing team, and also to the incredible resilience of both our operating model and the Smart platform that we deploy for large financial institutions and national governments. With close to a million savers on our platform already, we now have straight-line visibility through to well over five million savers on the platform within the next 24 months.
“We are very excited to welcome Chrysalis as they really understand the global scale of our vision and opportunity. Chrysalis’s investment adviser, Jupiter Asset Management, is a prominent leader in UK investment, and Chrysalis itself has an astonishing track record of backing Europe’s most successful tech businesses. We are delighted to join the Chrysalis portfolio.”
Enormous growth during pandemic
The global retirement market is already worth $55 trillion. In this scenario, Smart is the only proven, global, cloud-native retirement technology solution that faces the challenges in this market. Its Platform-as-a-Service model is ideal for financial services companies and governments trying to get to grips with delivering for their members and citizens as they save for retirement and beyond.
Eventually, Smart witnessed enormous growth in 2020, with assets on the platform growing by more than 160% to £1.8 billion. This was possible with the successful rollouts of the Smart platform with Bank of Ireland’s insurance arm, New Ireland Assurance, and with global insurance giant Zurich and the Dubai International Financial Centre in the Middle East during the pandemic.
Founded by Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, Smart has also partnered with governments and financial institutions, including insurers, asset managers, banks, financial advisers, to deliver retirement savings and income solutions that are digital, bespoke, and cost-efficient.
The post Eyeing to transform retirement, London startup Smart secures £165M Series D funding round appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).
