A retirement financial savings platform which beforehand secured backing from Legal & General will this week unveil a $95m (£76m) fundraising led by a New York-based non-public fairness investor.
Sky News has learnt that Smart, which was based in 2014, will announce the capital elevate on Monday.
It can be led by Aquiline Capital Partners, which manages over $9bn in belongings and specialises in backing monetary providers and know-how corporations.
The funding deal can be one of many largest struck by a UK-based fintech this 12 months amid a tougher financing setting for early-stage – usually loss-making – start-ups.
Sources stated the proceeds of the spherical can be used to finance quite a few impending acquisitions.
They can even speed up Smart’s funding in and distribution of its proprietary retirement financial savings know-how platform, Keystone.
Smart’s present traders, which embody Chrysalis Investments, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and Barclays, additionally participated within the spherical, the sources stated.
The firm was based by Andrew Evans and Will Wynne, and launched in 2015 in anticipation of big demand from corporations forward of a closing Government deadline for auto-enrolment in 2018.
It owns and operates one of many 4 main UK auto-enrolment grasp trusts – Smart Pension – which serves greater than 1m savers and 70,000 employers.
Smart’s development has been fuelled partially by the rising regulatory requirement for people to avoid wasting for retirement on the similar time that ageing populations place better stress on authorities funds world wide.
As a part of the funding spherical, Charles Janeway of Aquiline is becoming a member of Smart’s board as a non-executive director.
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One insider stated the capital injection had taken place at solely a modest low cost to its most up-to-date fundraising.
Smart has over £5.5bn in belongings beneath administration and expects this to exceed £10bn within the close to future.
It has important worldwide ambitions, having already struck partnerships with establishments in Ireland and a part of the large Zurich Insurance Group.
In response to an enquiry from Sky News, Mr Evans and Mr Wynne claimed that Smart was “the global leader in retirement technology, and our industry-leading platform, Keystone, is being deployed by the biggest, most successful financial institutions around the world”.
“This is a $62 trillion global sector waiting to be disrupted, and we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that.”
Bankers at Lazard suggested Smart on the funding spherical.
Source: information.sky.com”