Smarterly secures £7m in Series A funding round

UK FinTech startup Smarterly has successfully raised £7m in a Series A funding round being led by Major Oak who invested a sum of £5m with the remaining £2m coming from existing angel and crowdfunding investors.

Part of the investment has already been used to finalise the acquisition of pension account provider Salvus with the remainder being used to improve Smarterly’s suite of products to allow for continued market growth.

Ben Pollard, actuary and founder of Smarterly said he started the business as he “spent a lot of time helping big financial companies look after their own money, so I expected buying an ISA for myself to be pretty straightforward. I was amazed at just how difficult it was. Most of the analysis I found was really just marketing material and of no real help in choosing an investment. I wanted to use my actuarial skills to help, so decided to launch Smarterly.”

The FinTech startup Smarterly offers a way for people to invest small sums of money (from £50) on a monthly basis into over 90 investment providers where you can monitor your funds.

Smarterly wants “consumers to use financial services with confidence and have products that meet their needs, from firms and individuals they can trust” when they use Smarterlys platform.

Phil Hollingdale, Co-founder, Smarterly says: “Smarterly is changing the face of workplace savings, particularly as we move into unchartered territory of the working world post-COVID-19. Financial wellbeing is no longer one dimensional, it’s about supporting employees throughout their entire life journey.”

This is not the first time Smarterly has raised funding with its previous funding round offering being on Seedrs in 2019 where the company was given a pre-valuation £16.7m.

Smarterly joins a growing list of FinTechs that are having successful funding rounds during the COVID-19 era with Freetrade raising £5.6m on its opening day of crowdfunding, Smart loan finder LoanSnap raising $10m, and open banking API platform LUXHUB raising €7.4m being on the list.

According to Seedrs Secondary Market the valuation for Smarterly is around £19.5m up nearly 20% from their 2019 valuation.

Smarterly, founded in 2014 by an actuary and based in London, has witnessed rapid growth leading the business to now having a customer base of over 80,000 users with a combined £230m in assets and having over 100 businesses on its roster for users to invest in.

The FinTech startup says it was the first workplace savings provider to introduce a Lifetime ISA through payroll deduction giving it a USP over other ISA providers.