Hambro Perks today announced it has completed an investment in Railsbank, the leading global embedded finance platform.
The investment was made via Access Fund II, the venture secondaries fund which invests in stakes in European private technology companies, providing liquidity to former and current management, employees and shareholders, to enable investors to access high-performing companies which are not otherwise accepting external investment. Access Fund II was launched in 2021, following the success of the debut fund in 2019, and to date, has received investment from several notable private and institutional investors.
Led by an experienced management team, Railsbank is well positioned as the leading global embedded finance platform. It has developed a straight forward financial operations capability and regulatory licence that allows both regulated and unregulated clients to embed global financial services into their customer experiences. The company started in the UK in 2016 and has since expanded throughout Asia, and opened offices in North America and Australia.
Nigel Verdon, CEO and Co-Founder of Railsbank said: “We have always approached the finance industry from a different angle, one which puts the customer at the fore. What we need to understand is that too much of the current global financial services system is made up of aging legacy technology and operational processes, which have been built for the provider, not the user. This makes it unnecessarily complicated, highly expensive and nearly impossible for innovators to create the ‘Spotify’ of financial services. So, we are on a mission to transform the finance industry in the same way that Apple did to the music industry when they created iTunes.
“We are ringing the changes here at Railsbank. We are combining our ‘zero legacy’ platform with deconstructing financial services into individual digital components. And because we have created these individual financial components, our customers can easily embed financial products directly into their own customer experiences at exactly the point where consumers and SMEs need financial services, not at the point which suits the traditional providers. This will finally make financial services customer centric and inclusive, rather than the situation today which is institution centric and exclusive.”
Jemma Bruton, co-Head of Access Fund said: “We are delighted to have invested in Railsbank, which has enjoyed strong growth in recent years thanks to the talented leadership team and world-class technology. Railsbank is typical of the investments we look for in Access Fund, offering our investors a chance to back future winners before traditional investment events such as an IPO. We look forward to working with the management team as they continue their ambitious expansion plans for the business.”