London-based FintechOS, the financial technology startup with Romanian founders, has received over €8M investment from IFC (International Finance Corporation), to digitize and accelerate the financial services system. This is part of the $60M Series B round they announced back in April, led by Draper Esprit and joined by Earlybird Digital East, Gapminder Ventures, LAUNCHub Ventures, and OTB Ventures.
FintechOS is working on solving the issue of over 1B people worldwide that do not have a bank account. By empowering teams to develop digital products with low-code technology, the startup aims to democratize access to financial institutions and lower costs. This type of solution has been enabled by the digitization and automation trends all over the world.
FintechOS will use the investment to scale internationally and promote their solution to financial institutions around the world where the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, is present. The IFC will also be promoting partnership opportunities with its network of bank clients.
Henrik Bläute, Investment Officer at IFC, shared in the press release that the pandemic has increased FinTech services, but it has also shown the challenges that financial institutions are facing. They are looking at FintechOS solutions to accelerate digitalization and serve unbanked and underbanked communities.
FintechOS was co-founded in 2017 by Teodor Blidarus, as CEO, and Sergiu Negut, as CFO and COO, because they wanted to facilitate financial services providers, like banks and insurance companies. They aim to transform the infrastructure with as little code as possible. Before this, they also co-founded Softelligence, a company offering transformation through D.A.T.A framework.
Blidarus believes that financial technology can sometimes obstruct inclusion and that financial institutions do not have the tools to meet the market’s demand. Negut supports this idea and shares in the official statement that although there are discussions in the ecosystem, there aren’t many real steps taken in the direction of simplifying digital services.
Their business model is to assist organizations to offer customers personalized solutions by adopting a data-driven approach based on different sources, like databases and IoT devices. Their technology integrates this data throughout the customer’s journey, from the product catalog to the app. They work with over 40 institutions, like Erste Bank, Societe Generale, Scotia bank, Hyperion Insurance Group, Vienna Insurance Group, on 20 markets and four continents.
IFC is a development institution focused on the private sector in over 100 countries. Last year they invested over €18B in different projects in developing countries.
