Finbourne Doubles Funding in £55m Series B Round

Finbourne Technology has almost doubled the capital it has raised from investors, with the latest series B injection increasing its total by £55 million to more than £100m.

Six existing investors in the London-based investment data management solutions provider chipped in more funds and they were joined by another four investors. Two of them, CommerzVentures and HSBC, will have a presence on the Finbourne board as observers, the company said.

Finbourne offers a range of data management services, including through its SaaS-based LUSID platform, which are being utilised by clients including Northern Trust, Omba Advisory and the Pension Insurance Corporation.

While the company didn’t detail how it would use the proceeds from the secondary funding round, chief executive and co-founder Thomas McHugh said that Finbourne is looking to “significantly expand” its client base.

Earlier this year Finbourne said it would expand its sales, product and marketing capabilities in the UK, the US, Ireland, Singapore and Australia.

The company drew in £55m during its previous series B funding round in June, which was led by venture capital firm Highland Europe and AXA Venture Partners. That followed a £15m injection in 2021. It also has a £30m debt facility from Kreos Capital.

Preqin Alternatives Data Integrates With Bipsync Tech

Asset management technology platform Bipsync has integrated alternative markets information and technology specialist Prequin’s data into its tools and services.

Clients of each company will be able to access Preqin’s data and insights within New York-based Bipsync’s workflow automation tech. The tie-up enables users to integrate Preqin data with their own to give the broadest view of their portfolios.

ESG Book Clients Offered Access to Vyzrd Climate Technology

Sustainability data provider ESG Book is to use Australian firm Vyzrd’s climate risk technology to help clients assess their portfolios’ exposure to threats posed by global warming.

Clients of ESG Book’s SaaS-based platform will be able to use Vyzrd’s Climate Forward analytics to put a value on the risks that assets face from climate change and net-zero transition policies.

Taleo to Use CrateDB Data and Tech for Financial Clients

CrateDB’s database services will be used by Luxembourg-headquartered consultancy firm Taleo to help its financial clients with their data management and analytics processes.

Taleo will harness California-based CrateDB’s data to surface real-time insights in the banking, insurance and data management sectors. It will also aid clients in enhancing risk management and compliance capabilities, improve customer experience and loyalty, streamline underwriting processes and optimise portfolio performance, CrateDB said.

Writer Builds New LLM for Financial Sector

A new specialised large language model (LLM) has been created by American technology firm Writer for financial services firms based on its Palmyra products.

The Palmyra-Fin-70b model enables firms’ generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) platforms to assist in financial forecasting, investment analysis, risk evaluation, fraud detection, and asset allocation strategies, the company said.

The new LLM is available through NVIDIA, Baseten, Hugging Face and Writer’s own platform. The Palmyra suite of LLMs is already being used by firms including Vanguard, Franklin Templeton and Intuit, San Francisco-based Writer said.

Charities Fund Manager CCLA Deploys Finbourne’s EDM+

Investment data management solutions provider Finbourne Technology will take on a range of data management capabilities for the UK’s largest asset manager for charities, CCLA.

The British technology company, whose clients oversee more than US$4 trillion of assets, will provide CCLA with services via its EDM+ platform, which it says will help the client manage every asset class and access data sets from multiple providers. The service will also help CCLA enhance its reporting and investment performance evaluation workflows.

Latest Stage of UK SDR Comes into Force

The next stage of the UK’s sustainability disclosure requirements (SDR) came into effect today, enabling companies to use the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) new labelling regime for investment products.

The four labels are designed to more accurately reflect the level of sustainability of each product. They have been designed, along with anti-greenwashing rules and guidance introduced in May, to strengthen the country’s sustainability markets.

Arcesium Opens Office in Lisbon

Data management provider Arcesium has opened an office in Lisbon, Portugal, its first in continental Europe.

The New York-headquartered company whose data and investment lifecycle services are used by financial institutions that have a combined US$4.3 trillion under management, said the move was part of its global expansion. It has also offices in the US, UK and India.

ISS STOXX Offers Banks, Insurers New ESG Compliance Data Tool

ISS ESG, the sustainability arm of ISS STOXX, has unveiled its Industry Average Emissions Intensity dataset for use by banks and insurance companies.
The latest addition to the Switzerland-headquartered data and technology provider’s Climate Solutions suite of tools is designed to help companies comply with regulations including the European Banking Authority (EBA) Pillar 3 ESG Disclosures. The tool gives clients the data needed to estimate the emissions of smaller companies and other investments on which sustainability data is scarce.

SymphonyAI Extends Financial Crime Data Solution

Artificial intelligence-powered software-as-a-service provide SymphonyAI has expanded its financial services offerings with a product to help organisations overcome entity data shortcomings that could enable financial crime.

The Palo Alto, California-based company said its Entity Resolution service enables clients to solve issues such as records duplication, poor data quality and data fragmentation. The company, which focuses its financial services business on fraud prevention, said the service would also aid in identifying concealed relationships, all of which could be used by criminal networks.