London-listed fintech investment fund Augmentum Fintech has made an aggregate of £8.5 million of follow-on investments into three of its existing portfolio companies, Tide, Monese and DueDil.
The fund has increased its stake in SME challenger bank Tide to £9 million, topping up earlier rounds of £3 million and £1 million with an additional £5 million injection. Since Augmentum’s initial investment in August last year, Tide has partnered with ClearBank, which was awarded £60 million from the RBS bail out fund designed to boost competition in SME banking.
Augmentum has also invested a further £2.5 million in current account challenger Monese, adding to a £5.3 million stake taken in September last year. Since the earlier investment Monese has almost doubled the number of accounts it serves, from 600,000 to over a million.
Additionally, due diligence firm DueDil is the beneficiary of a further £1 million investment, following a £2 million contribution to a Series C fund raising round last August.
Having substantially committed most of the net cash proceeds of its £94 million IPO last year, Augmentum has now set its sights on a further £150 million capital raise, beginning with the issue of £30 million in new shares.
“In our first year we have seen some 675 opportunities and have invested in nine of them,” says CEO Tim Levene “The strength of our deal flow reflects the scale of the opportunity and we believe that Augmentum is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this. Our strategy remains to back some of Europe’s most exciting early and growth stage fintech businesses that are disrupting the traditional financial services industry.”