Multiply aims to revolutionise the financial advice landscape. Subject to FCA authorisation, it will officially launch its offering later this year to be the UK’s first unbiased, free and fully comprehensive financial advice website. Covering every aspect of personal finance, from mortgages to investments and savings, Multiply uses machine learning and financial modelling to create bespoke financial plans for consumers.

Octopus Ventures, the early stage investor, invested £1 million, and was joined by Portag3 Ventures LP and Entrepreneur First to support Multiply’s development and roll-out of their beta consumer facing product. Angel investors include Nick Hungerford, former CEO of Nutmeg, Taavet Hinrikus, CEO and co-founder of TransferWise, Peter Rading, Michael Orland and Toby Moore.

The FinTech firm was co-founded in 2016 by Vivek Madlani, the former Global Head of the Dynamic Strategies and Index Trading business at RBS, and Mike Curtis, a technology expert with a PhD in Computational Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge. The pair created Multiply with an ambition to disrupt independent financial advice by harnessing the power of machine learning to produce a fully impartial advice platform.

Vivek Madlani, CEO and Co-founder of Multiply, commented: “Traditional financial advisors are too expensive for most people and often won’t even consider helping clients with less than £100,000 in the bank. This leaves millions of people in the UK unequipped to make better financial decisions leading to an advice gap that discriminates against the consumers who need it more. We founded Multiply to combat this problem and are determined to be the first to make financial advice available to everyone, for free.”

Mike Curtis, CTO and Co-founder of Multiply, added: “We were delighted to get the backing from experienced investors like Octopus Ventures. Given their extensive experience in supporting the UK’s fastest growing companies, we welcome Octopus Ventures’ expertise and advice every step of the way as we launch and scale-up.”

Zihao Xu, Early Stage Investor, Octopus Ventures, added: “We’re hugely impressed with Multiply’s customer-centric and machine-learning-enabled approach to making financial advice easily accessible and freely available to all. There is currently a significant proportion of the population who are excluded from accessing crucial advice that will inform their financial decisions and Multiply will help close this advice gap. We're excited for Multiply to improve the financial well being of UK consumers and be a modernising force in financial services.”

Multiply has been accepted into the FCA’s Advice Unit which provides regulatory feedback to firms developing automated advice models.