VISIBLE Capital, a new Scottish fintech company founded by three Scottish tech veterans has secured £500,000 seed funding from TechStart Ventures and a group of eight private investors. Preston Rabl, co-founder of the advertising and public relations giant WPP plc will join the board, whilst Ian Steel, former senior partner of Deloitte in Scotland and Northern Ireland; and Iain Mackay, an experienced director and NXD are joining the Advisory Board.
Launching in early 2020, Edinburgh-based Visible Capital, led by Richard Braidwood, Ross Laurie and Christian Burgin, has developed technology that will help clients of intermediaries, such as wealth managers, pension providers and IFAs provide their advisors with controlled access to their financial data – thereby allowing them to receive quicker, more informed advice on financial matters.
The technology used across Visible Capital’s portfolio of wealth management products takes advantage of the opportunities opened up by PSD2 and Open Banking.
Richard Braidwood, Co-Founder of Visible Capital commented: “Financial advisers and wealth managers still take information from their clients in paper form – which means the advice they give and the strategies they suggest can only be as good as the immediate information they receive.
“Visible Capital’s technology allows the intermediary agreed and controlled access to real data about spending needs, wants, savings and borrowing, giving an instantly accurate picture of their clients’ ongoing finances – making the onboarding process quicker and easier, and a lot more precise. Fully compliant and easy to use, switching to a data-driven onboarding process seems like an inevitable step forward, allowing advisers to mitigate risk, benefit from built-in compliance, and give better advice in one fell swoop.”
In the UK, c23 million adults are investing – either in ISAs or pensions.
Mark Hogarth, Partner at Techstart Ventures said “We are delighted to back the team at Visible Capital as we believe they have identified a huge opportunity and their combined experience means they are uniquely placed to deliver on it.”
The business has already achieved its FCA approval and is ready to start doing business with potential clients, many of which are already at the discussion stage.
Braidwood concludes: “Seed funding has allowed us to hit the ground running, hiring critical staff members and allowing us to move directly to talks with key potential users. Having clear information benefits both adviser and consumer, and ultimately, contributes to both the quality of investment decisions and consumer trust in the adviser network. We are confident that the market is ready for, and indeed, has been waiting for, the Visible Capital platform.”
