Financial guru has received fresh capital from investors.
(Photo: finance guru)
Frankfurt Financial guru receives fresh capital: The Frankfurt fintech has collected 13 million euros in a financing round. According to financial circles, the valuation increases to 80 million euros. Most recently, the company raised eight million euros in January last year and was valued at around 32 million euros.
According to the founders, they could have collected even more money. “The demand was significantly higher than the supply. But we didn’t want to sell any more shares in the company,” said co-boss Benjamin Michel in an interview with the Handelsblatt. Michel founded Finanzguru in 2015 with his twin brother Alexander and runs it together with him.
The new round of funding is being led by Paypal Ventures, the venture capital subsidiary of US online payment service PayPal, and early-stage investor SCOR Ventures. But the existing investors, including Deutsche Bank, have also participated again.
The company became known because the founders appeared in the Vox start-up show “Lion’s Cave” in autumn 2018 – and juror and entrepreneur Carsten Maschmeyer joined Dwins, as the fintech was actually called, with one million euros.
Specifically, Finanzguru customers can link their bank accounts to the multibanking provider’s app. The fintech can then provide an accurate overview of the customers’ income and expenses as well as their contracts. “Our goal is to give customers a detailed financial overview. This makes a budget book obsolete,” said Michel.
Finanzguru competes with Outbank and Finanzblick
The app is free in the basic version. However, if you want to use additional functions, such as the expected account balance at the end of the month, you have to pay 2.99 euros per month for the premium membership “Finanzguru Plus”.
The company is thus competing with other multibanking apps such as Outbank or Finanzblick, but also with banks. For example, Commerzbank also offers an analysis of its own finances and automatically classifies sales into categories, as is the case with the Frankfurt-based fintech.
Finanzguru also advises customers on insurance and financial products based on the analyzed account data. “We want to find the best deal for our customers,” said Michel. “By analyzing the accounts, it can be seen, for example, whether the customer has insurance that is too expensive or whether all the essential insurance is in place.”
According to the company, this service is free of charge for the customer. The company earns money through commissions, which it then receives from the respective insurance companies. However, the financial guru also competes with other players on the market, such as the Frankfurt insurance manager Clark.
“We combine the most extensive analysis and forecasting functions on our financial platform and are completely independent when it comes to financial advice,” says Michel. That is the big advantage.
Financial guru still making losses
According to its own statements, Finanzguru currently has 1.5 million users. However, the two founders did not want to say how many customers actively use the app every month. Only that 100,000 of them also take out financial and insurance products via the app.
According to the annual report, the loss in 2021 was 2.3 million euros. According to its own statements, the company is not yet profitable. According to Michel, this is due to the fact that “a lot of money” is invested in marketing in order to continue to grow rapidly. According to the co-founder, the company is already operationally profitable. The founders did not want to comment on how high the loss was in the past financial year.
Sales tripled last year and were around five million euros. According to its own statements, the company is currently generating sales of over ten million euros for the year. The fintech also intends to use the money that has now been raised primarily for growth in the future. The focus is on Germany, says Michel. “We still see a lot of growth potential here,” he said.
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Just like in the area of payments. Last year, the company applied for a license as a payment initiation service from the German financial regulator Bafin. According to the company, this is still pending. This means that Finanzguru could also make payments for customers in the future.
However, the company will say goodbye to the debit card introduced in 2019 at the end of April. “Customers did not ask for the card as expected, which is why we are taking it off the market,” says Michel.
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