Italian lender UniCredit and Anthemis Group, a UK-based financial services technology venture and advisory firm, have launched UniCredit EVO – a joint investment venture that will invest in fintech start-ups.
The EUR200m fund will seek to identify and invest in promising financial technology start-ups with a primary focus on Europe and North America.
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The initiative will focus on mid-stage startups and follow-on investments in more mature and established Fintech businesses as well as early stage digitally native financial services startups working on more pioneering solutions.
The initial EUR200m investment with Anthemis will also aim to help UniCredit to accelerate the digitalization of its banking unit. It will include the entire lifecycle of emerging FinTech companies.
The initiative will span across the early startup ideas phase to maturity and apply to different fields of retail banking and consumer finance, investment and corporate banking, wealth and asset management, capital markets and trading, payments and financial data, technology and infrastructure.
This joint investment venture will be directly supervised and managed by two governing bodies including a management board comprised of UniCredit and Anthemis representatives working together to identify the most relevant areas of focus, and an investment committee, composed of UniCredit and Anthemis representatives responsible for sourcing, evaluating and finalizing investment opportunities.
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By GlobalDataThe JV will be headed by UniCredit’s innovation team, led by group COO and deputy general manager Paolo Fiorentino, while Nadeem Shaikh, founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, will oversee the partnership.
Fiorentino said: "Thanks to this partnership, we are ramping up our digital transformation, building a new business model to maximize the combined strengths of traditional market players and newcomers.
"This will in turn boost our digitalization, enabling us to better adapt to the ever-evolving needs of our customers. Today, Anthemis becomes a key partner on this journey. By leveraging their wide expertise, Anthemis will help us identify top class players and opportunities that will drive innovation and ultimately help us to better serve our customers."
Shaikh said: "We are delighted to be putting all of the Anthemis assets – a powerful global ecosystem, deep strategic insight and extensive investment experience – to work in the Investment Partnership."
