Zurich-based Numbrs is the latest fintech to join the unicorn club

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The Zurich-based fintech, whose investors include former Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, raised $40 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, reports Bloomberg. The latest investment brings Numbrs’ total raise to date to almost $200 million, CEO Martin Saidler told the outlet.

Notably, in contrast to many of its peers, Numbrs has joined the unicorn club not by focusing on venture capital and private equity funding, but instead by relying mostly on individuals and families — 50 have invested in the company thus far. The startup’s app enables users to aggregate their various bank accounts and manage their finances, and offers a marketplace for consumers to purchase various financial products.

The startup integrates with a slew of banks already and has signed up a big insurance provider for its marketplace. It claims to support integrations with over 3,500 banks, including Commerzbank and Deutsche in Germany, as well as HSBC and RBS in the UK.

It’s also secured a number of big-name players for its financial marketplace, having signed distribution agreements with insurance giants Allianz and AXA. And its offering appears to have gone down well with consumers, as the app’s been downloaded over 2.2 million times as of July 2019.

Numbrs’ largest market is Germany, but it’s aiming to make the UK its second-biggest market. It wants to achieve this by next year and also plans on expanding to other European markets, according to Saidler cited by Bloomberg. Targeting the UK makes sense: 71% of the country’s consumers have adopted fintech services, per EY.

This is in comparison to a global average of 64% — the same as Germany. But the UK’s market is flooded with account aggregation and personal finance management tools like Numbrs, with the likes of ING’s Yolt having already established themselves in the country for some time now. As such, the startup’s success in the country remains to be seen.

The bigger picture: Numbrs’ entry into the fintech unicorn club is evidence of how globally distributed the biggest fintech players are becoming.

That a Swiss startup has become the latest fintech unicorn is proof of the fintech industry’s growing global impact. For instance, so far this year, Brazil’s Nubank has snagged a whopping $400 million, German neobank N26 has secured a $470 million Series D round, and Australia’s Judo has nabbed over $270 million.

And this is despite fintech funding dipping significantly to $15 billion in the first half of 2019, compared with almost $27 billion in the same period last year, per CB Insights — although, it’s worth noting that the amount raised in H1 2019 already accounts for over 80% of the total raised across the whole of 2017. Crucially, though, as illustrated by the raises secured by the likes of Nubank and N26, we’re seeing players in markets across the world secure mega rounds.

Numbrs’ ascent into the unicorn club further reinforces this trend: Despite global funding falling shy of last year’s record raise, fintechs in multiple geographies are now beginning to secure huge investments as more and more consumers begin to use their services.

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