Technology

Posted on August 15, 2019 by staff

Octopus to acquire wealth management FinTech for £10m

Technology

Business group Octopus has acquired Bath-based FinTech Seccl for £10m.

Founded in 2016 by CEO David Harvey, previously founder of IT and consultancy software firm Ledge Systems, Seccl offers a range of digital services or ‘modules’, to advisers designed for wealth managers, investors and firms.

It will provide ongoing investment as the pre-revenue business continues to grow.

Seccl will continue to be led by its founders Harvey and chairman Hugo Thorman, alongside Sam Handfield-Jones from Octopus’, who will become co-head of Seccl.

Octopus said it would look to expand Seccl’s 13 employees once the deal had receive regulatory approval.

It plans to move staff from its existing Octopus Wealth division over to the new business.

Simon Rogerson, CEO and co-founder of Octopus Group, comments: “We are delighted to welcome the Seccl team into Octopus Group. Millions of us use platform technology everyday whether for online banking or managing investments. It determines our user experience and investment costs.

But it’s a market crying out for change. Seccl’s innovative technology has the potential to completely transform the customer and client experience across retail financial services. The market opportunity is enormous and we are all excited by its potential.”

David Harvey, co-founder of Seccl, added: “It has always been abundantly clear that Octopus shares in our vision and I wholeheartedly believe that together we can create something incredibly powerful.

“The platform technology space hasn’t changed in 10 years and, with a handful of firms now dominating the market, the time couldn’t be better for some new competition.

“Having created Seccl from scratch, rather than building on legacy systems, we operate with a fraction of the code base, which means we are cheaper, can move faster, and are ultimately open to smaller firms that can’t get a shoe in with the big providers today.”