London-based FinTech Nous on Friday (Feb. 18) closed a 7.9 million euros ($8.9 million) fundraising round that will expand its service offering to help more households across the region deal with the cost-of-living crunch.
Mosaic Ventures led Nous’ funding effort with participation from more than 65 angel investors, including tech entrepreneurs Tom Blomfield (co-founder of GoCardless and Monzo), Marc Warner (co-founder and CEO of AI platform Faculty.ai), Dan Hegarty (founder and CEO of digital mortgage company Habito), Eamon Jubbawy (co-founder of FinTech unicorn Onfido), serial entrepreneur Brent Hoberman and ActiveHotels (Booking.com), among others.
Nous’ tech platform aggregates first- and third-party data feeds to “power a real-time personalized dashboard of a household’s finances along with actionable insights,” according to a EU-startups.com report.
Nous monitors vendor activity to protect consumers from vendors “who would otherwise take advantage of their inattention by hiking prices or levying loyalty taxes,” the report said, adding that the company saves a typical household more than 1,000 pounds ($1,359) a year on energy, insurance, mortgages, broadband and other subscriptions.
“At a time when U.K. citizens are facing the worst inflation crisis for 30 years, household expenses are the largest component of people’s living costs, and yet most of us are routinely exploited by companies who hack our inattention to sneak in loyalty taxes at every turn,” said Greg Marsh, founder and CEO, in the report. “Nous will change that.
“We’re on the side of households, and we’re building a service to make people’s lives simpler and fairer,” he said.
Related: British FinTechs Felt the Love in 2021 with $37.3B in Funding
This investment keeps up last year’s trend of investments in British FinTechs, which were backed with $37.3 billion in funding in 2021, up 617% over 2020, according to a biannual report from KPMG.
Half of the top 10 FinTech deals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were based in the U.K.
Worldwide funding across mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital in FinTechs increased roughly 70%, with a record 5,684 deals last year that totaled over $210 billion, bolstered by investor enthusiasm for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.