Some latest news from two companies, Seismic Foundry a start-up investor and CloudMargin.

CloudMargin $10m Investment and Doubled Client Base

CloudMargin, the award-winning creator of the world’s first and only collateral and margin management solution native to the cloud, announced today the completion of a new round of investment in the company totaling US$10 million to support the firm’s rapid growth. The new investors are LVC, the venture investing arm of Leucadia National Corporation (NYSE: LUK), the publicly traded investment holding company and parent of Jefferies, the global investment banking firm; and IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions. Existing investors, including Illuminate Financial Management, also participated in the round.
 
In addition, CloudMargin significantly expanded the scope of its commercial alliance with IHS Markit announced last June. This will enhance the ability of IHS Markit to provide a more seamless and comprehensive suite of collateral management services to its customers.
 
“CloudMargin had the foresight to disrupt the industry with an innovative collateral solution native to the cloud that is robust, agile and cost effective,” said Ed Chidsey, Managing Director and head of pricing, valuations and reference data at IHS Markit.  “These were key factors in our decision to not only to invest in the company, but to embrace them as a strategic commercial and technology partner as well.”
 
“We are pleased to partner with CloudMargin in its next phase of growth,” said Raphael Bejarano, Managing Director at Leucadia and Head of LVC. “The firm’s deep market expertise and world-class product position CloudMargin as the preferred solution across the capital markets to manage increasingly complex collateral and margin requirements.”
 
CloudMargin has more than doubled its client base over the past 12 months, adding global and regional asset managers, sell-side and regional banks, hedge funds and insurance brokers in Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. In addition, CloudMargin has received commitments from its first two global investment banks and expects both to be live by the end of the calendar year.  This will lead to further rapid growth in this networked environment of sell-side and buy-side firms. CloudMargin has achieved 250 percent annual growth in the number of collateral agreements hosted on its award-winning platform and expects this growth to continue.
 
“We are delighted to have the support of LVC and IHS Markit, which bring complementary and critical value to our firm and our clients,” said CloudMargin CEO Steve Husk. “This investment allows CloudMargin to continue to provide unique value in the marketplace and capitalize on the significant demand from sell-side and buy-side capital markets participants for our solution. As CloudMargin remains the only native cloud-based offering in the space, we are ever-focused on improving the platform continuously while leveraging its accessibility, pricing flexibility and community that can be harnessed only with cloud technology.”
 
The investment will finance product development and growing connectivity to industry infrastructure. It will also help scale the company’s sales, partnerships and marketing efforts in both established and new regions.
 
About CloudMargin
Headquartered in London, CloudMargin created the world’s first cloud-based collateral management workflow tool, which has earned more than a dozen different industry awards since 2015 for innovation and best-in-class technology. The firm’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model is helping many of the leading financial institutions globally – including exchanges, brokerage firms, banks, asset management firms and insurance companies – meet time-critical regulatory deadlines and reduce costs associated with collateral requirements that are growing dramatically. CloudMargin bypasses many of the shortfalls of legacy, on-premise software, enabling clients to experience rapid implementation and access to robust and secure collateral management workflow software. For more information, visit www.cloudmargin.com.
 
About LVC and Leucadia
LVC is the venture investing arm of Leucadia National Corporation, a diversified holding company that invests in a broad array of businesses. Leucadia’s financial services businesses and investments include investment banking and capital markets (Jefferies Group), asset management (Leucadia Asset Management), real estate (HomeFed), online provider of foreign exchange trading services (FXCM), commercial mortgage banking, investment sales and servicing (Berkadia), and vehicle finance (Foursight Capital). Leucadia’s merchant banking businesses and investments include an insurance and consumer products company (HRG Group), beef processing (National Beef), oil and gas exploration and development (Vitesse Energy and JETX Energy), automobile dealerships (Garcadia), fixed wireless broadband services in Italy (Linkem), manufacturing (Idaho Timber) and a gold and silver mine (Golden Queen).
 
About IHS Markit
IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO) is a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions for the major industries and markets that drive economies worldwide. The company delivers next-generation information, analytics and solutions to customers in business, finance and government, improving their operational efficiency and providing deep insights that lead to well-informed, confident decisions. IHS Markit has more than 50,000 business and government customers, including 80 percent of the Fortune Global 500 and the world’s leading financial institutions.

Seismic Foundry invests in LodeBot

The Seismic Foundry Capital Markets FinTech SEIS Fund 2017-18 is excited to announce its latest investment, in LodeStar Ecosystems, a state-of-the-art intelligent advisor platform for the Financial Services Industry. Lodestar’s ‘LodeBot’ application is a personalised Intelligent-Advisor targeted at Brokers, Traders and Asset Managers. The AI platform pulls together information on financial assets from a wide range of internal and external sources and helps users identify the key signals that inform buy and sell decisions that are most relevant to them and their customers.

Seismic Foundry partner Jeff Gale said, “The firm provides a valuable tool for users to capture and co-ordinate investment activity, utilising cutting edge technology to drive efficiency and enhanced client service. LodeBot will streamline broker and advisor activities enabling greater levels of customer service across organisations and freeing up valuable resources to focus on additional revenue generating activities.”

Dr Anthony Edwards, founder of Lodestar said, “We are delighted to have secured investment from the Seismic Foundry, who have some of the most highly regarded and respected capital market professionals in the industry as founders.  They immediately ‘got it’ and are as excited as we are about the inexorable march of intelligent technologies that will improve financial investment relationships exponentially. We don’t see Seismic Foundry as just an investor, but as a partner that will be fundamental to the growth and success of Lodestar.”

About Lodestar: Lodestar is a technology company founded by financial services domain experts, backed by industry leading software architecture and development expertise. It has developed Lodebot, a new way of understanding data to change and improve relationships and profitability in capital markets.  Contact:  Anthony Edwards:  anthony@lodestar-ecosystems.com

Seismic Foundry Invests in Waymark Tech.

Seismic Foundry Capital Markets FinTech Fund closed its final investment for the current tax year by acting as lead investor in RegTech start-up, Waymark Tech. 

Waymark Tech develops software for companies in highly regulated industries and professional services firms with clients facing increasingly complex regulatory demands. Their flagship product, Wayfinder, is an AI engine that continually monitors and analyses regulatory changes and makes recommendations to ensure compliance using Natural Language Processing (NLP). Their relevance has been proven by acceptance into the Accenture FinTech Innovation Lab this year and being selected as one of the eight firms to pitch on their Graduation Day. They are currently working on a number of paid Proof of Concepts and securing their first clients to license the platform in the second quarter. 

“Waymark Tech is a great example of a company using their deep understanding of a business problem to leverage the power of machine-learning. Thanks to their unique abilities, they are making regulatory compliance a less tedious job and so allow compliance officers to focus on what really matters”, said Cedric Maloux, CEO of StartupYard, an early investor in Waymark Tech.

“Waymark is delighted to have secured investment from the leading industry figures who make up Seismic Foundry. They really understand our space and the potential of our global regulatory intelligence platform. Seismic’s input on our strategy and model will help us to scale efficiently, bringing the power of Waymark to many more people in regulated firms across the world. The twists and turns of regulatory change and enforcement are not receding anytime soon and so the ability to parse the millions of pages of regulation to provide users with answers to their questions when they need the information most is invaluable.,” said Mark Holmes, Founder and CEO. 

Brendan Bradley, a Co-founder of Seismic Foundry, commented, “Seismic are pleased to have completed our investments this tax year with our stake in Waymark. It is well documented that many of the alumni from the Accenture Innovation Lab have developed into leading FinTech firms, with associated success in their fund-raising activities, so we are enthusiastically looking forward to the ongoing journey. In addition, we are happy to be co-investing alongside Credo Ventures and StartupYard.”

Waymark Tech – is a young, innovative company that uses technology to aid regulatory compliance. Specifically, they use NLP, that sits within company’s existing systems, to parse millions of pages of regulation to provide them with answers to their questions when they need the information most.
Contact – Mark Holmes – +44 (0)7980 225 817 or mark@waymark.tech

Seismic Foundry is an early stage Capital Markets Fintech Fund that provides access to emerging Capital Markets FinTech for individuals and financial institutions. The Seismic Foundry Capital Markets FinTech SEIS Fund 2017-18 has now closed and funds are being raised for the 2018-2109 SEIS and EIS Funds. 
Contact: Seismic Foundry Team: +44 7767 254555 or seismic@seismicfoundry.com