Edinburgh fintech business nets £2m Maven-led funding
● Remuneration firm eyes targets such as US growth with private equity backing
Glasgow-based private equity house Maven Capital Partners has led investment of nearly £2 million into a fintech company present in Edinburgh alongside parties including the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB).
Maven is injecting development capital of £1.2m into Curo Compensation with the rest of the £1.8m total coming from the recipient’s existing investors Downing and the SIB, helping it realise aims such as expanding in the US and launching new products.
Curo offers software known as Curocomp that it says lets clients manage their pay review cycle “quickly and securely, in accordance with agreed, and often complex, compensation plans” to optimise annual spend on pay.
It currently covers more than 180,000 employees, in 130 currencies across 140 countries, and has worked with organisations including EY, the Londonstockexchangeandbupa.
The firm, which operates in London and the US as well as Edinburgh, says its offering, having recently launched its latest version (V4) of Curocomp, is “highly configurable and scalable”.
It aims to capitalise on the broader move away from inhouse compensation duties towards third-party software vendors amid a growing interest in harnessing value from compensation data and understanding the impact of effectively rewarding performance.
Maven explained that its investment, advised by law firm Burness Paull, will enable Curo to boost its sales and marketing resource, focusing on expanding its US operations and adding channel partners to its direct sales effort.
The compensation firm’s plans to launch additional products in 2018 starts with a reporting system aimed at meeting new legislation around gender pay gap and minority pay reporting in various territories such as the UK.
Chiefexecutivegerryo’neill, who co-founded Vebnet, an employee benefits software specialist sold to Standard Life in 2008, said the investment round will provide the capital “to scale our sales and marketing resource as well as accelerate new product development including both a gender pay gap reporting solution and a product targeted at smaller employers with simpler compensation needs.”
David Milroy, investment director at Maven, said: “Curo has achieved consistent revenue growth and now is an opportune time for Maven’s clients to invest following the recent launch of Curocomp V4, and with the imminent launch of new products, most notablycuro’sgenderpaygap reporting system.
“Maven also actively looks to support second-time entrepreneurs and we have been impressed by the team that Gerry has assembled.”
Other recent investments by Maven include £3m to grow an insurance brokering subsidiary of Edinburgh-based Altra Consultants, and £2m for software business Cognitive Geology, also based in the Scottish capital, to help speed up the rollout of its latest products.