€200 million investments in financial technology to accelerate innovation

UniCredit, one of the leading European commercial banks, and Anthemis Group, the leading financial services technology venture and advisory firm today, announced a new joint investment venture. UniCredit evo (equity venture opportunities) is set to be a dedicated initiative focused exclusively on identifying and investing in best-in-class financial technology startups. With an initial capital commitment of €200 million from UniCredit, the partnership will target mid stage startups and follow-on investments in more mature and established FinTech businesses, as well as early stage digitally native financial services startups working on more pioneering solutions.

The investment partnership and €200 million capital commitment serve as key tenets to accelerating the digitalization of the banking group. Their aim is to collaborate with emerging players within the FinTech ecosystem and explore, sustain and develop cutting-edge technologies and solutions.

Through the investment partnership, UniCredit and Anthemis will cover the entire life-cycle of emerging FinTech companies, with a primary focus on Europe and North America. This will span across the early ideas phase to maturity, applying them to different fields of retail banking and consumer finance; investment and corporate banking; wealth and asset management; capital markets and trading; payments and financial data; technology and infrastructure.

The UniCredit evo investment will be directly supervised and managed by two dedicated governing bodies: a Management Board of UniCredit representatives, working with Anthemis to identify the most relevant areas of focus, and the Investment Committee, composed of UniCredit and Anthemis representatives responsible for sourcing, evaluating and finalizing investments opportunities.

Within UniCredit, this joint venture will be led by the innovation team, under the remit of banking group Chief Operating Officer and Deputy General Manager Paolo Fiorentino. At Anthemis, Nadeem Shaikh, Founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, will oversee the partnership.