Singapore Life, a Singapore-based insurtech company, has made a strategic investment in Railsbank, a London-based regtech and open banking platform. The investment sum was not disclosed.
According to a statement, Singapore Life participated in Railsbank’s $10-million Series A round, led by Moneta Capital. Other investors include CreditEase, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Firestartr, and other existing backers.
Railsbank is an API-based financial platform designed for developers and product managers to build a financial services business from concept to launch and scale swiftly and seamlessly.
The statement added that the fresh capital will be used to expand its capabilities globally into markets like the US, Australia, and Southeast Asia. It will also invest in its core products across banking, payments, cards, and APIs for other financial services in insurance and credit.
Railsbank is also setting up a Singapore office as part of this expansion, which will act as a gateway into the region. The initial team has already been hired, with more to join in the coming months. Railsbank added it also has plans to expand its engineering teams across Vilnius, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.
“Our Singapore office is a central part of our expansion strategy. It will not only serve our existing client base but will allow us to attract new customers in a region, which is experiencing huge growth in the financial services sector and will allow us to fulfill our social mandate of financial inclusion,” said Nigel Verdon, Co-Founder and CEO of Railsbank, who has also moved to Singapore.
Walter de Oude, CEO of Singapore Life, said: “The investment (in Railsbank) gives us access to the world’s most cutting edge banking tech, accelerating the Railsbank development cycle and allowing Singapore Life to propel our own tech propositions across Southeast Asia even further ahead of our competition.”
Singapore Life has ambitious growth plans itself. Last month, the Sumitomo Life-backed firm told DealStreetAsia that it intends to enter three Southeast Asian markets by 2020, with Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines as its next targets for expansion.
Singapore Life added that it is open to both organic and inorganic routes for expansion, but noted that this will depend on factors such as the suitability of acquisition targets, available local partners, and local regulations governing foreign-owned insurers.
