M&G has led a £44.1m funding round in digital investment app Moneyfarm in order to build an M&G Wealth-branded digital investment service for UK retail customers.
The deal, which also garnered investment from Moneyfarm’s minority shareholder Poste Italiane, will see M&G acquire a minority stake in the investment app by the end of the first quarter of 2022.
M&G’s digital investment platform will build on Moneyfarm’s ‘platform-as-a-service’, which has been deployed by other financial firms such as Allianz, UniCredit and Banca Sella over the years.
The service will be designed to meet a range of customer risk appetites and profiles through a collection of multi-asset model portfolios, backed by a selection of actively-managed and passive funds.
The Wealth unit said it will also use Moneyfarm’s investment guidance journeys, further discerning the new proposition from its current advised platform.
“With the launch of a direct, mobile-based investment platform, complementing our growing independent, proprietary and hybrid adviser businesses, our customers will be able to access the channel, advice and investment proposition that most suits their financial situation and needs,” said David Montgomery, managing director at M&G Wealth.
The fund house said it will aim the new proposition at the “next generation” of retail customers in the UK, adding to the advised client platform it offers via the Ascentric acquisition from 2020 through M&G Wealth.
M&G said it already has 5m retail customers, with some £370bn in assets under management.
Last month, M&G told FTAdviser it intended to broaden the appeal of its platform in the coming year, saying the profession as a whole had a “collective duty to spread the multiple benefits of advice far wider than is currently the case”.
In an announcement published today (January 26), the two companies also said they will explore “a range of other opportunities” to partner in other European wealth markets.
Moneyfarm has some 80,000 customers, having most recently bought Canadian robo-adviser Wealthsimple’s 16,000 UK customers. In total, the fintech manages some £2.2bn in assets under management. It said these assets increased 72 per cent in 2021.
Since it launched in 2012, Moneyfarm has raised £139m in investments.
“Having launched in the UK five years ago, we are very excited to be partnering with a proven name in M&G on the next stage of our journey and welcome them as an investor,” said Giovanni Daprà, co-founder and chief executive at Moneyfarm.
ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com
