Octopus Ventures invests £1m to support launch of FinTech firm Multiply

Multiply, a London-based automated financial advice service, has secured Seed investment totalling £1.75m to help it launch later this year.

Early-stage investor Octopus Ventures led the round, investing £1m. Portag3 Ventures LP, Entrepreneur First and a host of Angel investors also contributed. The funding will be used to support the development of Multiply and help it roll out a beta version of its product.

Multiply’s official website launch is subject to it obtaining FCA authorisation. The company uses machine learning and financial modelling to create financial plans for consumers; from mortgages to investments and savings.

The FinTech firm was co-founded in 2016 by Vivek Madlani, who previously worked for RBS, and Mike Curtis, a technology expert with a PhD in Computational Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge.

Vivek Madlani, the CEO, commented on the news: “Traditional financial advisors are too expensive for most people and often won’t even consider helping clients with less than £100,000 in the bank. This leaves millions of people in the UK unequipped to make better financial decisions leading to an advice gap that discriminates against the consumers who need it more. We founded Multiply to combat this problem and are determined to be the first to make financial advice available to everyone, for free.”  

Mike Curtis, the CTO, added: “We were delighted to get the backing from experienced investors like Octopus Ventures. Given their extensive experience in supporting the UK’s fastest growing companies, we welcome Octopus Ventures’ expertise and advice every step of the way as we launch and scale-up.”

The pair created Multiply with an ambition to disrupt independent financial advice with the use of machine learning.

Zihao Xu, early stage Investor at Octopus Ventures, concluded: “We’re hugely impressed with Multiply’s customer-centric and machine-learning-enabled approach to making financial advice easily accessible and freely available to all. There is currently a significant proportion of the population who are excluded from accessing crucial advice that will inform their financial decisions and Multiply will help close this advice gap. We’re excited for Multiply to improve the financial well being of UK consumers and be a modernising force in financial services.”