FX HedgePool secures support from a pair of Canadian VCs.
Two FinTech-focused Canadian venture capital (VC) firms have invested in American FinTech startup FX HedgePool’s $8 million Series A round.
“We saw end-investors and buy-side institutions were both affected by ineffective processes that severely impacted fund performance, and the FX market was ripe for change.”
-David Unsworth, Information VP
Toronto-based Information Venture Partners (Information VP) led the financing, with support from NAventures, National Bank of Canada’s VC arm. The round also saw participation from United Kingdom FinTech VC Fidelity International Strategic Ventures.
Launched in 2020, FX HedgePool is a peer-to-peer matching platform for institutional foreign exchange (FX) transactions. The New York-headquartered startup said it has facilitated over $4 trillion in matched FX trades for dozens of firms.
FX HedgePool claims it is able to react more quickly to market demand than most incumbent players in the space, citing its ability to deliver thirty significant product releases annually. This agility, according to FX HedgePool, enabled the startup to design and develop its first platform prototype in just four weeks in 2019.
“We’ve led the market towards peer-to-peer matching, and this investment will allow us to continue to bring efficiency, cost-savings, and better outcomes for the investment community,” said FX HedgePool co-founder and CEO Jay Moore.
Dave Unsworth, general partner at Information VP, believes FX HedgePool has “proven its ability to innovate and effect change in the largest capital market in the world.”
“When observing changes in the FX market over the last couple of years, we saw end-investors and buy-side institutions were both affected by ineffective processes that severely impacted fund performance, and the FX market was ripe for change,” Unsworth added.
Concurrent with its latest capital raise, FX HedgePool is also launching the FXHP Innovation Pool, a community for leaders in finance to collaborate and address industry challenges.
For Information VP, FX HedgePool marks the latest in a series of investments the firm has made during recent months, backing US-based revenue operations software provider Nue.io in June and Calgary payments company Helcim in March.
RELATED: Information Venture Partners closes third fund, raising $124 million CAD
Founded in 2014 by Unsworth and Rob Antoniades as general partners—who were later joined by Kerri Golden as partner and CFO—Information VP invests primarily in B2B FinTech and enterprise SaaS startups that aim to modernize financial services. Information VP closed $124 million for its third venture fund last May.
The VC firm’s portfolio of FinTech investments includes LendingFront, Q4, Sensibill, and Procurify. One of Information VP’s most successful deals to date was its investment in St. John’s-based financial crime management company Verafin.
For its part, through NAventures, National Bank has invested in a swath of Canada’s most prominent FinTech startups. Most recently, NAventures took part in OneVest’s $5 million seed round in April. Other companies that NAventures has backed include Borrowell, Koho, and Nest Wealth.
National Bank also took a majority stake in Flinks last year, announcing a commitment of $103 million CAD that provided the bank with an 80 percent preferred share equity interest in Flinks.
Flinks later launched its Open Banking Environment (OBE) product with National Bank last year, ahead of the Canadian government’s own open banking framework.
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