Leveris’s multimillion euro funding round nearly complete

Banking technology company Leveris is close to completing a multimillion euro funding round with the financing to be used to fuel expansion in the US.

The company, which has been targeting up to €100 million in funding, is looking to build on the back of increased demand for its technology during the Covid pandemic.

Founded in 2016 by Conor Fennelly, Leveris has developed its own cloud-based retail banking and lending platform on which both traditional players and neobanks can offer their services, rather than building or updating their own systems.

The company previously raised €25 million from the Australian financial services firm Linked Group in 2018 in return for a 13 per cent stake in a deal that valued it at more than €190 million.

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Mr Fennelly, the company’s chief executive, said that like most businesses, it had felt the impact of Covid last year. However, he said the company had used the time to further develop its banking platform, form new strategic partnerships and do longer-term planning.

“From a business development perspective, we continued to sell our banking-as-a-service (BaaS) and sofware-as-a-service (Saas) products and have a growing pipeline with some new customers currently coming on board,” said Mr Fennelly.

“On the industry front, one plus side of the pandemic is that it has been a catalyst for innovation, particularly within banking and financial services. The companies that will succeed in a post-pandemic world are those that were already fully digital and working on solutions to make their clients fully digital too, and Leveris is perfectly positioned in this category,” he added.

The company late last year announced it had been chosen by Ceska Sportelna, the largest bank in the Czech Republic for its digital transformation programme. The bank has 4.5 million customers and nearly 10,000 employees working across about 450 branches.

Leveris is headquartered in Dublin and has development centres in Prague, Brno and Minsk. It employs about 150 people in total.

The company saw losses mount and revenues fall in the year prior to the Covid crisis. Recently filed accounts show turnover fell from €8.5 million to €2.17 million in 2019 while pretax losses rose to €3.2 million from €2.1 million a year earlier.

Mr Fennelly said the company's focus currently is North America, where it sees big opportunities "In 2021, we are looking at the US as a key expansion market. Channel partners have become and will continue to be a major feature of our growth and we have signed a number of key partnerships, one of which we'll be announcing in the weeks ahead," he said.

“We’re looking forward to the second half of the year when we plan to close our next fundraise, explore new markets and continue to build strong relationships that will support our growth and scaling ambitions for the future,” Mr Fennelly added.