fundcraft, a leading provider of digital infrastructure for asset management, today announces that it has closed a €5 million Series A funding round, led by Aperture Capital, with participation from SIX Fintech Ventures, the CVC arm of SIX Group and early supporters.
The funds will be used for product development and to fuel fundcraft’s international expansion.
Fund administration is a large, growing market that is ripe for disruption. Its growth owes to the increasing trend for fund managers to outsource fund administration to specialist asset servicing companies. In the alternative asset management market, fund administration represents a USD50bn annual market.
Despite its size, fund administration continues to operate in a highly inefficient manner, with heavy reliance on people-based operations, emails, spreadsheets and pdfs.
According to a 2024 study from EY , the professional services company, fund administration scores only 2.3 out of 5 for digital maturity.
fundcraft‘s technology-centric value proposition centralises and automates processes, data, and stakeholder interaction to lower costs and deliver better customer outcomes. Its open platform allows all parties in the fund administration value chain - lawyers, bankers, auditors, accountants, depositaries - to collaborate using one platform.
Furthermore, in bringing together fund accounting, transfer agency, compliance, corporate secretary, portfolio management, and reporting into a single system, it consolidates workflows, processes, and delivers a single source of truth. In turn, this leads to much lower fund administration costs, increased agility since many of the processes, such as capital calls, are fully automated, as well as lower risks. fundcraft has gained significant traction since its inception in 2021.
fundcraft boasts more than 22 asset management clients, including Moonfare, Stableton and Tenity, managing more than 135 funds on their behalf, representing more than EUR6bn in commitment.
The funding round will be used by fundcraft to expand its product and market reach. Today, fundcraft serves asset managers operating Luxembourg-domiciled funds, but it plans to expand into new markets, including Spain and Germany in collaboration with a strong network of partners.
In addition, the company intends to address additional asset classes on top of Venture Capital, Private Equity and Fund of Funds, which are its focus today.
“We’re delighted to close this round, amidst still difficult funding conditions, with great growth and business partners,” said Julien De Mayer, fundcraft founder and CEO. “This will enable us to move into new markets and add new asset classes to the platform.”
Olga Porro, co-founder and CPO added, “We can now double down on growing this business, investing faster in digitising and streamlining fund administration operations, making them accessible, efficient, and transparent through our single platform that centralises and connects the entire fund back office.”
Victor Martin, co-founder and CTO said, “The Asset Management industry’s technology stack is antiquated, spreadsheet-driven and inefficient. We look forward to continuing to invest into our custom-built platform and working with best-in-class tech providers where relevant. Our services will disrupt and disintermediate the incumbents in the industry, but it’s our tech that supercharges our digitisation engine.”
The collaboration between fundcraft and its investors in this round extends beyond financial backing. Aperture, which provides strategy consulting and marketing services, is playing an instrumental role in refining fundcraft’s go-to-market strategy and execution, while SIX Group is a customer via its subsidiary Tenity.
Ben Robinson, CEO of Aperture Group, commented, “We believe fundcraft has the right model to transform asset servicing. We have seen for ourselves the inefficiency in this industry, and we’re convinced something radically different is needed. Fundcraft’s model captures both supply-side economies of scale, by digitising fund administration end-to-end, and also demand-side economies of scale by orchestrating the fund administration value chain. We’re delighted to be extending our collaboration with the fundcraft team.”