United Fintech increases TTMzero share
By buying an additional 26% stake in TTMzero, Danish-UK United Fintech has reached the 51% tipping point to gain majority ownership in the Berlin-based RegTech, one of five acquisitions made in United Fintech’s just two-and-a-half-year lifespan.
The first investment was made in 2021, and just two years later under United Fintech’s umbrella, revenues have grown 2.5X in the German software provider whose primary clients today include names such as Citi, Morgan Stanley and Commerzbank. And according to Simon Ullrich, co-founder of TTMzero together with Soenke Blunck, the growth journey is testimony to a partnership where the whole is more than the sum of the parts, which prompted the two founders to sell when the right offer came along. :
“Our main motivation was that we wanted access to global markets, and with United Fintech’s network we believe we can grow into new jurisdictions. On their platform, we are in good company with other innovative entrepreneurs and experience many important synergies between their technology products and ours . As founders, we preserve the core culture of TTMzero, which has always been a focus on product innovation and user experience, while United Fintech offers a scalable platform that allows us to serve our clients as a global company. Therefore, it is a “best of both worlds scenario and in in today’s market, where it is a matter of size for those who want to be part of the bid for the banks’ digital transformation, it makes a lot of sense to be part of something bigger in order to realize our full potential,” says Simon Ullrich, who explains the growing demand for large-scale software relationships in fintech, with increased compliance and security requirements driving institutional customers towards larger vendors rather than smaller independent software companies.
Join us on a bigger journey
At the same time and in a separate transaction, the two German founders have used part of the share sale proceeds to invest in United Fintech at group level. According to United Fintech CEO Christian Frahm, the fintech platform’s projected growth in the coming years represents a rare opportunity for fintech entrepreneurs who want to join a bigger journey. He perceives the fintech platform’s position and management as an enabler in a number of directions, as today’s financial institutions steer towards larger technology providers:
“In recent years, the trend has been for financial institutions to want to reduce the number of third-party suppliers. Historically, this would mean more expansive contracts with legacy vendors, but this is where we differentiate ourselves “with a rare combination of great technology from the best niche vendors under one umbrella, and we now see this emerging as a winning combination. At group level, our revenues have increased fivefold, both organically and via M&A, and predicting only further growth in the niche in the coming years, it was obvious for us to get a majority stake in TTMzero”, says Christian Frahm, who retains intricate knowledge of fintech and financial industries from his days with Finalto which he founded in 2008.
Collaboration with banks for their digital journey
In just over two and a half years, United Fintech has grown from being just Christian Frahm to employing more than 160 people in 8 countries through both organic growth and by acquiring 5 software companies for the capital markets, converting these into United Fintech’s digital platform partners , in the process of adding Barclays, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered Bank among others to their list of over 200 clients globally. Over the next 10 years, Christian Frahm’s ambition is to carry out several strategic acquisitions and partnerships with Capital Markets’ fintechs; to build an “end-to-end roadmap” for banks, asset managers and other financial services firms to replace their old legacy infrastructure with innovative fintech:
“The financial sector is realizing that getting out of legacy infrastructure and embracing newer and more open architectures is critical to surviving in a world where customer behavior and needs are changing drastically. The best products come from niche product companies – not from large legacy vendors. It’s why our value proposition is attracting massive interest from financial services firms around the world, all of whom are in a digital race against time, and why they seem to be congregating around larger core vendors over smaller standalone software firms like never before, United Fintech and our platform of products a serious competitive advantage”, concludes Christian Frahm.
