Chief Information Officer, National Bank Invests in US FinTech FX HedgePool’s $8M Series A Round

Two FinTech-focused Canadian venture capital (VC) firms have invested in US FinTech startup FX HedgePool’s $8 million Series A round.

“We saw that end investors and buy-side institutions were both affected by inefficient processes that seriously affected fund performance, and the FX market was ripe for change.”
-David Unsworth, Chief Information Officer

Toronto-based Information Venture Partners (Information VP) led the funding, with support from NAventures, National Bank of Canada’s VC arm. The round also saw participation from UK 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 more than $4 trillion in matched currency trades for dozens of firms.

FX HedgePool claims it is able to respond more quickly to market demand than most incumbents 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 have led the market towards peer-to-peer matching, and this investment will allow us to continue to bring efficiencies, cost savings and better results to the investment community,” said FX HedgePool co-founder and CEO Jay Moore.

Dave Unsworth, general partner in Information VP, believes FX HedgePool has “proven its ability to innovate and influence change in the largest capital market in the world.”

“As we observed changes in the foreign exchange market over the last couple of years, we saw that end investors and buy-side institutions were both affected by inefficient processes that seriously affected fund performance, and the foreign exchange market was ripe for change,” added Unsworth.

Concurrent with its latest capital raising, FX HedgePool is also launching the FXHP Innovation Pool, a community for finance leaders to collaborate and address industry challenges.

For Information VP, FX HedgePool marks the latest in a series of investments the firm has made in recent months, backing US revenue management software provider Nue.io in June and Calgary payments company Helcim in March.

RELATED: Information Venture Partners Closes Third Fund, Raises $124M 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 the investment in St. Johns-based financial crime firm Verafin.

In turn, through NAventures, National Bank has invested in a number of Canada’s most prominent FinTech startups. Most recently, NAventures participated in OneVest’s $5 million seed round in April. Other companies NAventures has backed include Borrowell, Koho and Nest Wealth.

National Bank also took a majority stake in Flinks last year, announcing a $103 million CAD commitment that gave the bank an 80 percent preferred stock 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.