Canadian Fintech: Coinbase is licensed 🧑⚖️
Brim raises a lot of money. Summit launches commercial insurance. Curo crashes.
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💰 Funding
Brim, a platform for banks to launch credit card programs, raised $85m led by Crown Corp EDC. Brim is a direct issuer with Mastercard and runs cards for CWB & Laurentian.
Willful, an online will company, raised about $1m and signed their second bank referral partnership with Scotiabank.
Summit, a newly launched commercial insurance broker, raised $3.5m.
TorjAI, a platform to assess AI model risk, raised $7.7m.
Last month, Armilla raised $6m to provide insurance policies against AI model risk.
Canada has a new vertical software private equity shop. Define Capital raised $20m to mirror the investments of Canadian firms Valsoft & Constellation Software.
📉 Opposite of funding
Curo, US based subprime lender which operates Canadian brands LendDirect and CashMoney filed for creditor protection.
In 2021 Curo acquired and then two years later sold off Canadian point of sale lender Flexiti to Questrade.
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🤝 M&A
iA Financial acquired Laurentian Bank’s retail investment broker division for between $10m - $20m. The $2b in assets, 16k client accounts and 30 advisors will join iA’s private wealth group.
🚀 Product
Coinbase became the first international crypto exchange to obtain a restricted dealer licence in Canada.
Coinbase has been quietly operating in Canada for years but “officially” launched last summer.
Oliu, a digital ID platform launched by ATB Ventures can now be used to access government websites in the province of Alberta.
Last month Oliu received a thumbs up from Canada’s digital ID certification group, DIACC
FinX, a Montreal based loan management system rebranded as Flovver and launched their own speciality credit bureau.
⚖️ Policy
Canada’s Competition Bureau is encouraging Finance Canada to adopt open banking to (you guessed it) “boost competition” in financial services.
In another federal budget teaser, the Liberals announced $2b to subsidise the cost of computing for AI researchers and corporates.
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Have a great week! See ya 👋