EUR 2 million Series A financing for Munich financial services start-up
Munich, January 15, 2013: Munich-based venture capital firm Target Partners (www.targetpartners.de) today announced a EUR 2 million investment in Finanzchef24 GmbH (www.finanzchef24.de). The Munich start-up is Germany’s first financial services portal utilizing a direct marketing model to target small businesses and self-employed individuals. With its proprietary technology for comparing commercial insurance and banking products, Finanzchef24 GmbH has focused the launch around business liability insurance, business content insurance, and bank accounts for businesses, with more products to follow over the coming months.
“The service we offer is geared towards small business owners that do not have their own finance director and therefore search online for financial products, just like private individuals,” said Hendrik Rennert, co-founder and managing director of Finanzchef24 GmbH together with Felix Schollmeier. “Today’s financial services market for small businesses lacks transparency, and qualified independent consultants are hard to find. What’s more, the traditional quotation process for business insurance results in extremely long waiting periods in the broker market. We aim to solve these challenges for our customers by providing online comparison tools and professional, independent advice over the telephone.” Target Partners also considers the market conditions to be highly promising: “The overall situation at Finanzchef24 convinced us. We are confident that the financial services sector is ready for more innovation,” stated Waldemar Jantz, a partner at Target Partners.
“We are proud to have gained Target Partners as an investor and partner,” said Rennert. “Since we are tackling a complex business with Finanzchef24, it is absolutely essential to the success of our company to have strong, professional partners at our side.” Since its inception, the start-up has been backed by Robert Haselsteiner and Marcus Wolsdorf, the founders of Interhyp AG, whose investment company HW Capital began investing in Finanzchef24 at the seed stage. “The conditions in the market for business insurance remind us of the situation in the mortgage space 13 years ago. We also see a lot of parallels to Interhyp in Finanzchef24’s business model, which is why we decided to be active seed investors and support this founding team,” commented Wolsdorf.
With EUR 225 million under management, Target Partners is one of the leading early-stage venture capital firms in Germany. Target Partners invests in new start-up and early-stage companies, and supports them with venture capital during their build-out and expansion phases. With many years of experience as managers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, the team at Target Partners supports entrepreneurs in developing and marketing products and services, building organizations, raising money and taking companies public in Europe and the United States. For more details: www.targetpartners.de, follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/targetpartners or become a friend on Facebook: facebook.com/targetpartners.
Sprachperlen GmbH Agency for enterprise communication Helena Horak Am Glockenbach 3 80469 Munich, Germany Tel.: +49 89 411 53 199 Fax: +49 89 411 53 200 E-mail: helena.horak@sprachperlen.de
Finanzchef24 is Germany’s first online financial services provider specially tailored to the needs of small businesses and self-employed individuals. The company sells commercial insurance, among other products, directly to its target group through its own website and an auxiliary telephone hotline, thereby revolutionizing the market for commercial financial services as the first enterprise to make systematic use of the sales opportunities that the new media offer in this sector. For more details: www.finanzchef24.de, follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/finanzchef24 or become a friend on Facebook: facebook.com/finanzchef24.
Nils Beste Pienzenauerstr. 2 81679 Munich, Germany Tel.: +49 89 716 772 705 Fax: +49 89 716 772 800 E-mail: nils.beste@finanzchef24.de
HW Capital is an investment company started by Robert Haselsteiner and Marcus Wolsdorf, the founders of Interhyp AG, Germany’s largest independent residential mortgage broker. Together they experienced all stages of corporate development at Interhyp AG, from the 1999 start-up stage funded by venture capital, to the IPO in 2005 and SDAX listing through to the company’s 2008 acquisition by the world’s largest direct bank ING Direct. Since being appointed to the Supervisory Board of Interhyp AG in 2011, Haselsteiner and Wolsdorf have been focusing their efforts at HW Capital on actively creating, financing and developing young, innovative financial services start-ups.
Robert Haselsteiner Pienzenauerstr. 2 81679 Munich, Germany Tel.: +49 89 809912941 Fax: +49 89 809912951 E-mail: robert.haselsteiner@hwcapital.de