Impact fintech WeeFin announced it has successfully raised €7 million in Series A funding from European investment fund IRIS and Ring Capital. Investors Asterion Ventures and Investir&+ are following up on their past investment in this round which will reach a total amount of €10 million, including non-dilutive funding by the end of the year.
This Series A investment will allow the startup to foster its growth across Europe and boost its R&D initiatives. The company is hiring 100+ new employees over the next two years for its tech and sales teams and opening an office in London.
Leveraging its Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, WeeFin empowers financial institutions to implement and oversee robust ESG strategies, ensuring compliance with national and international regulations.
Founded in 2018 by Grégoire Hug (former Head of Product R&D at BNP Paribas), Marion Aubert, Sabrine Aouida, and Guillaume Klech, the company already works with over 35 clients in Europe gathering €4,454 billion assets under management and 8m+ portfolio companies. Notable clients include Natixis Investment Managers, La Financière de l’Echiquier, Ostrum Asset Management, and Sycomore Asset Management.
Grégoire Hug, CEO and co-founder of WeeFin, said: “This new funding will enable us to push our mission further by elevating the standards of sustainable finance, making our customers’ lives easier, and guiding them towards increasingly ambitious ESG strategies. In 2024, we plan to expand our product range by introducing new functionalities to the platform. We are also enthusiastic about venturing into new markets in Europe, believing that impactful change for the planet comes through widespread commitment.”
Regulatory frameworks now require financial institutions to measure their holdings’ impact in terms of Environment, Social and Governance, in order for them to invest more responsibly.vClimate, biodiversity, gender parity, or human rights protection, monitoring an ESG strategy implies managing heterogeneous and distributed data coming from multiple providers, based on specific objectives and local regulations.
Such a challenge requires financial institutions’ time, adapted tools and qualified resources to manage the amount of data and models, before being able to efficiently define, handle, pilot and optimize their ESG strategy.
WeeFin developed ESG connect, a SaaS platform, allows financial institutions to collect, aggregate and improve the quality of their data while analyzing and tracking their ESG commitments to produce required reporting. The startup also offers functionalities for their clients to invest more responsibility with add-ons based on shareholder engagement or exclusion policies allowing them to go beyond regulatory requirements.
The single platform gathers all data and processes from a company to improve collaboration and communication across teams, while saving time to focus on more sustainable finance.
Gil Doukhan, Partner, and Anaïs Monlong, Principal of IRIS, commented: “Monitoring environmental and social data is strategic to assets managers growth and investment. Yet it requires new processes and dedicated tools that match their requirements. Grégoire and his team’s extensive experience in ESG data management within financial institutions is key to conquering this market. Their product fits asset managers’ specific workflows, while ensuring they keep control of their ESG strategy, a value proposition unique to WeeFin.”
Daphné Dupont Gurs, Principal at Ring Capital, added: “As an impact fund, we are convinced that financial institutions need to adopt more ambitious ESG strategies. Ging beyond regulations and reporting, transforming their investment practice for good, putting social, environmental, and governance at the very heart of their investments. But it’s very hard to improve without the good tools, this is why we are proud to support WeeFin in its mission to provide the latest tech to responsible finance, allowing clients to define ambitious strategies and invest in companies that will effectively support the transition to a more sustainable world.”
This fundraising will allow WeeFin to become the go-to ESG platform in Europe. The company supports clients in implementing ESG strategies and preparing for upcoming regulatory changes, such as the new SRI label reference framework (March 2024), the European regulation level 2 update on ESG transparency of financial products (SFDR) in 2025, and the implementation of the SDR regulation in the UK by the end of 2024. To meet these objectives, WeeFin plans to hire over 100 new employees in France and the UK by the end of 2025, with a London office slated to open in the first quarter of 2024.
