Fintech startup CrowdBureau closes $1.1 million Series A equity funding with $9.7M valuation

CrowdBureau Corporation, a fintech startup and index provider, has closed $1.1 million Series A equity funding to expand its series of benchmarks and launch a pilot program for its patent-pending regulatory technology product. The round, which values the company at $9.7 million, was led by Clydagh Limited, Estuary Holdings Ltd. and Alpama Limited along with existing investors.

Founded by Kim Wales, a securities-based crowdfunding pioneer, the New York City-based CrowdBureau offers asset and risk management tools for market players seeking more transparency in marketplace peer-to-peer lending and securities crowdfunding. It collects, consolidates and unifies data from more than 90 platforms in North America, Europe, and Asia, which accounts for 80 percent of the market. Products include investment research, data analytics and asset and risk management for the peer-to-peer lending and securities crowdfunding industry.

In Feberuary, CrowdBureau launched the CrowdBureau Peer-to-Peer Lending and Equity Crowdfunding Index, the 1st of its kind marketplace lending index that benchmarks the price and total return performance of the industry. The startup provides benchmarks, research, and data analytics for publicly listed and non-listed opaque asset classes and risk management tools for digital lending markets.

The CrowdBureau Alert System (CAS®) is an early-stage risk detection system that helps P2P marketplace lenders and other digital finance companies comply with global regulatory mandates related to borrower and lender capital threshold limits.

Through a proprietary method of daily data collection, consolidation, and unification of the data, CrowdBureau measures the value, volume, and interest rates of the marketplace lending industry. Customized research, and the leading, lagging, and coincidence indicator signals, are derived in part from this data collection for global market players interested in these alternative lending sources.

“CrowdBureau offers peer-to-peer marketplace lenders, financial institutions and asset managers sophisticated tools and services they require to become and remain compliant and transparent in today’s fast-paced business environment,” said Pa Nolan, Director at Clydagh Limited and a CrowdBureau Advisory Board Member after the transaction.

At the end of 2018, the company released the CrowdBureau® Peer-to-Peer Lending and Equity Crowdfunding Index that tracks the price and total return performance of publicly traded firms domiciled across the globe but listed for trading in the United States that comprise four segments in the P2P lending ecosystem. This benchmark underpins the exchange traded fund, LEND that Amplify ETFs launched on May 9, 2019, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

“We are delighted to have investors of this caliber helping us to build the company,” said Kim Wales, CEO, and founder of CrowdBureau. “We plan to create a family of Indices for publicly traded companies and grow the company around private-capital including non-listed asset classes such as marketplace lending that includes consumer loans, small business loans, real estate loans, student loans, and agriculture loans. The goal is to enhance risk management, transparency, distribution, and liquidity to savers, borrowers, and lenders.”

Non-listed asset classes in the private capital markets have been a driving force for CrowdBureau since the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), 2012 launched was enacted in the United States, and various other countries adopted similar policies and regulations.