Bud, an open banking fintech used by HSBC, raises £64m

Bud, an open banking fintech startup used by the likes of HSBC and Credit Karma, has banked $80m (£63.8m) in a Series B funding round.

Bud said it will use the capital to continue developing its platform, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to let financial organisations offer customised products and automate lending decisions.

It will also use the cash to fuel international expansion.

“Bud’s transactional intelligence services allow applications to become truly personalised for the first time. For example, our lending customers can expect to see an increase of about 85% in capacity by combining open banking data with our AI capabilities in their affordability assessments,” said Ed Maslaveckas, CEO and co-founder, Bud.

Headquartered in London, Bud’s Series B round was led by Bellis Phantom Holdco Ltd, with participation from SEI investments and Outward Venture Capital, amongst others.

Founded in 2015 by Ed Maslaveckas and George Dunning, Bud’s automated lending decision platform is used by ANZ, Street UK and TotallyMoney. Banking giant HSBC and Credit Karma use Bud to provide customers with financial data analytics.

Competitors to Bud include fellow London-based embedded finance firm Liberis, which earlier this week partnered with Barclaycard.

“We are hugely excited by the potential of Bud, not only in the ability of its platform to truly harness the opportunities from open banking but also in its far-reaching potential to help power other businesses we are invested in,” said Gary Lindsay, managing partner, TDR Capital.

The latest funding boost follows on from the firm’s $20m (£15.9m) Series A round in 2019.

TDR Capital LLP is a London-based private equity company that invests in European companies and manages investment funds with more than €10bn (£7.9bn) in committed capital.

Earlier this month HSBC announced plans to invest £500m in UK tech small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) as part of its 2022 £15bn SMEs lending fund.