We're thrilled to announce that we've completed a $9MM financing round led by
Edison Ventures. The
official press release went out this afternoon so I wanted to follow up here and provide some additional context.
We have been very focused the last few years on execution in our core business – online account opening and funding for banks and credit unions. This focus on execution has been key to our success, as we’ve seen our customer base grow from a handful of pioneers to more than 400 progressive financial institutions, our team grow to more than 60 world-class professionals, and our alliance partner list grow to include major industry players like Intuit, FIS, S1, Q2, Yodlee, and most recently Online Resources.
But our focused approach appeals primarily to banks and credit unions who already understand other aspects of online customer acquisition like online marketing and analytics. These financial institutions have figured out how to drive qualified prospects from online (and offline) ads and communications into Andera's account opening platform, and have incredible results to show for it.
But the majority of financial institutions in the U.S. are not experts in online customer acquisition, and are looking for a complete solution encompassing marketing and account opening that is predictable, easy to implement, and cost effective. In effect, a faucet for new customers that can be turned on and off as needed, without the need to manage multiple vendor relationships or maintain in-house resources.
And on the other end of the continuum are those (mostly larger) financial institutions who already have both marketing and technology capabilities and are interested only in integrating specific account opening components (like risk management, core integration, or funding). These institutions are looking for a modular technology platform with which their developers can integrate to accomplish particular account opening functions, which was the subject of
my last blog post.
Our strategy involves developing solutions for each of these segments of the financial institution market, and allowing our clients to choose how much or little of their online customer acquisition process they want to outsource based on the marketing and technology capabilities they already have. We also will be broadening our platform beyond deposit products which have traditionally been our focus. And we intend to evaluate ways to leverage the incredible data in our database for purposes of fraud prevention and benchmarking, as well as other initiatives that will be announced as time goes on. You put all these together and start to see a powerful solution emerging for online customer acquisition, and today's growth capital will enable us to turn this vision into reality.
We are excited to be welcoming Edison Ventures as a new investor and partner. We’ve developed a great working relationship with them and are looking forward to the myriad resources they can bring to the table as we grow. Mike Balmuth (General Partner) and Samantha Roady (from the Edison Director Network and VP of Marketing for Gain Capital) will be joining our board as part of the Edison investment and we are happy to be gaining the benefit of their insight.
We’ll be actively recruiting across the company for great people over the coming months, so please keep an eye on our job openings and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’re interested in joining our growing team.
And lots more to come, so stay tuned.