Estonian-German female-founded startup Grünfin on Thursday announced the launch of its investment platform focused on sustainable, values-based investments, for European consumers. Additionally, the company has also raised €2M in a fresh round of funding for the launch.
The round was led by Norrsken VC, one of Europe’s largest impact tech funds founded by Klarna co-founder Niklas Adalberth. Other investors in this round include Superangel, Lemonade Stand and a number of angel investors with backgrounds in Wise, Pipedrive, Skype, and Wire.
Tove Larsson, General Partner at Norrsken VC, says, “Shifting your savings to sustainable assets is one of the most important choices you can make in your life to enable a sustainable future for the world. That is why we are extremely happy to partner with the experienced and mission-driven team of Grünfin to drive more capital to impact.”
“Help your money make a difference”
Grünfin was founded by two mothers, Karin Nemec and Triin Hertmann. As parents, they shared a common concern – ensuring a sustainable future for the next generation. They felt the lack of impact-driven investing platforms that are sophisticated yet easy enough for beginners. And this is what gave birth to Grünfin.
Grünfin aims to take out the fear and complexity of setting up a sustainable investment portfolio. It also tries to alleviate fears that sustainable investments have a lower potential for returns than regular investments.
Nemec explains, “If you’re concerned about the world and haven’t yet looked at the impact your finances can have, you’re missing out. Studies show that investments can have a greater effect on your carbon footprint than many other eco-conscious lifestyle choices combined. But there are no tools for regular people to comb through tens of thousands of funds to find the select few that take the impact of their investments into consideration.”
“We built Grünfin to make sustainable investing easy and widely accessible. We’d like to empower parents to create a better future for their children, but also allow people to make long-term investments with a double impact on both their financial future and the world around them,” adds Nemec.
Here’s what the platform offers
Grünfin says it will allow customers to invest in their child’s or their own future while contributing to a better world through their investment choices. It will compensate for the lack of know-how that could be a barrier for aspiring investors.
The platform will select the best sustainable exchange-traded funds for customer portfolios, considering ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors as well as UN Sustainable Development Goals.
With the world on an unsustainable track fighting through climate crisis, health challenges, and growing inequality, Grünfin claims that it will offer customers to choose between an environmental, equality, or health-themed investment portfolio, set up a monthly payment, and a time goal for the investment.
The company’s pricing model will also abandon the industry standard of a management fee as a percentage of the portfolio value.
Grünfin says that all expenses, including transactional and holding expenses and the selection of best funds and portfolio rebalancing, will be summed together in a low monthly fee. There will be no extra charges for one-off contributions, changing or closing a portfolio.
Grünfin’s team is heavy in ex-Wise employees
The company’s co-founder and COO Triin Hertmann is one of Wise’s first employees and its first Head of Operations. CTO and co-founder Alvar Lumberg was also a long-time engineering leader at Wise.
Other former Wise team members include Marek Unt, CMO, and Martin Mägar, Product Engineer. Co-founder Karin Nemec is an investment manager and a sustainable finance expert who held a number of board roles at Swedbank Estonia, the Nordic-Baltic banking group.
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