Amsterdam-based unicorn Backbase, an Engagement Banking platform that helps financial institutions in their digital transformation, announced on Thursday that it has acquired Nucoro, a London-based digital wealth platform, for an undisclosed amount.
Founded in 2019 by Lennart Asshoff, Nikolai Hack and Antonio Melé, Nucoro helps financial institutions build digital savings, investment, and wealth management offerings.
The cloud-native platform enables businesses to accomplish their digital strategy by generating tailored and automated offerings that evolve with their consumers and enhance profitability.
The company claims to be at the heart of every future digital investment proposal, from automated investing and stock trading to hybrid advising and digital wealth management, making it simple to prosper in the digital era.
Aim of the acquisition
With this deal, Backbase will be able to integrate Nucoro’s headless platform capabilities into its Engagement Banking platform, allowing its clients to establish digital end-to-end investment options such as robo-advisory, trading, or hybrid advisory services.
Jouk Pleiter, founder of Backbase, says, “We see a trend where retail banks want to quickly launch differentiating investment propositions to complement their daily banking services. Think of capabilities like enhanced savings, pension products, stock trading, and portfolio management. With these services, they can generate extra revenue and expand their share of wallet with their most valuable customers.”
“For private banks and wealth management firms, we see a growing demand to modernise their legacy point solutions and hollow out their bespoke core systems. I’m super excited about the potential of this powerful combined platform to provide instant end-to-end value for both retail and private banks,” adds Pleiter.
Nucoro has been a part of the Backbase fintech partner ecosystem for the past three years and the two businesses have been working closely together on joint engagements.
Technically, both platforms share a microservice-based design and are built on open industry standards, allowing Backbase to move faster towards realising its goal of ONE platform, ONE architecture.
Nucoro co-founder, Lennart Asshoff, says, “Backbase is an ideal partner to bring the next generation of wealth infrastructure to financial institutions around the world. As a trusted innovation partner to financial institutions, Backbase offers us the reach and technical expertise to take our vision further.”
Re-architecting banking around the customer
Founded in 2003 by Jouk Pleiter and Gerbert Kaandorp (no longer with the company), Backbase is a financial technology company that aims to “re-architect” banking around the customer.
The company’s white-label Engagement Banking platform enables banks and credit unions to quickly digitise their operations that interact with consumers. It also creates journeys that both meet and surpass the expectations of today’s tech-savvy clients.
Over 120 financials use Backbase’s Engagement Banking Platform. Some of them are AIB, Banorte, Barclays, BIAT, Bank of the Philippine Islands, BDO, BNP Paribas, Banque Saudi Fransi, BRD, Citibank, Citizens Bank, Discovery Bank, and First National Bank, among others.
In 2022, Backbase received €120M in growth equity capital from Motive Partners after organically increasing their sales to over €200M.
