MTLinTECH – July 4, 2018 – Newly Established Fintech Fund Luge Capital Making its First Investment
More good news for Montreal’s startup ecosystem today as fintech newcomers Flinks have raised $1.75 million in seed funding. The round was let by National Bank and Luge Capital, along with four other partners. While Flinks already has ties to National Bank, this deal marks the very first investment for Luge Capital, which launched in Montreal and Toronto last month.
This cash injection will be used primarily to complete and promote a new product called Flinks Score, an AI-powered risk assessment tool. Among other things, Flinks Score will allow financial institutions to calculate the probability of personal loans being repaid, based on the spending habits of the borrower. Those habits are tracked by an AI algorithm which monitors the transactions on that individual’s personal accounts.
Karim Gillani, General Partner at Luge, says they chose Flinks for their first investment both because of the potential of this new product and for other reasons. “The Flinks team has been incredible at executing their product plan and acquiring some of the top fintech companies as well. From a macro point of view, the global adoption of fintech services has really just exploded in the last few years. Flinks sits at the heart of this because they are servicing these fintech solutions providers that are gaining more adoption every day”. Gillani later added that Flinks Score’s ability to analyze an individual’s transactions also provides an opportunity for financial institutions to upsell their clients. “What’s also interesting about this new product is that it offers the ability to interpret the data not just to determine credit worthiness, but it’s also a way to offer a personalized set of financial products. If you can understand the behaviour of a particular individual and what their cash flows are like, you can start to offer them personalized services for investing, saving, education… in addition to offering them credit products, so the implications are far reaching”.