Smart, a UK-based retirement savings platform backed by insurance and financial services firm Legal & General and pension scheme administrator Link Group, secured £110m ($153m) in series D funding yesterday.
Investment trust Chrysalis Investments led the round with a $104m contribution, and the company said the other participants will be disclosed in the next few weeks. The primary funding was disclosed alongside a $76m secondary transaction.
Founded in 2014 and also known as Smart Pension, Smart provides workplace retirement and savings plans, and manages more than $2.5bn in assets from customers based in its home country as well as Australia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.
The company will use the cash to improve its software and expand its presence in new markets. Asset manager Natixis Investment Managers provided funding for Smart in May 2020 following an investment of similarly undisclosed size by Link Group six months earlier.
Investment bank JP Morgan had suppplied an undisclosed amount for Smart in early 2019 that took its overall funding to nearly $65m.
The Stensrud family led a $19.4m series B round for Smart in 2017 that also featured private investors William Reeve and Tom Valentine. It came after a round of undisclosed size the previous year featuring Legal & General’s investment arm, Legal & General Investment Management.
Reeve and Valentine had joined fellow angel investor Ed Asseily in the company’s $4.8m series A round earlier in 2016, taking its total funding to $7.3m. Financial services firm Barclays was also identified as an investor this week.
