ExpressGroup, a German fintech touted to ease the process of tax returns for the working class starting with taxes, has raised €25 million in Series A funding. The investment round was led by Insight Partners that invested in Shoreline.io and Builder.ai and Project A Ventures, which invested in Touchlab.
After growing in the German market, ExpressGroup is all set to grow in the larger EU tax market. The proceeds of this funding round will be used to grow the organisation internationally and launch adjacent products in more fintech verticals.
“The European working class is notoriously underserved by the fintech industry and we are going to change that by making our services available to anyone – regardless of income, language barriers, or knowledge of the tax system”, said Maximilian Lambsdorff, Co-Founder and CEO of ExpressGroup. “We democratise financial services for this target group and beyond as our product is ideal for people who have never dealt with optimizing their finances before or rarely have touchpoints with it. We remove all the friction from the users’ side and generate cash payouts for them.”
Anton Waitz, General Partner at Project A, said: “ExpressGroup brings positive change to the lives of a very large group of people that have been underserved with easy-to-use digital tools so far. The incredible traction of the ExpressSteuer product will motivate Max and the team to build out their offering and make it available to a mass audience in Germany and beyond.”
What problem does ExpressGroup solve?
As per reports, in Germany, there are 12 million taxpayers, mostly from the working class, who never file income tax returns, thereby forfeiting an average of nearly €800 in refunds per year. Previously, this group could still receive €38 billion in returns for the last 4 tax years.
However, people are mostly overwhelmed with the process, they either do not know that they are eligible for refunds or are afraid to interact with the tax authorities. This is where ExpressGroup comes to play.
Founded in 2019 by Maximilian Lambsdorff, Dennis Konrad, Konstantin Loebner, Mehdi Afridi and Andreas Santoro, ExpressGroup works with the idea to reimagine fintech products for the working class, starting with taxes. The mission of the fintech startup is to enable everyone to reclaim the overpaid taxes from the tax office irrespective of income, language barriers or knowledge of the tax system.
AI-powered backend system
In 2021, ExpressGroup launched its first product – ExpressSteuer, which reduces the entry barrier to filing taxes by simplifying the process and allowing people to do their taxes in a couple of minutes. It offers a convenient data input tool that gathers basic tax information and calculates expected tax returns. The platform connects users automatically with tax professionals handling the tax declaration on their behalf.
The product was well received by users and enabled the company to grow to over €45 million GMV run-rate in less than 12 months.
ExpressGroup uses an AI-powered backend system that allows platform partners such as accounting firms, tax consultants, and lawyers to process tax cases in a few minutes. The system uses machine learning and automation features alongside manual work to make processing income tax returns easier, quicker, and more accurate.
ExpressSteuer, the AI-based platform works quite simple and efficient. Users just have to answer a few simple questions and upload some necessary documents such as photo ID and tax ID. The platform takes care of the tax return and includes optimisations for the highest possible refunds. The team at ExpressSteuer takes care of everything else. The cost is calculated automatically and the short-time workers pay a fixed price of €49.
