Having a child is a big responsibility! With increasing educational costs, it is crucial for parents to figure out the best way to secure their children’s future in the early stages.
Most parents don’t know where to start, what to save for, how much to save, and do it. Here’s where Nosso, a family finance app that helps parents invest and plan for their children’s financial futures, fills the gap.
Picks up $2.8M
Nosso, just announced that it has secured $2.8M (£2.1M) funding led by Octopus Ventures and Anthemis. Other investors, including Entrepreneur First, Ventures Together, Errol Damelin, Tracy Doree, and Peter Hetherington, participated.
The funding will allow the UK company to accelerate its product development. Further, the company intends to launch numerous new financial products, such as more flexible Junior Investment Accounts (Bare trusts).
What does Nosso solve?
According to Nosso, the financial services industry is controlled by single-use products designed for individuals. But, digitally native parents are expecting a more of a collaborative approach to wealth management, claims the company.
Youssef Darwich, CEO, and co-founder of Nosso says “The main hurdle for many parents to effectively save for their children’s future is a lack of awareness about what they can do and a lack of tools that help them do that easily. The money we’ve raised today is going to give us the opportunity to change this, providing better education to families and building financial products and tools solely designed for families.’
How does it do?
Founded by Youssef Darwich and Sigurjon Isaksson, Nosso addresses the issue by offering children investment accounts that two parents can track, manage and contribute together.
The app also features a unique contribution link, enabling parents to share the link with anyone. For example, grandparents can contribute directly to their grandchildren’s accounts without additional paperwork.
Further, family members can also leave messages and pictures with their contributions allowing them to pass down memories and wealth to future generations.
The company allows parents to open Junior stocks & shares ISAs and General Investment Accounts and select investments from ETFs managed by BlackRock.
Available on Android and iOS
The company has been operating in beta over the last few months, working with a group of 1000 families to build out its product offering.
The app is now live and available to download on the app store and Play store.
Investors
Based out of London and New York, Octopus Ventures is a multi-stage venture capital investor specialising in B2B software, health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
With £1.3B under management and investing over £200M a year, Octopus Ventures is one of the largest and most active venture investors in Europe.
The company’s typical investment is from £1M for Seed to £10M for Series B. So far, the company has backed the likes of BoughtByMany, Cazoo, Depop, Elvie, WaveOptics, and many more.
“We continue to see traditional firms in this space struggle to provide financial planning and wealth management solutions that address the needs of younger existing clients and a new generation of families. Therefore, Nosso stood out to us immediately for a number of reasons: the seamlessness way it integrates into a family’s life, the manner in which it’s transformed a traditionally ‘single-player’ approach to financial planning into a ‘multi-player’, sustainable approach, and the founders’ bold vision of democratizing intergenerational wealth transfer. As a result, we’re very proud to support Youssef, Sigurjon, and the team in building out the financial partner for every family” said Tosin Agbabiaka, Octopus Ventures.
“We’ve been exploring how families collaborate around financial services for some time now. When we met Youssef and Sigurjon and saw their commitment to building products that would enable parents to build and manage wealth for their children with an opportunity for the wider family to participate, we knew it was a company we wanted to be part of. We’re excited about changing the way parents save for their children and how families support the younger generation’s financial health,” says Farhan Lalji, Anthemis.
