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👋 Situational awareness: Ryan is at the Future Proof Festival in Huntington Beach, Calif., this week. Say hi if you see him.

Moderne Ventures, a specialist in proptech, fintech, insurtech and sustainability, raised over $230 million for its Core Fund III.

Why it matters: VCs and LPs are back on the prowl for startup investments, after two slow years of deal-making.

How it works: Chicago-based Moderne's third core fund will focus on Seed to Series B investments, with a typical first check between $4 million and $8 million.

The firm plans to make 15 to 20 investments from the new fund, eight to 10 of which will be core deals and the rest smaller, opportunistic seed bets.

"We are generalist investors with a vertical focus, where those verticals are real estate, finance, insurance and sustainability," managing partner Constance Freedman says. 

"But every deal we do is more generalist of nature, meaning that it has a focus on those verticals but also serves the broader markets."

By the numbers: Moderne has made over 35 investments and backed over 150 Passport companies across its three funds to date.

Freedman's previous investments include companies like DocuSign, Porch, Homesnap and TaskEasy.

Between the lines: In addition to its venture investments, Moderne runs a six-month program called Moderne Passport to connect companies with a network of about 1,500 executives and corporates.

"It's a way to bring companies into the industry and connect them with our network, who are all potential customers ... and help create value for the portfolio with that business development loop," Freedman says.

Flashback: Before founding Moderne, Freedman launched Second City Ventures in partnership with the National Association of Realtors as its sole LP.

She spun out Moderne in 2015 with a broader LP base and a $43 million Fund I, then closed a $200 million Fund II in 2021.

Zoom in: The firm's LPs include GCM Grosvenor, the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, AvalonBay, Essent and LeadingRE.

What's next: In addition to the latest core fund, Moderne plans to raise a new growth fund to double down on existing investments and place bets on later-stage companies outside its portfolio.

"About half of it will go toward the highest growth companies in the existing portfolio ... and then 50% of the growth fund capital will be net new deals," Freedman says.

$230M proptech and fintech fund

Illustration of a repeating pattern of houses made out of hundred dollar bills. 

Wealth.com, which helps financial advisers create and optimize estate plans for their clients, raised a $30 million Series A round led by Google venture arm GV. 

Why it's the BFD: In what's been dubbed the "great wealth transfer," more than $80 trillion in assets will be handed down to younger generations over the next two decades, but only about a third of Americans currently have an estate plan.

How it works: Wealth.com's platform enables financial advisers and wealth management firms to guide their clients through the estate planning process.

For clients who don't yet have an estate plan, the platform collects and ingests all the personal and financial information necessary to create one from scratch.

It can also update and optimize estate plans for clients with outdated documents or inaccurate information.

For high-net-worth individuals, or those with more sophisticated estate planning needs, the Phoenix-based company recently launched a Family Office Suite.

That new product gives wealth managers tools to manage complex estates, optimize tax planning and streamline reporting processes.

Between the lines: The company's platform is powered by an AI tool called Ester that ingests existing estate documents, imports their information, and offers optimized recommendations.

From there, it can create state-optimized legal documents, including wills, revocable trusts, financial powers of attorney, advance health care directives and guardianship nominations.

The platform also generates visual reports to help clients better understand how their decisions will function within the overall plan. 

The big picture: According to recent research from CEG Insights, over 85% of affluent investors surveyed see a need for estate planning help, but only 40% feel fulfilled by the services provided by their advisers.

"Clients are looking for the holistic experience from their advisers, and advisers are looking for a solution that's going to increase the stickiness of the relationship," Wealth.com CEO Rafael Loureiro says.

Zoom in: In addition to the funding, GV partner Elena Sakach, who recently joined the firm from Coatue, is joining the Wealth.com board.

Citi Ventures, Neuberger Berman's Outpost Ventures, The Pritzker Organization's 53 Stations and Gokul Rajaram's Firebolt Ventures also participated in the Series A round.

Context: Before founding Wealth.com, Loureiro was CTO at fraud prevention startup Emailage, which was acquired by LexisNexis Risk Solutions in 2020.

His co-founders are Tim White, who last served as chief partnership officer at Emailage, and Danny Lohrfink, a former executive at SoFi and Goldman Sachs.

Wealth.com had previously raised a $16 million seed round in 2022.

What's next: Loureiro touts the round as a strategic partnership with GV that will help advance its AI product development.

"Now I have a direct channel with Google. ... As a GV company, we now have early access to any AI tool they are working on," he says.

$30M estate planning Series A

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🇦🇪 Revolut submitted applications to the UAE's central bank to become an electronic money institution and offer remittances there. (Bloomberg)

💰 Revolut's CEO cashed in $200 million to $300 million of his shares in an August secondary sale. (Sky News)

😲 Berlin has been blindsided after JPMorgan asked UniCredit to bid for Commerzbank stake. (FT)

⚖️ Bolt says it is settling its suit with investor Activant Capital. (TechCrunch)

🏦 The OCC reached a formal agreement with Wells Fargo to shore up its anti-money-laundering and risk management procedures. (Fintech Futures)

🪙 As meme coins flood the market, crypto creators resort to sometimes dangerous stunts for attention. (Wired)

🛂 Google Wallet will soon begin testing the ability to create a Digital ID from your U.S. passport. (TechCrunch)

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Go deeper into our full database with the Axios Pro Deals Tracker.

• Every, an SF-based payroll, onboarding, and spend management startup, raised a $22.5m Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Okta Ventures, Base10 Partners and Formus Capital. Go deeper

• Ledgebrook, a Boston specialty insurtech, raised a $17m Series B led by Duquesne, with participation from The Stephens Group, Brand Foundry Ventures and American Family Ventures. Go deeper

• Bounti, an AI platform for sales and customer success teams, raised a $16m seed led by GV, with participation from Floodgate, Bloomberg Beta, Haystack, Octave Ventures and MS&AD. Go deeper

• Infinit, a DeFi abstraction protocol, raised $6m from Electric Capital, Mirana Ventures, Hashed, Faction, Robot Ventures, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, Selini Capital, Tangent and Presto Labs. Go deeper

• Atlas Partners invested in Sedgwick, a Memphis, Tenn.-based claims management firm owned by Carlyle. The deal values Sedgwick at $13.2b, or nearly twice what Carlyle paid for it in 2018. Go deeper

• Akur8, a U.K.-based insurance pricing and reserving platform, raised $120m in Series C funding led by One Peak, with participation from Partners Group, and Guidewire. akur8.com

• New Mountain Capital is merging health payment accuracy-focused portfolio companies Rawlings Group and Varis and Apixio's payment integrity business. Go deeper

• HSBC (NYSE: HSBC) is in talks to sell its South African corporate banking unit to FirstRand, per Bloomberg. Go deeper

• Sentry Insurance agreed to acquire Nashville, Tenn.-based auto insurer The General from American Family Insurance for $1.7b. Go deeper

• Nirvana Labs, a crypto infrastructure company, acquired multichain query and execution platform Vektor. Go deeper

• Department of XYZ, a crypto VC firm led by ex-crypto regulator Matthew Homer, is raising its second fund, per PitchBook. Go deeper

• ParaFi Capital, a crypto-focused VC firm, is tokenizing part of its $1b in AUM. Go deeper

Deals!

• Gilles Grapinet, longtime CEO of French payments group Worldline, is leaving the company. Go deeper

• Hadley Stern, the former president of Fidelity Digital Assets, joined Solana-based staking protocol Marinade as chief commercial officer. Go deeper

• Jesse Spiro, former head of regulatory relations for PayPal's blockchain and digital currencies business, joined Tether as head of government affairs. Go deeper

It's Personnel

️ 😋 @Lucinda had a great brunch at Sailor yesterday. Thanks to the source who suggested it.

🦅 @Ryan is hoping for a convincing Eagles win in Monday Night Football's battle of the birds.

Thanks to George Moriarty and Rob Reinalda for today's edits.

And thanks to you for reading this edition of Fintech Deals. Please tell your fintech friends and fans of bad teams about this newsletter. They can sign up here.

September 16, 2024

1 big thing: $230M proptech and fintech fund