London-headquartered B2B fintech venture capital firm Illuminate Financial has fully closed its third fund at $235 million, according to an announcement on Wednesday.
The B2B fintech investor welcomed two new limited partners (LPs), BNY Mellon and Euroclear, who joined JPMorgan, S&P Global, Jefferies, Deutsche B?rse Group, Barclays, Citi, and SGX as investors in the fund.
According to Illuminate’s founder and managing partner Mark Beeston, the reset in private market valuations in the last 18 months makes this “one of the most exciting months to deploy early-stage capital since the bursting of the dot com bubble over 20 years ago”.
Since its inception nine years ago, Illuminate has invested in 35 companies, of which it has exited nine, primarily via trade sales to strategic firms. The firm added that its first fund (2015 vintage) was ranked among the top funds in Europe for distributions, according to Cambridge Associates.
In an interview with DealStreetAsia in March, the London investor shared that its $50-million Fund I (2015) has a distributed value to paid-in capital (DPI) ratio of 1.8x, while its $100-million Fund II (2019) has a total value to paid-in capital (TVPI) of 1.5x.
This latest fund close will also position Iluminate Financial to increase its deployments in the Asia Pacific. It recently opened a new office in Singapore to mark its foray into the region and appointed Luca Zorzino as its Asia partner to spearhead its efforts from the Asian city-state.
Asia Pacific currently comprises about 10% of Illuminate’s global portfolio, including Singapore startups like Tookitaki (acquired by Thunes in 2022) and Osome.
It focuses on seed to Series A startups, writing $2-8 million lead cheques across various enterprise fintech sectors like institutional finance, digital assets, custody, trading, anti-money laundering (AML), sustainable finance, data analytics, and others. As such, this will see Illuminate focus on developed Asian markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia.
Iluminate Financial was founded by financial services veteran Mark Beeston in 2014. It is also led by partners Alexander Ross, Rezso Szabo, Rachel Townend, and Luca Zorzino, with 20 team members across New York, London, and Singapore.
