SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clocktower Technology Ventures (“CTV”)1, the venture capital investment arm within Clocktower Group, today announced the launch of the firm’s first venture capital fund dedicated to financial services innovation in Latin America. The firm has already held a first closing and is targeting a $25M strategy. Since launching in 2015, Clocktower Technology Ventures has invested in 96 fintech companies in North America, Europe, and Latin America.
CTV’s global fintech venture platform has supported financial services innovation in sectors such as insurance, payments, personal finance, lending and credit, asset management, real estate finance, and banking. The firm’s expertise investing across financial services and its relationship ecosystem of global institutional allocators, policymakers, and hedge fund managers have created a community that offers a distinct value-add to portfolio companies. CTV’s Latin America fund will leverage the power of CTV’s model to capture the fundamental trends driving technological innovation in Latin America and invest opportunistically across the spectrum of financial services in the region.
“We believe fintech will be at the vanguard of technological innovation in Latin America, creating an opportunity for new companies to displace or disrupt the existing system,” said Ben Savage, Partner at Clocktower Technology Ventures. “The current oligopoly of established financial institutions has not been able to provide the access and quality of service that we’ve seen technology-driven companies provide in other markets. We’re excited to bring our established investment approach and expertise in fintech investing to the Latin America region.”
CTV believes financial innovation in Latin America is on the cusp of exponential growth — according to the World Bank, a large portion of the Latin American population is underbanked or unbanked, and CTV expects the COVID pandemic will accelerate the shift away from brick-and-mortar financial services. CTV has already made a total of 8 investments in the Latin America region, including investments made through CTV’s second flagship fund in Flink (a neobank, commission free trading platform), Habi (an iBuyer and listing service), Kushki (a digital payments processor) and ontop (an automated taxes, payroll, onboarding service for employers). CTV’s Latin America fund has already made 4 undisclosed investments.
Key investors include institutions such as Hirtle Callaghan, an outsourced investment office for families and institutions that manages approximately $18 billion, along with hedge fund CIOs such as Alan Howard, Philippe Jabre, Glen Kacher and John Burbank’s Passport Foundation.2
About Clocktower Technology Ventures
Clocktower Technology Ventures partners with entrepreneurs who have the vision and drive to reinvent financial services, investing from the earliest seeds of startups to businesses scaling for growth. Our approach to financial services innovation venture capital is crafted around a curated network of global macroeconomic thinkers and investors. Launched in 2015, Clocktower Technology Ventures is the venture capital investment arm within Clocktower Group, an alternative asset management platform that partners with a select group of globally significant allocators to seed and invest in hedge funds across macro and onshore China focused strategies. CTV is based in Santa Monica, CA. To learn more, visit clocktowerventures.com.
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1 CTV is the venture capital investment arm of Clocktower Group, L.P., an SEC-registered investment advisor.
2 References to any entity or investor should not be considered as an endorsement of or by Clocktower Technology Ventures.