United Fintech Group Limited, the financial technology company headed by Christian Frahm, has onboarded Danske Bank as its third institutional investor after BNP Paribas and Citigroup. The Nordic bank also secured a rotating board seat in the company.
Onboarding Institutional Investors
Announced today (Tuesday), the latest investment came only a couple of months after the company secured its first institutional investors. Similar to Danske Bank, the other two institutional investors also secured board seats.
Danske Bank is the largest lender in Denmark, with total assets of more than $558 billion at the end of 2023. Before the latest investment, the Danish bank also tapped the services of one of the portfolio companies of United Fintech.
“Danske Bank… sees great opportunities as per both collaboration within the existing ecosystem of fintech companies, and also in being closer to the future fintech investment processes and decisions, where the partnership allows Danske Bank to expand its exposure to innovative solutions, ultimately benefiting our customer value proposition,” Claus Harder, Head of Transaction Banking & LC&I Business Development with Danske Bank, said.
A Strategic Investment
The investment is a strategic one, as both United Fintech and Danske Bank will benefit from it. As pointed out in the official press release, the investment will allow Danske Bank to scale the diversification of its digital ambitions, specifically its Forward ’28 strategy.
“United Fintech is an investment that provides a unique digital edge and competitive advantage to support our strategy in terms of both relevance and time-to-market when it comes to future innovative solutions,” Harder added.
“Furthermore, the investment in United Fintech will generate possibilities to engage directly with fintechs that are subscale; to support their growth while simultaneously helping fuel our own digital transformation and growth strategy.”
Frahm, who sold CFH Clearing (now Finalto) in 2019, established United Fintech in November 2020. The company aims to acquire stakes in small and mid-sized startups to scale them over five years. It has built an impressive portfolio by acquiring stakes in NetDania, TTMzero, FairXchange, Athena Systems, and others.
“By uniting the strengths of Danske Bank and our other banking partners, we are setting the stage for a new era in banking where we move beyond traditional silos to propel the industry into the digital age,” Frahm said.
