Digital managing general agent Ripe has acquired holiday homes insurance specialist Schofields Limited.

The deal, subject to customary closing conditions, marks Ripe’s first entrance into the holiday homes space, building upon its expertise in leisure products including motorhomes, caravans, park homes, golf and boat insurance.

Established in 1984, Schofields is a family-run business, based in Bolton, offering a personalised service for specialist holiday homes insurance for properties in the UK and overseas. With over 10,000 policyholders, the company has a strong 40-year heritage in the sector.

Jonathan and Philip Schofield, who have been instrumental in driving the business over the past two decades will continue to lead the business on a day-to-day basis alongside the Ripe team. Keith Schofield will remain as a consultant to the business to support the transition of ownership.

It is Ripe’s third acquisition following private equity backing in 2021.

Emm has raised £6.8m in an oversubscribed seed funding round to bring the world’s first smart menstrual cup and connected app to market.

Emm will equip users to understand their individual menstrual baseline and track key metrics for personalised, actionable insights into their menstrual health.

The round was led by Lunar Ventures, with additional participation from the Labcorp Venture Fund, Tiny VC, BlueLion Global, Alumni Ventures (investor in Oura & Levels), and a network of high-profile angels, including Amar Shah (co-founder of Wayve), Vivek Garipalli (founder of Clover Health and Wormhole Capital), and Harpreet Rai (former CEO, Oura). Emm has also received non-dilutive funding, including grants that support innovation in women’s health technology.

Despite affecting half the global population, menstrual and women’s reproductive health remain among the most under-served areas in healthcare. 1 in 3 women will experience severe menstrual or reproductive health symptoms in their lifetime, yet both clinicians and individuals lack reliable tools for baseline measurement and tracking until now.

Emm is addressing this gap with a breakthrough wearable device that objectively measures menstrual flow volume and tracks key cycle metrics, such as duration, frequency and regularity – offering users accurate, personalised health insights for the first time, together with an absolute commitment to privacy.

The University of Liverpool has unveiled an ambitious plan to position the Liverpool City Region and the UK as a global leader in AI-driven materials research, development and innovation.

Announced at the University’s annual Vice-Chancellor’s Conference, the new £100 million AI Materials Hub for Innovation (AIM-HI) will be a flagship national facility dedicated to accelerating the application of artificial intelligence in materials chemistry.

Focusing on areas such as catalysis, materials for net-zero, soft matter and product formulation, AIM-HI will drive innovation in sectors crucial to the UK economy and the transition to net zero.

AIM-HI will feature state-of-the-art research and translational spaces, as well as an innovation incubator designed to foster collaboration between academic and industrial researchers.

Keyzy, a UK FinTech helping aspiring homeowners get onto the property ladder, has secured asset-backed funding to acquire over £130m worth of homes over the next 18 months.

The investment comes from Crayon Partners, a real estate private equity firm specialising in alternative living sectors, and will enable Keyzy to expand its portfolio by 250+ homes across Greater London by 2027, specifically targeting young professionals and key workers.

Keyzy and Crayon Partners are already acquiring £30m of properties in Q4 2025. This OpCo-PropCo partnership is the first of its kind in Europe, establishing a scalable model that allows Keyzy to bring on additional capital partners to fund future growth of its rent-to-own portfolio.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Sage Group plc have climbed 3.4% today.

The rise followed the announcement of a share buyback programme, commencing today, and the publication of strong annual results.

The share buyback is for aggregate consideration of up to £300 million, which will run no later than 19th March 2026. Sage is also increasing its full-year dividend by 7% to 21.85p.

However on 31st March 2026, after almost five years at Sage, Walid Abu-Hadba will step down as chief product officer and take on a new role as technology advisor to the group in a part-time capacity. The search for a successor is underway.

Dost, an AI-powered financial automation platform, has launched in the UK market following a £6 million Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures.

Barcelona-based Dost says that it is bringing ‘battle-tested’ technology to these shores as it is already deployed across 150+ European enterprises across food, retail, manufacturing and other sectors. It has processed more than 4m accounting transactions since its foundation in 2021.

It is aiming to tackle a challenge plaguing British mid-market businesses: finance teams mired in manual invoice processing, data entry errors and approval bottlenecks.

Following a successful pilot phase with early UK enterprise customers across manufacturing, construction, logistics, and automotive sectors, Dost is now formalising its UK presence with a dedicated seven-person local team for sales, marketing, and customer success. 

The company’s CEO and co-founder, Adam Barbera, has relocated to London to lead the expansion.

SAPI, a payment-linked financing platform, has raised around £60 million in debt and equity funding. 

The funding – more than £57m in debt and almost £4m in equity – will be used to scale SAPI’s repayment-at-source technology and expand its global footprint.

The round was led by Hudson Cove, a US-based alternative credit asset manager, marking one of the firm’s inaugural UK transactions as it looks to expand beyond the United States – and received continued significant support from existing equity investors, Triple A Capital and Passion Capital. 

With offices in Hanoi and London, SAPI has recently established a financial technology entity in Vietnam to accelerate growth across Asia-Pacific markets.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Par Equity and Praetura Ventures have completed their merger to create PXN Group.

Billed as the  fastest-growing venture and investment firm outside of London and the South East, PXN has secured Financial Conduct Authority approval and set itself the target to unlock £1 billion in funding for high growth companies across the North of the UK by 2030.

This would see investment into promising Northern businesses boosted by 50%.

The firm will operate from offices in Manchester, Edinburgh, Yorkshire and London.

TMT Investments Plc, a venture capital company investing in high-growth technology companies, will today commence a share buyback programme.

The programme will be up to an aggregate consideration of up to $2m, with the intention of purchasing approximately 2.54% of its issued share capital. It will operate until 19th December 2025.

The board of directors believe that the current share price trades at a significant discount to the company’s intrinsic value. “The purpose of the programme is therefore to seek to take advantage of this discount to enhance Net Asset Value (NAV) per share, reduce the company’s share capital, and return value to its shareholders,” it stated.

AIM-listed TMT’s share price has risen 3% this morning on the announcement. However it is 18% down in the year-to-date.

Founded in 2010, it has a current investment portfolio of over 50 companies and net assets of $214m.

PR and publishing agency Moja has launched The Get Known Club, a new membership platform designed to help experts, founders and creatives finally get seen and stay seen.

The Get Known Club is aimed at a growing group of professionals who are highly skilled, ambitious and brilliant at what they do, but remain largely invisible outside their own networks.

Moja’s team says the launch responds to a surge in demand from people who know they need to raise their profile but are overwhelmed by where to begin.

Unlike traditional PR support, the membership provides ongoing guidance rather than one-off consultancy. Each month, members access a live masterclass from Sophie, the Moja team or industry experts, covering subjects such as strategic storytelling, confidence on camera, award submissions, thought leadership and building a recognisable online presence.

 The sessions are supported by practical templates, step-by-step resources and a private community space where members can share wins, ask questions and stay accountable.

eflow Global, a provider of regulatory compliance technology, has launched PATH AI – a new AI-powered functionality integrated into its TZTS Trade Surveillance system.

PATH AI delivers explainable and contextualised insights that enable compliance teams to investigate trading alerts more efficiently.

With fines relating to market abuse enforcement reaching $1.8 billion in 2024 – the second-highest annual total on record across 163 cases – and regulators repeatedly citing weaknesses in trade surveillance processes, financial institutions face mounting pressure to strengthen their compliance capabilities.

Through an intuitive interface, users can investigate alerts using conversational prompts to access contextualised information. For example, they can identify whether a trader has triggered similar alerts within a specific period, generate case summaries for escalation, or explore linked patterns of behaviour. All data points are fully referenced to support regulatory audit requirements, with a chat history tracking conversations for reporting and escalation purposes.

The system also dynamically suggests relevant prompts based on the questions being asked, enabling compliance teams to explore different investigative routes efficiently.

NHS Supply Chain has selected Tata Consultancy Services to modernise its IT systems, transforming the delivery of essential medical supplies across the NHS.

TCS will deploy cloud computing and AI to streamline NHS Supply Chain workflows, improving control of product movement and faster time to market. This will in part be enabled by the 5,000 new UK-based jobs TCS has recently opened.

They say the multi-year partnership will have a tangible impact on frontline care, accelerating the delivery of critical items across 17,000+ NHS locations and improving speed and reliability of supply.

It aims to support NHS Supply Chain’s commitment to return a minimum of £1bn of recurrent value to the NHS by 2030.

Palantir and PwC UK have signed a multi-year, multi-million-pound AI deal.

It follows a successful collaboration launched in 2023 which combined PwC’s sector expertise with Palantir’s Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) to help organisations accelerate operational transformation across industries.

The firms say that since then, the alliance has delivered immense value for clients in financial services, healthcare, energy, manufacturing and government – for example through the joint work on the NHS Federated Data Platform, which is transforming the way data is used to improve patient care and system efficiency.

Crimson Tide plc, the provider of the mpro5 process management app, has swung to profit in its half-year results.

For the six months ended 31st October 2025, it recorded revenue of £2.95 million, broadly in line with the £3.01m achieved in the prior period. 

Total overheads fell by 29% to £2.26m (2024: £3.2m), ‘reflecting management’s efforts to right size the business’.

As a result, EBITDA increased to £790,000, compared with £70,000 in the 2024 period; and produced a profit before tax of £320,000, compared with a loss of £600,000 in 2024.

Cash at the period end amounted to £1.49m (30th April 2025: £1.25m).

Author: Chris Maguire

Manchester-based car finance FinTech Zuto has landed a majority investment from Bridgepoint to accelerate the next phase of its growth.

Zuto’s revenues are up 30 per cent year-on-year to £75m and the deal signals an exit for long-term investor Scottish Equity Partners (SEP).

Jim Wilkinson, CEO of Zuto, said: “This is a pivotal milestone in Zuto’s journey. We’re proud to be a high-growth, profitable fintech operating at scale – leading the way in our sector by combining technology with a progressive, people-first approach.

“The fact that Bridgepoint shares our vision and has invested with such confidence is hugely exciting. It gives us the opportunity to strengthen our position, scale our platform, support more customers and give them even greater control.”

“We are hugely grateful to SEP for the support and guidance they have given us.

“Their partnership, and belief in our mission, has played a huge part in shaping the business into what it is today, supporting the development of the progressive culture that makes Zuto so unique”.

Founded in 2006 and certified as a B Corp, Zuto has helped over 450,000 people in the UK find the right car finance for their needs.

The company achieved revenues of £75m and EBITDA of £12.5m in the last financial year to June 25.

 

The Sage Group plc has commenced a share buyback programme for aggregate consideration of up to £300 million which will run no later than 19th March 2026.

For the year ended 30th September 2025, the North East accountancy tech giant reported a 10% increase in revenue to £2.51 billion.

Underlying operating profit grew by 17% to £600m, while EBITDA increased by 15% to £694m.

Author: Chris Maguire

 The Beauty Tech Group, a global leader in the at-home beauty technology market, has said it’s ahead of its expectations in a positive trading update.

It follows the Cheshire company’s appearance on the London Stock Exchange in October with a share price of 271p – valuing it at £300m.

The group, which encompasses CurrentBody Skin, ZIIP Beauty and Tria Laser, has continued to perform strongly through October and into November.

Given the group’s continued strong performance, the board now anticipates that revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the year ending December 31^st will be ahead of current market expectations and will be no less than £128m and £32m respectively.

This is up on the previous market expectations of £117m revenue and adjusted EBITDA of £29.7m.

Kooth Plc, a provider of digital mental health services, has acquired US paediatric digital health company Kismet Health‘s telehealth platform.

The bespoke platform has been designed with interactive and age-appropriate tools to enhance engagement during teletherapy, principally for children aged 5-12.

Kooth is expanding its services to access a wider range of payers and funding opportunities by adding new capabilities for the 12-and-under age group.

Furthermore, Kismet’s pipeline includes a number of US states where Kooth is not currently active, enabling the company to grow its existing pipeline, and can enable digital mental health service delivery in rural areas.

Kooth, led by CEO Kate Newhouse, will acquire Kismet’s intellectual property along with four key Kismet team members with significant clinical, product, and technical experience.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The CEO of WH Smith has resigned after accounting inconsistencies in supplier income recognition within its North America division were identified.

An independent Deloitte Review said that there would be a net reduction in supplier income of approximately £22m and additional one-off inventory costs of around £20m in the division.

North America’s headline trading profit has been revised to £5m-£15m, down from the revised expectation of around £25m announced on 21st August 2025 and previous market expectations of £55m.

WH Smith PLC’s headline trading profit for the year ended 31st August 2025 is now anticipated to be between £100-110m.

Carl Cowling offered his resignation, and the board has accepted it. Andrew Harrison, CEO of the UK division, has taken on the group CEO role on an interim basis.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Lloyds Banking Group has acquired digital wallets provider Curve in a reported £120 million deal.

Lloyds and Curve confirmed this morning that the acquisition had gone through, but not its value.

It follows reports that Lloyds and Curve had agreed a £120m deal and that some shareholders were furious at the valuation.

The acquisition is expected to complete in the first half of 2026, subject to regulatory approval.

In the circular to shareholders, Curve said: “We recognise that the value of this transaction falls short of the ambitions we all held for Curve, and we share the disappointment some of you may have in this outcome.

“Yet, the board strongly believes this transaction represents the best available path forward for Curve’s creditors and shareholders as a whole.”

However, shareholders voted down an attempt to remove chair Lord Fink and founder and CEO Shachar Bialick last month.