A FinTech helping parents invest and plan for their children’s financial futures has raised £2.1 million in seed capital.
Nosso – formerly known as Hapi Plan – has been operating in beta over the last few months, working with a group of 1,000 families – 95% of which are investing for their children for the very first time – to hone and build out its product offering.
The app is now live and available to download on the app store and Play store.
The round was led by Octopus Ventures and Anthemis with participation from additional investors including Entrepreneur First, Ventures Together, Errol Damelin, Tracy Doree and Peter Hetherington.
The financial services industry is dominated by single-user products, designed for individuals managing money on their own. And whilst this works for a certain group of people, more and more digitally native parents want a more collaborative approach to wealth management.
Nosso aims to address this by offering children investment accounts that two parents can track, manage and contribute to, together. The app also goes one step further by providing each user with a unique contribution link that they can share with anyone.
This allows grandparents – as well as other family and friends – to contribute directly and seamlessly with no additional paperwork or even the need to open a Nosso account. Family members can also leave messages and pictures with their contributions allowing them to pass down memories as well as wealth to future generations.
The funding will allow Nosso to continue expanding its product offering. Whilst today the app allows parents to invest through tax-efficient Junior ISAs, in the child’s name, or general investment accounts, in the parent’s name, Nosso intends to launch a number of new financial products regularly used in family financial planning such as more flexible junior investment accounts.
Nosso was founded by Youssef Darwich and Sigurjon Isaksson, who met in 2020 at Entrepreneur First. Darwich was the second employee at the digital banking service Tide and Isaksson was an early employee at Eigen Technologies.
“The main hurdle for many parents to effectively save for their children’s future is a lack of awareness about what they can do and a lack of tools that help them do that easily,” said Darwich.
“The money we’ve raised today is going to give us the opportunity to change this, providing better education to families and building financial products and tools solely designed for families.”
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Farhan Lalji of Anthemis added: “We’ve been exploring how families collaborate around financial services for some time now. When we met Youssef and Sigurjon and saw their commitment to building products that would enable parents to build and manage wealth for their children with an opportunity for the wider family to participate, we knew it was a company we wanted to be part of.
“We’re excited about changing the way parents save for their children and how families support the younger generation’s financial health.”