Canadian Fintech: Conquest Raises $110m 💰

Good morning! Welcome back to the Canadian Fintech Newsletter, an industry roundup for founders, operators and investors.

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💰 Funding

• Conquest Planning, a Winnipeg based financial planning software, raised $110m from Goldman Sachs, Citi Ventures, Canapi Ventures and BDC.

  • Over 60% of the Canadian financial advisor market uses their service.

• Botpress, a Quebec City based devops tool for building AI agents raised USD $25m from Framework, Inovia, and Deloitte Ventures.

• Momentum Financial, the parent company of subprime lender Money Mart renewed a $658m credit facility with Ares Management.

• Canada Life,a Winnipeg based wealth management firm invested in ClearEstate, an estate planning and settlement service.

  • Last year, IGM Financial also made an investment in ClearEstate.

  • Both IGM and Canada Life are owned by Power Corp, who is also an investor in ClearEstate through their VC arm, Portage.

🤝 M&A

• Valsoft, a Montreal based private equity firm acquired Alessa, an Ottawa based AML and fraud prevention software.

• CentML, a Toronto based AI firm was acquired by Nvidia.

🚀 Product

• Stablecorp, the issuer of QCAD, a Canadian dollar stablecoin filed with the OSC to have it officially recognized under Canada’s interim crypto rules.

• Mahalo, a mobile app to accept tips, donations, and other digital payments launched pilots across Canada.

• RBC Direct Investing removed fees for account maintenance and buying / selling ETFs.

  • This is a great example of competition bringing down prices. Canadian fintechs have offered commission free trading since 2019.

⚖️ Policy

• OSFI is working on legislation that will clarify how stablecoin issuances will look in Canada.

• The Digital Services Tax has been killed.

  • This was going to be a 3% levy on gross revenue on giant tech platforms (Google, Uber, Airbnb, etc.)

  • It was a controversial tax for two main reasons: 1) it’s very weird for taxes to be calculated on gross revenue instead of profit and 2) it disproportionately impacted US firms at a time of heightened trade tensions.

🧍People

• Andrew Moor the CEO of Equitable Bank passed away. Andrew was a huge figure in the Canadian fintech industry.

• Francis Davidson, the CEO & Founder of Sonder, a Montreal founded short term rental platform has stepped down.

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Have a great week! See ya 👋

-Tal Schwartz