Listings in the banking – specifically, tech-enabled banking – space made headlines in the past week, and it seems that traditional initial public offerings (IPOs) held sway over the past several days.
As tracked by PYMNTS, bank-focused listings announced year to date stand at 33.
Within that group, the consumer banking platform Blend Labs filed for an offering in the United States. The firm is seeking to raise $100 million, according to reports, though that figure is typically known as a “placeholder value” for such filings.
Delving into the SEC filing itself, we see that the company estimates that it processes more than $5 billion in daily loan volumes for financial services across a range of mortgages, lines of credit and vehicle loans.
“While we currently offer products for consumer banking, we plan to extend our modular software platform over time to add support for commercial banking products. In 2020, our software platform helped financial services firms process nearly $1.4 trillion in loan applications,” the filing notes. Revenues were up 90 percent year over year in 2020, to $96 million. And in a nod to the competitive environment, the company said in the filing that “48 percent of banks and 42 percent of credit unions have partnered with FinTech startups over the past three years to address specific technology needs.”
Insurance Platforms, Too
Separately, Ryan Specialty Group, which operates as a firm focused on wholesale specialty insurance brokerage activities, filed for an IPO with a similar $100 million amount.
In that company’s filing, the firm makes note of its Connector platform, which “is a digital marketplace through which our retail clients can receive quotes and bind policies online. It can produce multiple bindable quotes sourced from high-quality E&S carriers across several risk classes in minutes.” The company added that ”in cases when certain risks do not fit into The Connector’s highly automated underwriting criteria, the retail insurance broker is automatically connected to our producers and underwriters for more traditional placement methods.” Organic revenue growth rates in the most recent quarter stood at 18.4 percent to $311.5 million.
That’s not to say that SPAC activity was entirely absent. Consider FinTech Acquisition Corp. VI, which this past week announced the pricing of its IPO for $220 million and began trading this week.
Generally speaking, of firms that went public this past week, tech names dominated as companies such as Confluent, which focuses on data analytics, surged 25 percent in its debut on the Nasdaq this week. The firm raised more than $800 million, CNBC reported, with revenues jumping 58 percent year over year to $236.8 million.
And Doximity, as reported, saw its own IPO soar by more than 100 percent on the first day of trading. The company’s app helps doctors connect in order to share research and other information. The firm has 1.8 million professionals here in the States using its site, as CNBC reports. In terms of top line, revenues were up 77 percent, to $206.9 million. In an interview with CNBC, Jeff Tangney, Doximity’s co-founder and CEO, said that “telehealth is 2 percent of revenues today, and it’s such a green field. We haven’t been aggressive on pricing yet.”
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