Australia's Westpac invests $38m in Reinventure

The new vehicle, like Reinventure's first, will invest in Australian start-ups in the financial technology space, especially those that could have a disruptive effect on Westpac. Westpac plans to gain equity stakes in these start-ups to head off potential impacts on its business; it also hopes to develop relationships with companies developing innovative technologies in order to improve its customer experience.

Reinventure co-founder Danny Gilligan told the Australian Financial Review that the fund will invest in 10-15 start-ups. The firm's previous vehicle, Reinventure Fund 1, which launched in 2014 with a corpus of A$50 million, invested in 10 companies. About 60% of the fund has been deployed to date; the remainder is being held for follow-on investments.

Investments from that fund include data security solutions developer Data Republic. Reinventure participated in the company's A$10.5 million Series A round earlier this year alongside Qantas and NAB Ventures, a unit of National Australia Bank (NAB) established to invest in start-ups to help its financial services product offerings.

The fintech industry is attracting growing interest from Australia's financial institutions, which like Westpac aim to build beneficial relationships with emerging start-ups to improve their own operations. In addition, Sydney's government established a hub for fintech start-ups last year with initial funding of A$2 million from Australian banks, property and technology firms, along with the New South Wales government.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Financials
• Technology
• Venture
• Fundraising
• Australia
• TMT