London-based startup Codat has raised a $10 million funding round from Index Ventures. If you’ve ever tried to apply for a loan for your small business or filled out an application for an insurance product, you know it can be a long and painful process.
Codat is building an API that connects with all the systems that hold all the relevant financial data. That type of information is usually spread across multiple systems, and small businesses often use different systems. On the other side, banks, insurance companies and more can speed up their internal processes and give you an educated answer for your next loan or insurance product.
Codat currently works with 50 financial providers, such as iZettle, Experian and two of the top four banks in the U.K. Every month, those companies process data from 10,000 small businesses that have interacted with those 50 institutions.
So what type of data can you fetch using Codat’s API? It ranges from accounting software, such as Xero, Sage and QuickBooks to payment terminals. Codat connects to those data sources, standardizes data across services and then regularly fetches new data — it can be every hour, every month or whenever you want.
Many financial institutions waste a ton of time getting Excel files from their customers to review balance sheets. As many small businesses face some liquidity issues right now, automating data aggregation can speed up the time it takes to secure money on your bank account after applying for a loan.
With more accurate data and some level of standardization, financial institutions could improve their models more easily as well.
As you can see, there are some similarities between Plaid and Codat. Plaid, the fintech company that is in the process of being acquired by Visa for $5.3 billion, is building an API that lets you fetch financial data from consumer accounts. If you’ve used Venmo, Betterment, Square’s Cash App or Robinhood in the past, those apps use Plaid to connect to your bank account.
Codat has a different focus as it connects with accounting software and other related tools from small businesses. But it is still part of a broader trend — multiple startups are creating APIs to make various applications talk the same language.
With today’s funding round, Codat plans to expand to the U.S. and hire more people — there should be 100 employees by the end of the year.
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