Calgary and Toronto-based FinTech startup OneVest has secured nearly $29 million CAD ($20 million USD) in Series B funding to scale its presence south of the border.
The wealth management software company’s all-equity, all-primary round, which closed earlier this month, was led by Salesforce Ventures. Fellow new United States (US) corporate venture capital investors Allianz Life Ventures and TIAA Ventures supported the financing. Returning backers included Canada’s OMERS Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, and Luge Capital, and American firms Fin Capital and Pivot Investment Partners.
OneVest plans to use the new capital to fuel its product development plans and continued US expansion, where it sees “a tremendous opportunity to be a leader.” The now 80-person startup plans to hire approximately 100 employees over the next 12 months.
“OneVest aims to be the leading wealth management platform in North America, and eventually globally.”
“OneVest aims to be the leading wealth management platform in North America, and eventually globally,” OneVest co-founder and CEO Amar Ahluwalia told BetaKit. “We can’t get there without investing in people and product development to make it happen. The additional funding gives us the ability to really accelerate our growth and continue to develop market-leading features for our customers.”
Ahluwalia said the startup’s Series B investors bring a combination of “strategic alignment, industry expertise, and ecosystem access that are crucial to OneVest’s evolution.”
“We’re investing in OneVest because there is a compelling market opportunity in wealth management tech and OneVest is leading the charge through their end-to-end wealth management platform,” Salesforce Ventures senior associate Zak Kokosa told BetaKit. “We believe in the founding team and have been impressed by their conviction in their long-term vision, their thoughtful approach to product design, and deep domain expertise.”
Founded in 2021 by Ahluwalia, COO Jakob Pizzera, and CTO Nathan Di Lucca, OneVest offers an end-to-end wealth management platform. Aimed at helping financial institutions fill gaps in their process, OneVest’s modular software spans client onboarding, portfolio management, and analytics.
OneVest’s focus is on large financial services firms like banks, registered investment advisors, wealth management firms, asset managers, insurance companies, broker-dealers, and credit unions. Its customers include ATB, Wellington-Altus, Picton Mahoney Asset Management, Westwood Wealth Management, and Addenda Capital, as well as some fellow Canadian FinTech companies like Neo Financial and Manzil.
OneVest competes and partners with a number of large enterprise software providers, including Envestnet, InvestCloud, CGI, Orion, SS&C, and Broadridge. “Our superpower is having the ability to truly provide modular and configurable solutions,” which Ahluwalia claimed is industry leading.
“In a market dominated by legacy solutions that are slow to innovate and may take years to implement, OneVest’s platform stands out,” Kokosa said. “Its highly configurable workflows cover the entire client lifecycle—from initial onboarding to ongoing management—ensuring a seamless and efficient experience.”
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There were no changes to OneVest’s board of directors as part of its Series B, which brings the company’s total funding to $53 million CAD. This figure includes a $17-million CAD Series A from 2023, a $5-million CAD seed round in 2022 and a $2.1-million CAD pre-seed in 2021.
Ahluwalia declined to share OneVest’s latest valuation but claimed that the startup’s Series B was a “substantial up round” relative to its Series A financing.
Many OneVest customers already use Salesforce. Going forward, the two companies plan to implement a platform integration to unify the client-advisor experience.
Strategic partnerships with Salesforce Financial Services Cloud and other players, including BlackRock and Vanguard, will also be a focus for OneVest. Asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard already list their pre-constructed model portfolios on OneVest’s marketplace, where advisors using OneVest can access them directly.
OneVest has also been exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance decision-making and client engagement and working to expand its offerings in alternative investments.
Over the coming months, OneVest intends to launch new AI tools to help advisors do their day-to-day jobs, automate back and middle office manual tasks, and detect signals and anomalies in data, and bring the broad functionality it offers for more traditional security types and asset classes (like equities, exchange-traded funds, and mutual funds) to alternative investments (such as private equity, real estate, and art).
Feature image courtesy OneVest.