Silverfin raises series B investment led by Hg to accelerate international growth

Silverfin has announced a significant Series B investment led by Hg, Europe’s leading software investor and expert in the tax and accounting sector. The investment will be used to support the company’s expansion internationally as it responds to demand for its cloud service that consolidates real-time financial data, automates compliance reporting and improves financial planning. Silverfin was founded in 2013 in Ghent, Belgium and now has offices in London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. The details and terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

Joris Van Der Gucht, co-founder at Silverfin commented: “Our platform is the central nervous system thousands of businesses, and their accounting firms, rely on for efficient and effective financial management and decision making. We consolidate multiple financial data sources into one central data hub. Then we use that data to improve the speed, accuracy and quality of compliance with automation; and financial planning with our data analytics and reporting tools.”

He added: “Technology has been driving considerable innovation and change in finance and accounting. The past few weeks have shown how important this digital transformation is. Obviously there’s been a rapid move to remote working. There’s also been a widespread acceptance that cloud technology is key in enabling finance teams to operate whatever the circumstances. Our technology helps with this and much more. Even before today’s challenges, our customers told us Silverfin has made them more efficient and more successful. We’ve made the core reporting work they do easier but we’ve also made it easier to give the advice their businesses really need, particularly now, like financial modelling, risk monitoring, benchmarking and scenario planning.”

Silverfin has more than 650 customers in 11 countries from the leading accountancy firms in Europe and North America including all of the ‘Big 4’.

Tim Vandecasteele, co-founder added: “We want to bring the benefits of Silverfin to more customers and develop the platform to have an even greater impact on their business transformation. This investment from Hg will help us to accelerate our product development and provide us with invaluable insight into future developments in accounting we can capitalise on. Their considerable international experience in the accountancy sector, and understanding of technology, makes them the perfect partner for us as we begin the next phase in our international growth.”

Joris Van Gool, Partner at Hg, said: “After seeing Silverfin in action in our portfolio for a number of years, we were impressed with the technology and the potential it offers the accounting sector. We’re delighted to be able to join and support the Silverfin team as the business continues to scale internationally.”

Hg has a long history of partnering with businesses in the tax and accounting software space. Silverfin is Hg’s 14th investment in this sector over the last 15 years, with a total of around €1.8BN of invested capital in this sector alone.

Hg has invested in a minority stake in Silverfin from its Mercury 2 Fund and joins the co-founders who remain majority owners, and existing investors, Index Ventures and SmartFin Ventures.

About Silverfin

Silverfin is the cloud platform that makes accountants successful. It improves the efficiency, competitiveness and profitability of compliance services, and powers the development and delivery of advisory services.

Silverfin takes financial data directly from client systems and hosts it securely in a single cloud Structured Data Hub. Templates then standardise, and automate, accounting workflows and use the data hub to make compliance easy, fast, and accurate.

But that’s only half the story. Leading firms use Silverfin to power their advisory services too. Looking at data and trends, right across the client portfolio is easy and automatic alerts warn of risks or identify opportunities to give advice, or sell additional services.

For further details, please visit the Silverfin website: www.silverfin.com

About Hg

Hg is a leading European investor in software and services, focused on backing businesses that change how we all do business. Deep technology expertise, complemented by vertical application specialisation and dedicated operational support, provides a compelling proposition to management teams looking to scale their businesses.

Hg has an investment team of over 140 professionals, plus a portfolio team of more than 30 operators, providing practical support to help our businesses to realise their growth ambitions.

Based in London, Munich and New York, Hg has an aggregate portfolio enterprise value of c. €30 billion and serves some of the world’s leading institutional and private investors.

For further details, please visit the Hg website: https://hgcapital.com/