Ohpen, a cloud-based ‘core banking provider’, scores €15M Series B at €100M valuation

Ohpen, a Netherlands-based company that has built cloud-based core banking software, has raised €15 million in Series B funding, which I understand gives it a valuation of €100 million. Private equity firm Amerborgh has led the round, with the new financing pegged for accelerated growth, including expansion to the U.K. where it recently opened an office in London.

Built from the ground up to run entirely in the cloud, Ohpen’s core banking SaaS is targeting any large financial services provider that administrates retail investment and savings accounts. These include online savings banks, asset managers, retail banks, insurance companies, and pension providers, with the likes of Aegon, and The Volksbank named as clients.

The premise is that via a modern technology stack and reliable cloud-hosting, and a revenue model that charges per user and therefore has predictable costs, Ohpen’s clients can focus on the front-end experience and brand differentiation rather than dealing with legacy systems and keeping the servers spinning.

“The founding team of Ohpen was previously the management team of BinckBank and in that capacity responsible for the creation of the most successful internet broker in Europe, before we left,” says Chris Zadeh, CEO of Ohpen. “Having spent 10 years cursing on unreliable technology that was almost impossible to adapt to our needs, we had to put our money where our mouth was and create a complete new core banking engine from scratch”.

The resulting technology was 2 years in the making, he says, with an MVP in April 2010 and Ohpen’s first live client signed in 2012 “[It] took a couple of years to actually program the engine. The Ohpen Platform was the first core banking engine in the world that was totally cloud-based, with regulatory approval”.

Meanwhile, Zadeh says the 100-person company has already proven it has a sustainable business model and claims Ohpen has a positive P&L sheet. “This money shall be invested in international growth, our home market is self-sufficient already,” he adds.