For decades, if you wanted to borrow against your investment portfolio without selling it—a maneuver known in the trade as a Lombard loan—you typically needed at least £1 million sitting with a private bank. Firenze, a three-year-old Manchester startup, thinks that threshold is arbitrary. And now, with a fresh £6 million in the bank, the company is betting it can convince wealth managers across Europe that their clients shouldn't have to be quite so wealthy to access the same kind of liquidity.
The funding round, which closed in late April 2026 and was led by London's AlbionVC, drew follow-on checks from existing backers Outward VC and Form Ventures. It was oversubscribed—always a useful signal, though perhaps more a reflection of investor appetite for fintech infrastructure plays than a verdict on Firenze's ultimate odds of success.
What the company has managed so far is intriguing, if not yet transformative. It has built an embedded lending platform that allows wealth managers and financial advisers to offer portfolio-backed loans starting at £65,000, a figure that opens the door to a far broader cohort of clients. Crucially, customers don't need to move their assets elsewhere; the loans sit alongside existing custody arrangements, which removes a traditional friction point for advisers wary of losing client relationships.
Traction, With Caveats
Firenze says it now works with partners overseeing nearly £200 billion in assets under management—a figure that sounds impressive, though it's worth noting this measures the total portfolios of the advisers using the platform, not the loans Firenze itself has written. Still, the company reports that drawn facilities tripled in the first quarter of this year, suggesting genuine momentum, even if the absolute figures remain undisclosed.
Among its clients: Brooks Macdonald, Canaccord Wealth, Artorius, and a handful of other wealth managers and investment platforms, including Sweden's Söderberg & Partners. One recent deal, arranged through Third Financial in March, delivered what Firenze describes as a "multi-million-pound estate-planning Lombard facility" for a UK wealth manager—though again, specifics are sparse.
The Parmenion integration, announced last October, went live in eight weeks. For an industry where technology rollouts are often measured in quarters, if not years, that's a noteworthy pace.
"We're building global credit infrastructure for wealth managers," CEO David Newman said in a statement accompanying the funding announcement. It's the kind of sweeping claim founders are obliged to make, though the reality—at least for now—is more modest. The company has historically maintained conservative loan-to-value ratios, a stance that limits both risk and revenue potential.
Building the Machine
The new capital will fund the usual startup priorities: hiring (the company plans to more than double its roughly 40-person team), geographic expansion, and product development. Firenze is working on what it calls an "agentic credit structurer" for banks—a piece of software that, in theory, automates some of the underwriting complexity that has kept Lombard lending concentrated at the upper end of the market.
Whether that automation holds up under stress—say, during a sharp market correction when collateral values drop and risk models get tested—remains to be seen. For now, Firenze operates under a funding line from Monument Bank, which provided £160 million in February of last year to support the actual lending. The equity capital, by contrast, funds the platform and operations. It's a classic fintech structure: venture money builds the tech, bank money writes the loans.
Firenze's founders, David Newman and Anna Curtis, incorporated the company in 2023 and launched it publicly in early 2024. They've raised steadily since: £750,000 in a pre-seed round tied to scout funds linked to Andreessen Horowitz, Atomico, Ada Ventures, and Lakestar, followed by a £2.5 million seed round last March led by Outward VC.
Regulation and Governance
The company is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority under money laundering regulations and is currently applying for full authorization under Article 60B permissions. Until that comes through, it operates under exempt agreements pursuant to Article 60H—regulatory scaffolding that's standard for fintechs at this stage, though not without its own compliance overhead.
Former TSB chief executive Paul Pester chairs the board, a hire that signals Firenze's ambitions to be taken seriously by incumbent financial institutions. Non-executive directors Samantha Bamert and Mike Toole round out the governance structure.
Jay Wilson, a partner at AlbionVC, offered the kind of endorsement investors typically provide when they've just written a check: "Firenze is addressing a clear gap in the market with a compelling proposition for wealth managers looking to retain AUM while providing liquidity to clients." Fair enough—though the real test will be whether the unit economics hold, whether the product remains compelling as competitors inevitably emerge, and whether the firm can scale without stumbling over the regulatory and operational complexities that trip up so many fintechs.
For now, Firenze has a product that works, partners who are using it, and a balance sheet to keep building. That's more than many startups can claim. Whether it adds up to the global infrastructure play Newman envisions—well, that's the £6 million question.
