BlackRock, a global leader in investment management, and Upvest, a Berlin-based fintech specializing in trading, settlement, and custody infrastructure, have announced a strategic partnership that aims to leverage BlackRock’s extensive asset management expertise and Upvest’s innovative investment API to facilitate seamless investment experiences for millions of investors across the continent.
About Upvest
Established in 2017, Upvest empowers financial institutions to offer exemplary investment experiences to their customers. With its Investment API, Upvest provides a broad range of investment products, such as stocks and ETFs, in nominal, portfolio, and fractional form, aligning with its mission to make investing as straightforward as spending money.
Regulated by BaFin, Upvest is backed by prominent venture capital funds and investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners, BlackRock, Earlybird, HV Capital, Notion Capital, and ABN Amro Ventures, and continues to pave the way in making investing accessible and straightforward.
A Symbiotic Collaboration
The partnership is poised to amalgamate BlackRock’s leadership in ETFs and Upvest’s efficient API-based infrastructure, enabling wealth managers, banks, and fintechs to develop modern investment experiences in a significantly reduced timeframe. Upvest, committed to maintaining an open architecture in its offerings, provides a low-friction API infrastructure that can power investment offerings for a wide demographic of investors.
In a testament to the strength and potential of this partnership, BlackRock has also participated in Upvest’s recent €30m funding round in 2023.
Navigating the European Retail Investment Surge
Europe has witnessed a surge in retail investing in recent years, with a notable influx of first-time investors accessing financial markets through low-cost, transparent products like ETFs. ETF savings plans have been a significant driver of this growth, with projections estimating a rise from 4.9 million in 2021 to approximately 20 million by 2026 across Europe.
Upvest, a pivotal player in powering new investment propositions, provides efficient, low-friction infrastructure that minimizes transaction costs and facilitates access to investments from smaller amounts. This is achieved through innovations such as fractional dealing of ETFs and stocks, which can benefit both fintechs, like neo brokers and neo banks, and established banks and brokers.
Upvest: Pioneering Fractional Investing
Upvest has established itself as a leader in the investment infrastructure space, boasting some of Europe’s largest fintechs as clients. Its API-based investment infrastructure enables genuine, physical fractional investing across ETFs, stocks, and mutual funds, thereby lowering investment entry barriers to as minimal as €1 in any asset class. Upvest’s capabilities, supported by its in-house portfolio engine and re-balancing, can also facilitate the growth of ETF portfolio adoption in retail.
