Peer-to-peer matching platform FX Hedgepool has raised $8 million in Series A funding, led by Information Venture Partners (Information VP), with participation from Fidelity International Strategic Ventures (FISV) and NAventures, National Bank of Canada’s corporate venture capital arm.

The firm says the investment will accelerate a multi-product strategy aimed at delivering further efficiencies for its growing network of investment managers and banks. In line with its community-centric innovation philosophy, FX HedgePool is also launching the FXHP Innovation Pool, “a community in which leaders in finance collaborate to address industry challenges by pushing the boundaries of technology to revolutionise the world’s largest financial marketplace”.

Since its launch in January 2020, FX HedgePool says it has facilitated over $4 trillion in matched FX trades for dozens of firms. “Our new partnerships will further strengthen FX HedgePool’s ability to deliver on a shared vision of changing the market for good,” says Jay Moore, CEO and co-founder of FX HedgePool. “We’ve led the market towards peer-to-peer matching, and this investment will allow us to continue innovating to bring efficiency, cost savings and better outcomes for the investment community.”

Guided by a ‘10X innovation philosophy’, FX HedgePool says it has shown its ability to react to market demand by delivering 30 significant product releases annually, compared to an average of three achieved by most incumbents. “This agility enabled FX HedgePool to design and develop its first platform prototype in just four weeks back in 2019,” the firm states. “Over the following 16 weeks, [we] delivered the minimum viable product that facilitated the first ever live peer-to-peer FX swaps trades in January 2020 – the platform has rapidly evolved with new releases every 1 to 2 weeks.”

With over 30 institutions, from buy and sell side, now using the platform, FX HedgePool recently announced its intentions to launch an FX spot matching service by year-end to meet growing demand from its community of buy-side participants. This natural extension of the company’s product offering will serve to further reduce market impact, tracking error, cost transparency and operational inefficiencies for buy-side participants in the foreign exchange market, the firm argues.

“When observing changes in the FX market over the last couple of years, we saw end-investors and buy-side institutions were both affected by ineffective processes that severely impacted fund performance, and the FX market was ripe for change,” says Dave Unsworth, general partner at Information VP. “FX HedgePool has proven its ability to innovate and effect change in the largest capital market in the world.  We’re delighted to lead their very first investment round and support them in the next stage of their disruptive journey.”

Michael Sim, principal at FISV, adds, “FX HedgePool’s ability to transform the largest segment of the financial market aligns with our philosophy of bringing efficiency and cost savings to investors across the globe. We look forward to working with the FX HedgePool team on expanding their solutions to an even greater portion of the market.”