I am thrilled to announce our £5M Seed funding round, led by AlbionVC, with the participation of Vast Ventures, Form Ventures and our existing investors Connect Ventures and Fly Ventures. I’m equally as excited to welcome a group of highly experienced and accomplished angels, including Matt Robinson (GoCardless, Nested), James Meekings (Funding Circle), Jonah & Noah Goodhart (Moat) and many more on our journey.

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This is a significant milestone for us, almost exactly 12 months after we launched and announced our £1.7M pre-seed round. Against one of the most challenging funding environments of the past decade, this seed round is an important signal to the debt collection market that transformation and disruption are needed to support businesses and consumers during these unprecedented times.

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Over the past decade, FinTech innovation has in particular given us far superior payment technology as well as faster and fairer access to credit, while a lack of creativity has left the debt collection industry stuck in the past. The truth is, if we make it easier for customers to pay and borrow, we also have to make it easier for them to get out of debt. That’s why our mission is to become the new standard for how organisations resolve debt - ethically & technologically.

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This mission is now more important than ever since we are facing a significant challenge in the current cost of living crisis across the UK and many other economies. In the UK, inflation is predicted to hit double digits, and roughly 40% of households could be considered Fuel Poor by the end of the year. We expect to see many households struggling to keep up with their bills and loan obligations, which could lead to an even higher demand for credit. 

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At Ophelos, we’ve built the world's first autonomous debt resolution platform, which utilises machine learning to predict, automate and personalise an individual’s debt journey, while also empowering customers to digitally self-serve. Through our platform, we are enhancing our brilliant customer service staff, with better technology and tools to detect and support customers that need a helping hand. We are also providing our clients with unparalleled analytics and insights into their customer's debt resolution journey.

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The results speak for themselves: on average we improve debt recovery performance for clients by more than 50%, while providing a superior customer experience compared to traditional debt collection agencies (just take a look at our Trustpilot reviews). The additional funding will enable us to cater to the growing demand from clients and customers who look to replace their traditional debt collection agencies with our debt resolution platform, by further enhancing our platform and expanding our team.

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Ophelos has been a mission-led business from Day 1, and we still believe that in order to be truly disruptive, we have to put the financial health of our customers first. This simple yet important cultural value allows us to build a better product, attract better talent and convince the best investors to join us on our journey. Being the first and only registered B Corp (certification pending) in the debt collection industry underpins this unique approach. 

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Investors like AlbionVC, Vast Ventures, Form Ventures, Connect Ventures, and Fly Ventures deeply share our mission and purpose, and we are truly humbled to have them on our side along this journey. 

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This investment milestone, alongside our dramatic growth over the past 12 months, puts us right at the forefront of the much-needed change in our industry. Ophelos is here to stay for the long-term and drive fundamental change in the collections industry.

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A huge thank you to every single member of our team for their hard work and dedication, to our clients for their trust and to our amazing customers, who remind us every day that our actions have a measurable impact on their financial health and lives. We’re just getting started! 

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