Credem Group Invests In Artificial Intelligence Through A Silicon Valley Startup Incubator

SEATTLE, Dec. 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Credem Group, one of the main and most trusted Italian banking groups, has closed the first deal of their Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) initiative, launched in April 2021 and focused on acquiring shares in high potential ventures (mainly startups and fintechs) in order to integrate new technologies and innovative business models with their main business lines and to improve their financial products and services.

An agreement has been reached with Noonum, a Seattle based startup. Noonum works in the artificial intelligence arena, developing digital learning tools and textual analysis in order to perform financial analysis and portfolio construction. Noonum was selected by Credem from the Franklin Templeton Silicon Valley FinTech Incubator, focused on partnering with early-stage fintech startups that are developing technology that promises to revolutionize the financial sector. 

The deal has been carried through by Euromobiliare Asset Management SGR, the asset management company of Credem Group, working in collaboration with Credem's own Innovation Unit. Euromobiliare AM SGR will provide funding to Noonum to accelerate the startup's growth. The agreement sets the guidelines for a potential strategic partnership that will allow Euromobiliare Asset Management portfolio managers to collaborate with their American counterparts at Noonum to develop new data analytic tools, to be used, primarily, to improve their thematic strategies.

"Our main goal is to invest in startups and fintechs that will allow us to integrate our existing business model with innovations and new ideas," said Paolo Magnani, Head of Credem Group Wealth Management Area. "We want to work with Noonum in order to allow our portfolio managers to use alternative data for their analysis and improve our thematic and ESG mutual funds quality. Noonum developed a proprietary system that analyzes disaggregated data and transforms it into useful information to be used by portfolio managers  to execute their strategies. Specifically, Noonum's technology collects, aggregates and analyzes news and data across several different sources and allows portfolio managers to detect high potential companies to invest in. This is just a first step in a long journey that we are beginning together with Franklin Templeton, and we aim to be increasingly active on these issues in the future."

"Open Innovation activities, through partnerships or investments in startups and fintechs by larger companies, are on the rise," said Piergiorgio Grossi, Credem Chief Innovation Officer. "We are pleased to start our Corporate Venture Capital journey with this deal with Noonum. For us this deal is not simply a financial transaction and represents the basis to develop an industrial partnership between Credem Group and Noonum. We aim to increase our knowledge on AI and to promote its usage to help our businesses grow. Our portfolio managers will be the first to start this process, by using Noonum set of tools to capture market data from non-traditional and alternative data. We will also provide feedbacks to the Noonum team on our results so that we can help them get in tune with european users and expand their business overseas."

"As local representatives of Franklin Templeton," said Michele Quinto, Head of Distribution Italy Franklin Templeton, "we are very proud to have orchestrated the Credem and Noonum meeting and subsequent collaboration. The Silicon Valley Fintech incubator, based in our headquarters in San Mateo, California, is a distinctive and highly valuable endeavour, allowing us to position ourselves increasingly as a  value-added partner for our distribution customers. Programmes such as leading corporate innovation and working with startups allow us to position ourselves not only as suppliers of investment products and solutions but as robust partner with the ability to support customers across the board, leveraging the scale, resources and expertise of one of the largest global asset managers."

CONTACT: Shankar Vaidyanathan, [email protected]

SOURCE Noonum