Polish-UK startup Symmetrical raises €5.6 million to bring 'ethical finance' to European employees

Polish-UK startup Symmetrical raises €5.6 million to bring 'ethical finance' to European employees

Symmetrical, a fintech startup based in Warsaw and London, has raised €5.6 million of seed funding to help employees gain more control over their finances. The round is a combination of equity and debt. The equity side is led by Global Founders Capital and Partech, with participation from existing investors Finch Capital, Market One Capital and Plug and Play.

With the partnership of employers, the fintech platform (and mobile app) offers employees three main tools: salary-on-demand (free access to earned salaries between paydays), zero interest employee loans and an automated financial advisor. “Our mission is to let people regain control over their finances. We want our users to make the right financial decisions and have access to fair financial products,” says Daniel Wartolowski, one of the startup’s co-founders. Piotr Smolen, another co-founder and Symmetrical’s CEO, says the solution is designed to serve mid-to-large organisations in Europe, giving them a new path to support their employees’ financial health. “Currently they can choose between a couple of specialised providers of cash advances and/or employee credit products, which only deliver tools and neither solve real problems of employees nor of HR Departments,” he says. 

Calling the platform a ‘financial marketplace’, Smolen added that Symmetrical’s ethical and fairly priced financial products can “eliminate conflicts of interests connected with financial advisory practice and ensure that the data transparency we offer benefits employees, as opposed to being used against them.

Founded in 2019, the startup raised a pre-seed round of €1.35 million to kick things off. “The company has already disbursed more than 15,000 on demand salaries and is available to nearly 70,000 employees, all within just 9 months after the product was launched. These figures speak for themselves,” says Aman Ghei, principal at Finch Capital. 

The new seed financing will help the Polish company expand into new European markets, starting with Germany and France.

Photo: co-founders Daniel Wartołowski and Piotr Smolen

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