myprosperity, an Australia-based financial management platform, announced new venture capital funding and a new hire from one of its industry peers, Xero.
Reports Monday (April 3) said myprosperity closed a $1.9 million strategic investment round and has hired Xero Australia Managing Director Chris Ridd as its CEO. Existing investors facilitated the funding round, reports said, while Craig Winkler — MYOB cofounder and an earlier investor in Xero — also joined in.
“There is no platform on the market that does what myprosperity does,” Ridd said in a statement. “It connects individuals with their accountant or advisor and provides them with a real-time financial picture, giving them a true sense of their financial prosperity at any given time.”
“In the same way Xero made accounting accessible and easy for small businesses, myprosperity simplifies the task of putting all of an individual’s financial matters in one place, enabling them to be in complete control of their finances,” he added. “This provides significant peace of mind because they can know their financial position in any given moment.”
Myprosperity automates data feeds between bank accounts and other financial sources into a single portal in an effort to help advisors gain streamlined insight into their clients’ financial positions.
“I spent more than 20 years in the financial services industry before launching myprosperity,” said founder Peter McCarthy in a statement. “Through experiencing firsthand the time wasted sourcing information, I saw a need in the market for a product that would help advisors understand the full financial picture of each individual client.”
myprosperity’s offerings emerge at a time when data sharing is a particularly hot topic in the financial services space, enabling FinTechs and innovators to make use of financial data and igniting debate over the sharing of that financial data and its impact on client privacy.
According to reports, myprosperity aggregates data from ASX, Yodlee, RedBook and other service providers. It integrates with bank accounts, credit card accounts and other financial products. Reports pointed to recent data that suggests financial advisors aren’t delivering what their clients’ needs, with up to 4.3 million Australians planning to conduct some type of financial activity without the help from an advisor in the next two years.