LONDON, September 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Russian venture capital fund Life.SREDA today confirmed a broad partnership with Anthemis Group, a leading digitally native company focused on re-inventing financial services for the Information Age.

Both Anthemis and Life.SREDA enjoy a unique perspective into new disruptive business models and the challenges facing traditional financial institutions. This partnership enables Anthemis and Life.SREDA to co-invest in some of the most promising and disruptive financial services startups out there while sharing expertise and resources to provide the necessary mentoring and guidance for their existing portfolio to grow and scale successfully. At the same time, the two companies will also be collaborating on wide-ranging technological innovation projects to help incumbents adapt their businesses to the digital age.

Life.SREDA is a venture capital fund based in Russia, focusing on investments in financial, mobile and Internet projects around the globe. They offer their startups excellent foothold in the growing Russian and CEE markets considering that LIFE Financial Group includes 8 commercial banks, more than 700 branches providing services to around 3 million private-individuals and thousands of SMEs. Their current portfolio consists of several startups including Moven (also an Anthemis portfolio company), Instabank, Life.Pay, LifePAD and MyApps. The fund's CFO Aleksandr Ivanov said, "Anthemis Group shares our passion for change in the financial world by supporting the creation and development of new services. Our partnership will allow us to join our financial and intellectual capitals, providing mutual support to portfolio companies in their attempts to develop, grow and expand to new markets."

Anthemis Group is a digitally native financial services firm with investments and consulting activities located across the globe, including stakes in companies such as Betterment, Simple, Moven and Fidor Bank. Anthemis brings together a network of talented entrepreneurs, executives and engineers to build innovative, technology-enabled businesses across the spectrum of financial services.  

"We are pleased to partner with Life.SREDA in catalyzing innovation in finance, while at the same time helping the traditional financial structures thrive in the digital age," added Nadeem Shaikh, Founder, Anthemis Group and Managing Director, Anthemis Edge.

Links to include:
Instabank: https://www.instabank.eu
Moven: https://www.moven.com/
Betterment: https://www.betterment.com/
Simple: https://simple.com/
Fidor Bank: https://www.fidor.de/

About Anthemis Group:

Anthemis Group is a young, dynamic growth company focused on re-inventing financial services for the 21st century. We are distributed, networked and emergent; an approach we believe is optimally aligned with the economic, cultural and competitive environment of the Information Age.

We work with a diverse group of customers and partners - from start-ups and venture capital firms to corporates, financial institutions and private equity firms - catalyzing and accelerating positive and disruptive change across the financial industry.

About Life.SREDA:

Life.SREDA is a venture capital fund focusing on investments in financial mobile and Internet projects around the globe.

The fund offers a great platform for product promotion in the growing Russian and East European markets considering the opportunities provided by LIFE Financial Group that has 8 commercial banks and more than 700 branches with highly proficient consultants providing services to around 3 million private-individuals and thousands of SMEs. Their current portfolio consists of several startups including Moven (also an Anthemis portfolio company), Instabank, Life.Pay, LifePAD and MyApps.

Contact: Simrat Ghuman; simrat@anthemis.com; +44(0)207-479-7771

SOURCE Anthemis Group