SEP Leads GBP17.5 Million Funding Round for Media Ingenuity

LONDON, April 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Growth equity and venture capital group SEP ( http://www.sep.co.uk/) has led a GBP17.5m financing round to take a minority stake in Media Ingenuity (http://www.mediaingenuity.com/), a rapidly-expanding online marketing technology company. Media Ingenuity owns financial comparison site, TotallyMoney.com (http://www.totallymoney.com/), and is the UK's largest online advertiser of financial services (according to Comscore [ http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2011/03/the-uk-finance-sector-continues-to-invest-in-online-display-advertising/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twt&utm_campaign=2707 ]).

The investment will support the next phase of Media Ingenuity's growth including the development of own-brand financial products.

Media Ingenuity, which launched in 2006, has pioneered a unique formula for scalable online marketing of financial services. The company employs a highly analytical and scientific approach to web marketing which includes the development of cutting-edge technology. It has grown rapidly and profitably, achieving 14th place in the 2010 Sunday Times Tech Track 100 ( http://www.fasttrack.co.uk/fasttrack/downloads/2010techtrack100.pdf) list of the fastest growing technology companies.

The business has made significant inroads into the UK price comparison space through TotallyMoney.com, successfully challenging incumbent online comparison brands for visitor numbers and regularly receiving in excess of a million unique visitors a month. This is driven completely by online advertising.

More recently, Media Ingenuity has diversified into the first of a series of own-brand financial products with its launch of online travel insurance service Fluid (http://www.fluid.co.uk/travel/default.aspx), and its Granite (https://www.granitecard.co.uk/Default.aspx) credit card. The SEP investment will support the impending launch of further products, with Media Ingenuity ideally positioned to take a significant share of the huge UK retail financial services market.

Will Becker, co-founder of Media Ingenuity, says: "We are delighted to welcome SEP as a shareholder in Media Ingenuity. The deal will enable us to strengthen our offering in existing verticals and move rapidly to exploit the very exciting opportunities we have identified in new areas. We believe there is a unique opportunity to grow significantly in a relatively short space of time by introducing better value and choice to millions of consumers selecting financial products online."

SEP Partner Andrew Davison notes: "We have great confidence in the executive team at Media Ingenuity who have consistently demonstrated an ability to identify and capitalise on new opportunities. The performance and growth of the company since its creation less than five years ago has been very impressive and we see significant scope for it to make further inroads into the GBP750 million UK online financial services market. We look forward to working with the team as it evaluates new growth opportunities and expansion of its market offering."

The shareholders of Media Ingenuity were advised by Clarity (http://www.claritycp.com/) and Osborne Clarke (http://www.osborneclarke.com/ ) for corporate finance and legal advice respectively. SEP was advised by Maclay Murray and Spens ( https://cls6.bullhornstaffing.com/BullhornStaffing/Maclay%20Murray%20and%20Spens ).

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