The 2016 Fintech Finance 35: Amy Nauiokas and Sean Park

< Fintech’s Most Powerful Dealmakers of 2016

6. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park
President &
Chairman and Chief Investment Officer
Anthemis Group
Last year: 7

“Investors and advisors in digitally native financial services” are the words that greet visitors to Anthemis Group’s website. The combination sets Anthemis apart from those that either invest or advise, but the leaders of the London-based firm, who were making seed investments before the term “fintech” began to take hold, are lengthening their storyline beyond what can be contained in an elevator pitch. Amy Nauiokas and Sean Park, partners in Nauiokas Park circa 2008, were “the crazy people in the room,” Nauiokas likes to say — until their names appeared among the backers of companies like Climate Corp., a weather data provider acquired by Monsanto Co. in 2013, and U.K. property website Zoopla, which went public in 2014. Money transfer start-up Azimo, investment platforms Artivest and Betterment, and blockchain player Eris Industries are among about 40 companies currently in the portfolio of Anthemis, the successor firm that president Nauiokas and chairman and chief investment officer Park co-founded in 2010 along with CEO Nadeem Shaikh, a former First Data Corp. president who leads the advisory side of the business. Advisory isn’t limited to strategy consulting or even to helping start-ups and incumbent institutions work together — one of Anthemis’s hallmarks as it has evolved “from investor to influencer,” as Nauiokas puts it. The firm has, for example, formed an investment partnership with Exponential Ventures, which has a mandate from its South African parent, MMI Holdings, to “take advantage of opportunities created by technological disruption in the financial services, insurance, and health markets.” In July, Anthemis announced a strategic partnership with executive recruiter Erevena. “We are committed to the entire financial services technology ecosystem, and that includes helping clients to access the best available talent around the world,” explains Nauiokas, 44, a former Barclays Stockbrokers CEO and Cantor Fitzgerald partner who relocated this year from London to the growing New York office of her 40-plus-person firm. The perceived slowdown in fintech didn’t prevent Anthemis from announcing the first close of its Venture Fund I, with the European Investment Fund and UniCredit as anchor investors, on August 2. “The exuberance of 2014–’15 was not a bad thing, and the sobriety of 2016 is a good thing,” says Park, 48, a Canadian native who previously led Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein’s digital markets initiative. “Cycles drive innovation.”

The 2016 Fintech Finance 35