By Charlie Conchie
British kids finance firm GoHenry has been snapped up by US investing app Acorns in a deal which will see its financial education tools rolled out to millions of new customers in the US.
GoHenry, founded by City A.M.’s entrepreneur of the year Louise Hill in 2012 and named after its first 11-year-old customer, has been touted as a positive force in the UK fintech scene with a focus on money management and financial education for 6-18 year olds.
The tie-up with California-based Acorns will now create a merged customer base of some six million “kids, teens and adults” and will swell GoHenry’s young saver base, who have stashed away $130m in the past five years.
GoHenry founder Louise Hill toldCity A.M. yesterdaythat there had never been a more “salient time to expand” as rising prices on both sides of the Atlantic squeeze consumers’ spending power.
“Easy to use products that make savings, learning about money and investment easy to access for everyday people – there really couldn’t be a more timely moment,” she said.
Hill, who now serves as GoHenry’s chief operating officer, said it would be “business as usual” after the merger and the firm’s top team will stay on to manage the business. Expanding GoHenry’s reach beyond a younger customer base had been a “long held” ambition, she added.
“The more work we do and the more customers we get across the UK and Europe, the more often we hear, ‘my kids are learning loads, but actually, I don’t know about investing or I don’t know about compound interest’,” she said. “So fundamentally we have a shared vision and mission [with Acorns].”
She declined to disclose the value of the deal.
Acorns has helped US investors save and invest over $16bn but made its first foray into kid’s finance in 2020. The firm said the deal would now accelerate its push into the younger end of the savings market and put “responsible tools of money management and education in the hands of kids, teens and adults”.
Acorns was valued at $1.9bn in March last year in a $300m funding round. GoHenry last raised $55m in October to fuel a push into European markets.
Hill said both firms were “well capitalised” and insisted the deal was not a “consolidation for safety”.
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