Addleshaw Goddard has today announced the first cohort of applicants selected for the AG Elevate programme to benefit from a tailored programme of legal advice alongside a range of training, insight and mentoring from AG lawyers.

Launched in November 2016, with an initial investment of £500,000, AG Elevate is a fast track 12 month programme to guide ambitious FinTechs in their development. It will support 'early-stage' start-ups with no more than £1million of investment and FinTechs with funding of more than £1million.

The first seven Fintechs have been paired with an assigned AG mentor who will help identify and respond to their unique legal and commercial challenges. Benefits include up to 40 hours of free legal advice for the year, as well as access to briefings, seminars and regulatory developments and networking opportunities.

Addleshaw Goddard partnered with FinTech Connect, a global platform and community for the FinTech industry, and PayExpo, the UK’s largest payments event, and teamed up with a number of FinTech accelerator programmes to identify FinTechs to join the programme.

Nearly 30 businesses, including FinTechs from across Europe and Asia applied to AG Elevate, with more than half coming from accelerators across Europe. The first cohort span a range of specialisms including payment services, SME banking, and money manager services.

Final candidates for the programme were selected based on a variety of criteria: type of business and the stage they are at in their evolution, legal needs, clarity of ambition and their business plan, as well as cultural fit with AG.

The seven successful businesses are:

Comply Advantage: a London-based provider of AML data and compliance technology solutions. They help compliance professionals access real time, high quality and relevant AML risk data to make the right risk decisions quickly.

Delio: a complete white label platform solution for private assets, helping financial institutions and their advisors enhance their offering through connecting private deal flow with (ultra) high net worth capital.

Mobillity: is the intelligent money manager for people like you & me. Mobillity identifies savings opportunities in your finances and offers you better alternatives directly through their chat-based platform. Once you give Mobillity the go-ahead, they then do the legwork of realizing these savings for you too. In today's world, both time & money are rare, that's why Mobillity wants to save you both.

Money Fellows: allow customers to leverage their social network to make loans cost nothing and savings a lot more rewardable.

Pace Invoice: Pay and get paid internationally through the all in one cash management platform for SME’s. The platform allows you to see and manage multiple currency accounts in a single dashboard and also gives you the tools to invoice and collect funds in multiple countries and currencies.

Penta: a bank for small businesses. It redefines SME banking by empowering businesses to do more through powerful third party services and a great user experience.

Valoot: gives consumers the opportunity to select the currency of purchase prior to handing over their card when shopping abroad. Valoot sources the rates for the conversion straight from the FX market - no more hidden mark-ups and commissions and charges a very small fee for providing the service - they pass the vast majority of savings to the consumer and the merchant.

Fiona Ghosh, Head of Addleshaw Goddard's FinTech Group said:

"We are thrilled to be able to work with this group of exceptional FinTechs, each with a distinctive business and a brilliant opportunity to grow their market share. The industry needs pioneers to disrupt, challenge and push the boundaries through clever thinking and technological advances. That’s why programmes like AG Elevate are so important and our job over the next year is to draw on our collective experience and insight to guide them through the next important stages of their growth."

She added:

"We are very grateful to all those businesses who applied to join AG Elevate. The benchmark was very high resulting in a very competitive process."

Addleshaw Goddard has unique experience acting on some of the most complex FinTech transactions and the structuring of digital mobile and technology solutions and services. The AG Elevate team is well-placed to offer a collaborative, responsive advice and help from general commercial guidance and support to technical, hard-edged legal advice.