Launched in Nigeria in January this year, TopCheck, a financial services price comparison platform has just closed a six digit Euros financing round in amove to allow users to compare prices of financial products such as car insurance or health insurance.
The platform aims to help users receive a tailored quote on their desired product online and directly contact the service provider with the most attractive conditions. The firm will use new financing round to up its product design.
“This first round will help us to improve our operations in Nigeria and start building a cutting edge technology” says Thomas von Pilar, one of the founders.
TopCheck was able to get a group of undisclosed European business angels as investors on board as the financial price comparison site industry grows. Moneysupermarket, for example, filed a USD 868 million IPO in 2007 and the founders believe the sector is only just beginning to get momentum in Africa.
“We believe that 2015 will be the year of the emergence of a big African player, and we’re very well positioned to be that one player”, says von Pilar.
While the Nigerian financial services sector is small by international comparison – the sector’s contribution to the GDP is a mere 0.4% in Nigeria, compared to ca. 2.5% in USA – it experiences tremendous annual growth rates, especially in the B2C market. “The current annual growth rate of 20% in the B2C financial services industry poses a huge opportunity for TopCheck”, von Pilar states. Traditionally, the financial services sector in Nigeria is highly informal and customers end up paying more money than they should. The reason is that there is no centralised information source for comparing services.
TopCheck is changing this with its online platform that is equally optimised for desktop and mobile. By giving users a full overview over all products in the market, TopCheck smartly brings transparency to the market.
