Melbourne venture SelfWealth raises $1.6 million via ASSOB

Melbourne-based start-up SelfWealth has closed a $1.6 million capital raising via the Australian Small Scale Offerings Board, in what has been hailed as one of ASSOB’s most successful transactions.

SelfWealth, founded by Andrew Ward, is an online tool that allows self-directed investors to compare their portfolio’s performance against those of their peers, professionals and the market.

The business was founded in November last year.

“I found that many investors were disillusioned with the high fees and commissions paid for services they did not value,” Ward says.

“We decided to develop a solution offering the services valued by investors for a flat monthly subscription.”

SelfWealth offers a community dashboard, which provides analytics for the entire SelfWealth community. It also provides a breakdown of performance by various filters.

The business has successfully closed a $1.6 million capital raising via the Australian Small Scale Offerings Board, which matches investors with high-growth companies and entrepreneurs.

It’s worth noting ASSOB is Australia’s largest capital raising platform, raising more than $131 million for unlisted companies.

According to Simon Davis, ASSOB advisor and national business manager of Springboard Equity, the SelfWealth capital raising was one of ASSOB’s most successful transactions in 2012.

Springboard Equity is an operating company of ASSOB. Davis says the SelfWealth capital raising “demonstrates the strengths of the ASSOB platform in tough capital market conditions”.

The funds raised were completed over four rounds from March 26, 2012 with the initial shares on offer at three cents and the round four shares offered at 10 cents.

In total, 21 investors participated in the raising, including Ron Lesh and Peter Jones, both of whom are senior figures in the self managed super funds and accountancy fields.

Lesh is the founder and managing director of BGL – the leading supplier of administrative software to the Australian SMSF market.

Jones, meanwhile, has extensive experience in building accountancy software practices, public company directorships and in the capital markets.

Both Lesh and Jones also sit on the SelfWealth board.

The SelfWealth solution was successfully released to the market via its website on Wednesday, October 24.

The company will ramp up its distribution to the SMSF sector in the first quarter of 2013 through an exclusive agreement with BGL Corporate Solutions.

BGL’s Simple Fund is an award-winning software solution used to maintain more than 75% of the 480,000 self-managed superannuation funds in Australia.

Ward says he is delighted with the capital raising outcome for the development of the business, praising ASSOB for its open yet structured approach.

“In late 2011, I investigated a number of capital raising alternatives,” he says.

“I decided on ASSOB as the platform enabled us to attract a range of investors in an open and transparent framework with the appropriate governance structure.”