Senso Lands $3M Pre-Series A Round To Strengthen Banking Client Relationships

Toronto-based Senso, a fintech startup using artificial intelligence to provide financial institutions with recommendations on how to strengthen client relationships, raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by Mendoza Ventures and BreakawayGrowth.

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Luge Capital, Rising Tide, Inovia Capital and BDC also participated in the round, which brings the 3-year-old company’s total funding to $4 million, Saroop Bharwani, co-founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News. Senso previously raised approximately $1.1 million in seed rounds in both 2018 and 2019 after being a part of Techstars.

The company, which analyzes first- and third-party data to generate predictive insights about consumers, intends to use the new capital to accelerate the expansion of Senso’s operations and product offerings into the U.S. market.

“We’ve proved out the concept in Canada in the mortgage asset class space, and we are ready to replicate that in the U.S. market and then the Latin American market will follow,” Bharwani said.

What you should know

A banking relationship is often one-sided, meaning consumers initiate the relationship and go to the bank only when they need services. Senso aims to help financial institutions identify what customers need and proactively help them by creating personalized services.

Mortgage retention rates in the U.S. average less than 20 percent, according to a Black Knight report. By embedding Senso’s technology into a financial institutions’ marketing and sales workflows and broadly applying it across lending products, clients can get that average up to 80 percent retention, Bharwani said.

“You can unlock millions of dollars in value, create a competitive advantage and retain the customer over their lifetime,” he added. “For every mortgage you retain, the better it is and easier it is to reduce costs for customers.”

Bharwani did not disclose revenue growth, but said Senso is covering more than 20 percent of the mortgage market in Canada and is growing.

What investors are saying

Mendoza Ventures general partner Adrian Mendoza said in a written statement: “The Senso team is redefining how the financial services industry leverages predictive intelligence at a crucial moment in history when it needs it most. Financial institutions, globally, require a competitive advantage to deliver delightful experiences, and the ones who adopt Senso’s data-driven strategy will be able to confidently build loyalty and lifetime value.”

Next steps for Senso

The company will focus on building better models, which are constantly adapting and getting better over time with artificial intelligence and data science, Bharwani said. In addition to mortgage products, Senso is also looking at the consumer credit space.

“We will be dedicating resources on expanding into credit cards and other products,” he said. “We will also be looking at other verticals that need these tools.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias