Dutch investment bank ING has backed a London-based natural language processing (NLP) FinTech firm which counts BlackRock and Goldman Sachs among its client base.
ING confirmed it made the €4.5 million investment in Eigen Technologies after participating in a $42 million series B funding round, alongside other investors including Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Lakestar and Dawn Capital.
The bank said that with Eigen Technologies, it will work on establishing NLP modules tailored to the financial industry’s need for data extraction. Both companies in partnership are looking to speed up the development of use cases for the technology in various areas.
“This partnership allows both companies to work closer together when implementing use cases through data and process analysis, so as to accelerate Eigen’s advantage in NLP as well as ING’s digital transformation,” said Benoît Legrand, ING’s chief innovation officer and CEO of ING Ventures, the capital arm of ING which made the investment.
Eigen’s NLP technology has been deployed across ING’s Libor transition and loan operations. According to its website, the FinTech has also worked with various institutions as clients or partners, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Allen & Overy, Hiscox, and Deloitte.
“In the years we have worked with ING we have found them to have some of the most advanced thinking in the market on the application of machine learning in financial services, something that comes from their fantastic innovation culture,” added co-founder and CEO of Eigen Technologies, Dr Lewis Liu.
Last month, ING confirmed that its chief executive, Ralph Hamers, will step down from his role and become CEO of UBS as of November. Hamers replaces Sergio Ermotti, and has served as CEO of ING since 2013.