€200 million investments in financial technology to accelerate innovation

UniCredit, one of the leading European commercial banks, and Anthemis Group, the leading financial services technology venture and advisory firm today, announced a new joint investment venture. UniCredit evo (equity venture opportunities) is set to be a dedicated initiative focused exclusively on identifying and investing in best-in-class financial technology startups. With an initial capital commitment of €200 million from UniCredit, the partnership will target mid stage startups and follow-on investments in more mature and established FinTech businesses, as well as early stage digitally native financial services startups working on more pioneering solutions.

The investment partnership and €200 million capital commitment serve as key tenets to accelerating the digitalization of the banking group. Their aim is to collaborate with emerging players within the FinTech ecosystem and explore, sustain and develop cutting-edge technologies and solutions.

Through the investment partnership, UniCredit and Anthemis will cover the entire life-cycle of emerging FinTech companies, with a primary focus on Europe and North America. This will span across the early ideas phase to maturity, applying them to different fields of retail banking and consumer finance; investment and corporate banking; wealth and asset management; capital markets and trading; payments and financial data; technology and infrastructure.

The UniCredit evo investment will be directly supervised and managed by two dedicated governing bodies: a Management Board of UniCredit representatives, working with Anthemis to identify the most relevant areas of focus, and the Investment Committee, composed of UniCredit and Anthemis representatives responsible for sourcing, evaluating and finalizing investments opportunities.

Within UniCredit, this joint venture will be led by the innovation team, under the remit of banking group Chief Operating Officer and Deputy General Manager Paolo Fiorentino. At Anthemis, Nadeem Shaikh, Founder and CEO of Anthemis Group, will oversee the partnership.

Mr Fiorentino noted: “Thanks to this partnership, we are ramping up our digital transformation, building a new business model to maximize the combined strengths of traditional market players and newcomers. As a bank we have the resources, financial expertise and large customer base that can complement startup innovation. This will turn and boost our digitalization, enabling us to better adapt to the ever-evolving needs of our customers. Today, Anthemis becomes a key partner on this journey. By leveraging their wide expertise, Anthemis will help us identify top class players and opportunities that will drive innovation and ultimately help us to better serve our customers.”

Nadeem Shaikh, Founder and CEO of Anthemis Group said: “We are delighted to be putting all of the Anthemis assets – a powerful global ecosystem, deep strategic insight and extensive investment experience – to work in the Investment Partnership. UniCredit has proved to be a dynamic partner with a proud history of innovation, and this partnership will allow them unlock further potential in the realm of digitally native financial services.”

About UniCredit SpA

UniCredit is a leading European financial group with an international network spanning in 50 markets. With ca. 8,000 branches and over 144,000 employees serving more than 32 million clients, the Group has commercial banking operations in 17 countries and assets of €860 billion.

As one of the strongest banks in Europe, UniCredit has a Common Equity Tier 1 Capital ratio of 10.94 percent pro-forma (Fully loaded Basel III).

It also has the largest presence of banks in Central and Eastern Europe, with over 3,300 branches and assets of €202 billion. UniCredit operates in: Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine.

For more information, please go to www.unicreditgroup.eu/en

Data as of December 31, 2015

About Anthemis Group

Anthemis is an investment and advisory firm focused on re-inventing financial services for the 21st century. We work with a diverse group of customers and partners – from start-ups and venture capital firms to financial institutions and private equity firms – to catalyze and accelerate positive and disruptive change across the financial industry.

More information for media:

UniCredit Bulbank, Identity & Communications Department

Viktoria Blajeva, Phone: + 359 2 9264 993, wjlj/ebwjepwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch