Imperial Innovations Group Regulatory News (IVO)

19 June 2017

Touchstone Innovations plc

Innovations commits £3.0 million investment in Concirrus

Touchstone Innovations plc (AIM: IVO 'the Group', 'Innovations') has committed a new £3.0 million, two-tranche investment into Concirrus Ltd ("Concirrus" or the "Company") a leading insurance IoT (internet-of-things) solution provider based in London. Following this new investment, Innovations will hold a 66.9% stake in the issued share capital of the company.

Concirrus was founded in 2012 by Andrew Yeoman (CEO) and Craig Hollingworth (Corporate Development) who came directly out of the telematics and communications industries. Andrew (formerly with Trimble Navigation) and Craig (formerly with Orange, O2 and Masternaut), identified an opportunity to launch a company providing fully integrated business solutions built on a scalable cloud-based platform. 

This further investment into Concirrus continues to build Innovations' growing ICT portfolio. Innovations' Venture Director Kelsey Lynn Skinner is currently a board director at Concirrus and Innovations' venture partner David Parker chairs the Company. The funding will allow Concirrus to onboard several more insurance customers, and further develop its product platform and data partnerships across several insurance lines of business, with the initial focus on marine insurance.

Andrew Yeoman, CEO at Concirrus, said:

"My co-founder Craig Hollingworth and I founded this company with the vision to enable large corporates to access and exploit the value of internet-of-things data. This capability fundamentally adjusts the insurance market and transforms loss ratios through the selection and management of risk. We are pleased to continue to work closely with Touchstone Innovations and its focus on building fundamentally strong businesses with high quality management teams and a deep technology focus."

Kelsey Lynn Skinner, Director Technology Ventures at Touchstone Innovations, added:

"Concirrus has made significant progress in bringing new insight into the insurance market to improve loss ratios. For example, one of their leading customers is now able to offer a product line in a previously "un-insurable" market segment by leveraging internet-of-things data.

"As investors we are building an ICT portfolio to capitalise on opportunities created by new data insights and Concirrus is leading that charge for the London & Global insurance markets."

For further information contact:

About Concirrus - www.concirrus.com 

Concirrus provides a software platform to help insurers leverage data from the Internet of Things for new products. Operating across personal and commercial lines Concirrus' technology is trusted by Insurers to extract risk and insight from fast moving, complex data streams. Using a combination of advanced analytics, machine learning and active risk management the Concirrus Quest platform makes sense of IoT data and turns this into improved loss ratios.

About Touchstone Innovations - www.touchstoneinnovations.com

Touchstone Innovations plc (formerly Imperial Innovations Group plc or just "Innovations") creates, builds and invests in pioneering technology companies and licensing opportunities developed from outstanding scientific research from the 'Golden Triangle', the geographical region broadly bounded by London, Cambridge and Oxford.

This area has an unrivalled cluster of outstanding academic research and technology businesses, and is home to four of the world's top 10 universities, as well as leading research institutions, the cream of the UK's science and technology businesses and many of its leading investors.

Innovations supports scientists and entrepreneurs in the commercialisation of their ideas through protecting and licensing out intellectual property (through its Technology Transfer subsidiary, Imperial Innovations Limited), by leading the formation of new companies, by recruiting high calibre management teams and by providing investment and encouraging co-investment. Innovations remains an active investor over the life of its portfolio companies, with the majority of Innovations' investment going into businesses in which it is already a shareholder.

Since becoming a public company in 2006, Innovations has raised more than £440 million of equity from investors, which has enabled it to invest in some of the most exciting spin-outs to come out of UK academic research. In addition, post period end the Group has drawn down the outstanding £50.0 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB) taking the total loan to £80.0 million.

Between Innovations' admission to AIM (August 2006) and 31 January 2017, Innovations has invested a total of £335.7 million across its portfolio companies, which have collectively raised investment of £1.5 billion.