Imperial Innovations Group Regulatory News (IVO)

RNS REACH

14 March 2017

Touchstone Innovations plc

Innovations supports £2.9m funding round in Resolver.co.uk

Touchstone Innovations plc (AIM: IVO or 'the Group', 'Innovations') has participated in a £2.9m funding round in Resolving Limited ('Resolver' or 'the Company') the parent company of Resolver.co.uk, the independent website dedicated to consumer rights and complaint resolution.

Innovations has committed £1.1 million to the round alongside co-investor Draper Esprit. As a result of this investment, Innovations will have an interest of 8.1% in the Company.

Founded in 2014 and based in London, Resolver.co.uk is a website dedicated to making it easier for consumers to make complaints or raise issues with brands, companies and organisations. Users can sign up in seconds via the web site (or its iOS or Android apps) to create a case and send it off in minutes to the more than 30,000 companies, brands and organisations in the Resolver database. The Company is also working with the London School of Economics to analyse data within complaints, assess the severity of these complaints at scale and attach a severity index to each complaint. This can be used to rank large volumes of complaints.

The web site is growing at a rate of more than 10% month-on-month and is now the UK's leading web site for complaint resolution, with 665,000 registered users and more than 700,000 visits each month. The site now raises an average of 3,000 new cases on any given day. To date Resolver.co.uk has seen 65% of cases offered a resolution and has resolved £80 million of issues. Top issues include banking, travel and flight delays, shopping instore/online, telecoms, utilities and eating out.

The new funding will allow Resolver to expand its team and invest in new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning helping to predict the outcome of a customer case. This will allow the Company to automate key processes to increase the speed at which cases can be raised and also to help predict the likelihood of successful resolution.

Jon Edington, Director of Technology Ventures, Touchstone Innovations, said:

"Resolver is working to transform consumer rights and complaint resolution by automating the process for the benefit of both consumers and businesses. The Company has made fantastic progress since its creation two years ago and we are delighted to back founder James Walker and his team.

"We are looking forward to working with Resolver to grow its user base and increase its breadth of offering, not only for consumers, but also for the thousands of companies in Resolver's database that use its services to improve customer service and understand how well their own companies and organisations are performing."

Enquiries:

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 the licensing of intellectual property, 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, the Group has agreed £80.0 million in loan facilities from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Between Innovations' admission to AIM (August 2006) and 31 July 2016, Innovations has invested a total of £306.7 million across its portfolio companies, which have raised collectively investment of £1.5 billion.

About Resolver - www.resolver.co.uk

Resolver's free and independent website and iOS/Android apps enable people to get their complaints heard quickly and easily and resolved successfully. After entering details of issues into the impartial platform, users are given templated emails created automatically with all their relevant details. These are then sent through the Resolver system to the right department/s at any of more than 30,000 brands, companies and organisations. Complaints can then be escalated throughout the hierarchy all the way to the Ombudsman Services or appropriate regulators.

Each day, an average of 1500 new cases are raised through Resolver.co.uk. The website receives more than 600,000 visits each month and offers up-to-date advice and tips at the start of the process to inform users of their consumer rights.

The company was launched in September 2014 by James Walker following an awful complaints experience relating to a boiler repair at his home. Based in Borough, south London, in 2015, Resolver won business SME award The Pitch. Resolver are proud members of AdviceUK, TrustMark, Trading Standards Institute and Buy with Confidence and work in consultation with regulators, government departments, Ombudsmen and consumer rights organisations.