Quartz Raises £2.75m for a Banker It Cannot Yet Be

London fintech Quartz raised £2.75 million in pre-seed funding on 16 September 2026 to launch a UK app it calls a personal banker. The round was led by Paris firm Daphni, with Outward VC and Spain’s K Fund, plus angels including Kantox founder Philippe Gelis and former N26 and Kraken product chief Gilles BianRosa.

The product is live on the App Store and Google Play only as a waitlist. Quartz is an FCA account information provider, not a bank and not a financial adviser, and its assistant Charlie still cannot move money or issue a regulated personal recommendation.

The App Is Live on a Read-Only FCA Licence

Quartz Digital Ltd told users it wants to sit between expensive wealth managers and generic products that offer little individual help. The legal base for that pitch is narrower. The firm’s own launch note said it does not provide regulated investment advice, and the only permission it holds is account information under the Payment Services Regulations 2017.

That status lets a firm, with the customer’s consent, see information from selected accounts in one place and analyse spending. It does not let the firm start a payment, hold client money, or give a personal recommendation on a pension or an ISA. A separate payment-initiation permission is required to move cash. A further permission is required for targeted support or full advice.

WHAT QUARTZ CAN DO TODAY

Co-founder and chief executive André Silva, formerly head of global expansion at Revolut, has been plain about the gap. He said the company would like adviser status later. Until that arrives, the “banker” in the marketing is a chat layer on top of connected balances.

Charlie Answers Questions It Cannot Execute

Charlie is the branded assistant inside the app. Quartz says it pulls a member’s own accounts together with market news and then answers questions about that portfolio. Silva has described it, in conversation, as functioning like an independent adviser for the user on allocation and tax wrappers.

At the moment we are not regulated as financial advisors, though we would like to obtain that status in the future.

André Silva, co-founder and CEO, Quartz

He also sketched a later version of Charlie that would ask follow-up questions and, with permission, carry out the actions it suggests through linked accounts. That version would need more than an information licence. On the current build, dedicated calculation tools run the ratios and the language model only reads the results, a design Silva said lowers the chance of a model inventing a number. The stack uses models from Anthropic and OpenAI, tracks goals and risk, and sends unclear cases to human reviewers. He said that review loop has already run for a year.

The invitation gate matters here. Quartz has been testing since the first quarter of 2026 and now lets people in by batch, so there is still little public, independent use against which to test those safety claims.

What the UK Advice Gap Looks Like in Numbers

The market Quartz is aiming at is real, and it is a regulatory problem as much as a product one. The FCA’s Financial Lives work for 2024 found that 8.6% of UK adults, 4.6 million people, received regulated financial advice in the previous 12 months. On its Advice Guidance Boundary Review pages, the regulator says most consumers in the UK are not getting the financial help they need and too often lean on friends, family and social media instead.

Treasury and the FCA spent two years building a middle rung for that gap. Targeted support lets an authorised firm offer suggestions to groups of customers who share common characteristics, for example pointing a person holding surplus cash toward an ISA, without running a full individual suitability test. It is not generic guidance and it is not a personal recommendation. Firms need a specific permission, and they apply through the FCA’s Connect system.

The targeted support rules from 6 April 2026 were already in force when Quartz opened the waitlist. Five months of runway sat between that start date and the 16 September launch. Quartz has not said it has applied for the new activity. It is still introducing itself as an information provider that talks about a member’s existing pots.

THE DATES THAT FRAME THE LAUNCH

1. 14 February 2025: Companies House records show the firm was incorporated in England and Wales as Quartz Digital Ltd, number 16253590.
2. First quarter of 2026: Closed testing begins; the company later says members have more than £10 million of assets connected.
3. 25 March 2026: Quartz announces its FCA registration as an account information provider.
4. 6 April 2026: Targeted support rules take effect, with applications taken through Connect.
5. 16 September 2026: The UK app opens by invitation and the £2.75 million pre-seed is announced.

Those dates put the raise after the new advice rung existed, not before it. The money funds a read-only product that still has to climb the permission ladder Silva has already named.

Ten People, Three Cities, One Waitlist

Silva founded the company in 2025 with Mateus Mesquita Alves, who led investment products at N26 and is listed as co-founder and chief product officer. Companies House incorporated Quartz Digital Ltd on 14 February 2025, with a registered office at Marlborough House in Chelmsford. Silva, who is Portuguese and lives in the United Kingdom, holds more than 50% but less than 75% of the shares. Mesquita Alves, also Portuguese and resident in Spain, holds more than 25% but not more than 50%.

The operating map is split on purpose. A 10-person team sits across London, Barcelona and Porto, with engineering in Portugal and Spain and the regulatory work in London. Silva used the launch to argue that small differences in how money is set up compound into large differences in how a life goes, and that the effect should not be reserved for a niche. The company euro figure on the same round is €3.2 million.

Access opened on 15 September 2026, a day before the funding story, and new members are still being taken from the waitlist in batches. Quartz has said it wants to keep the quality of the experience while it grows. That is a product choice. It is also what you do when the assistant is not yet allowed to complete the job the homepage promises.

THE LAUNCH IN FOUR FIGURES

• The round: £2.75 million pre-seed, led by Daphni with Outward VC and K Fund.
• Assets tracked: More than £10 million of members’ money is connected in the app, not managed by Quartz.
• The team: 10 people in London, Barcelona and Porto.
• Advice take-up: 4.6 million UK adults received regulated financial advice in the 12 months covered by the FCA’s 2024 Financial Lives survey.

Tracked assets of more than £10 million across a 10-person company is a test book, not a wealth manager’s book. The figure is still useful. It shows people will connect pensions and ISAs to a new brand if the login path is short.

Daphni Backed the Product Before the Permission

Daphni is a Paris venture firm, founded in 2015, with a European early-stage book that already includes fintech names such as Memo Bank. Partner Paul Bazin framed Quartz as a rare mix of product instinct and a regulatory start, aimed at savers whose needs do not match their parents’.

The first company we have come across that has both the product instincts and the regulatory foundations

Paul Bazin, partner, Daphni

The foundations he is pointing at are the AISP registration and a UK entity, not an advice stamp. Silva’s own competitive map is telling in the same way. He does not treat other money apps as the main threat. He names offline independent financial advisers as the rival, and he puts Emma and Cleo in the budgeting box. He says neobanks such as Revolut and eToro keep their AI helpers inside their own customer bases. Quartz wants to sit across a person’s existing providers, including accounts those banks do not see.

That is a distribution argument, and it is why a French lead cheque on a London information licence is coherent. The firm can grow a relationship on read-only data first, then spend the next raise on the heavier permissions. It is also why the banker language runs ahead of the file at Canary Wharf.

Pensions and ISAs Sit Outside the Easy Pipes

Open banking in the UK was built around payment accounts. Current accounts and some savings pots are the easy connections. Pensions, ISAs, brokers and investment platforms sit on different rails, which is why so many “one app for your money” products stall at the current-account feed.

Quartz is explicit that it is trying to jump that stall. Its privacy notice says the regulated information service covers payment accounts, and that the app also connects brokers, pension providers and other investment platforms so a member can view consolidated data. The launch copy calls those extra pipes proprietary connectors. The company listed pensions, ISAs, savings and investments as the products members can bring in.

WHAT MEMBERS ARE ASKED TO CONNECT

• Payment accounts: The FCA-regulated information service, listed as an AISP under reference number 1043690.
• Pensions: Workplace and personal pots pulled in through Quartz’s own connectors, not through a bank API alone.
• ISAs and savings: Cash and stocks-and-shares wrappers the firm says it can display beside everyday accounts.
• Investments: Broker and platform holdings, so Charlie is answering questions about a book rather than a current-account feed.

If those connectors hold, the app has a view a typical bank app does not. If they drop, Charlie is another spending chatbot. Coverage of institutions is one of the three jobs Silva set for the team on launch day, which is an admission that the graph of linked providers is still being built.

Silva Has Already Named the Next Licence

On 25 March 2026, six months before the public waitlist, Silva used the firm’s FCA registration as an Account Information Service Provider to say that seeing every account was the first step toward a personal banker in everyone’s hands. The launch round now funds the next steps he has listed in public: grow in the UK without wrecking the experience, add institutions, and prepare the advice file.

He has also set the order of the product. Guidance now. Comprehensive advice after FCA approval. Then execution of trades on a member’s behalf. Each rung is a different permission, a different complaint risk, and a different capital conversation with Daphni.

THE THREE RUNGS SILVA DESCRIBED

• Guidance now: Charlie reads connected accounts, runs figures through separate tools, and answers questions without moving money.
• Advice later: The firm seeks regulated adviser status so a recommendation can be personal, not just a comment on data the user already has.
• Execution last: With permission, the assistant would carry out suggested actions through linked accounts, which needs more than an information licence.

Until that middle rung is granted, the honest description of Quartz is a well-funded aggregator with a constrained assistant and a Revolut and N26 pedigree. The waitlist can grow on that. It cannot yet do the job a personal banker is paid to do, which is to tell you to move the money and then move it.

Disclaimer: This piece is news reporting on a company launch and a regulatory permission, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, pension advice, tax advice, or a recommendation to download Quartz or to connect any account to a third-party app. Anyone considering a change to ISAs, pensions, savings or investments should speak to an FCA-authorised financial adviser who can look at their own circumstances. Funding totals, asset figures, product features and licence status are those given by Quartz and by the FCA on the dates named above and can change as the register and the app are updated.