Raisin rides into the U.S. with its savings and investment marketplace

Raisin, the pan-European fintech marketplace for savings and investment products, is headed to the U.S., announcing plans to roll out a similar offering across the pond.

The German company, which is backed by the likes of PayPal, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Thrive Capital, wants to bring greater competition and easier savings and deposit account opening to U.S. customers. The deposits market in the U.S. is said to be $12.7 trillion, and yet Raisin claims most Americans could be getting a much better return on their savings.

Despite the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates and most consumers having ample opportunities to optimise their savings in theory, Raisin says shopping around for a competitive savings rate often involves too many hurdles for many American to bother. This includes finding out where good rates are available, assessing the quality of offers and in some instances switching from your existing primary bank.

In contrast, Raisin’s marketplace model claims to addresses theses issues by making the range of offers transparent, whilst also creating a convenient and simple way to access the best rates on the market. Part of its remedy is that only have to sign up to Raisin once, including regulatory checks, in order to access any of the offers from partner banks on its platform.

To kick off the new U.S. expansion, Raisin has hired Paul Knodel as U.S. CEO. Boasting twenty years financial industry experience, prior to joining Raisin he held executive and senior management positions at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch as well as TD Ameritrade, E-Trade and robo-advisor Wealthfront. Most recently Knodel led Wealthfront’s extension of its product suite into cash savings.

In addition, Raisin’s American expansion is being supported by the German government’s U.S.-based “German Accelerator” program. Each year 12 of Germany’s most promising startups are selected with the aim of helping them break into America.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, Raisin says it has more than 175,000 customers who have invested almost €13 billion into Raisin marketplace deposits. This year has also seen the fintech company acquire Germany’s MHB Bank, and close €100 million in Series D investment.