StepEx raised £1.1 mn in funding with BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership

By Joy Dumasia

StepEx has raised £1.1 million in pre-initial funding, with the venture studio BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership being the lead investor. This startup from the UK offers an alternative system of student finance based on the estimation of their future income to democratize access to postgraduate qualifications.

Through StepEx’s Future Earnings Agreements, students do not pay an upfront university fee, instead of paying their university a percentage of their income for a fixed period after they graduate, and only once they earn above a minimum salary.

In the UK, StepEx is partnering with the London Business School and the prestigious universities of Cambridge and Cranfield, among others, and several providers of courses focused on in-demand technical skills such as coding and Artificial Intelligence.

An alternative to the traditional system of financing postgraduate studies, with access to lending based on past income. StepEx believes that this type of loan limits the opportunities for younger and less wealthy people to access postgraduate and technical qualifications, limiting their upward social mobility.

Christhi Theiss, Head of BBVA & Anthemis’ Venture Partnership at BBVA, says: “StepEx has created a solution that benefits students and educational institutions in equal measure. But it’s also an attractive investment for lenders – combining strong returns with genuine social impact. We have every confidence in the team’s ability to make this a mainstream option that transforms student finance,”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that BBVA has collaborated with Google Cloud to transform its security strategy with the optimisation of its security infrastructure. BBVA stated that it would utilise the partnership for developing new AI and ML models for predicting and preventing cyberattacks against its banking infrastructure. The Bank is expected to implement Google Cloud’s AI capabilities into its security strategy.