Capitalize: 401(k) Management Company Raises $19 Million (Series B)

By Amit Chowdhry • Aug 16, 2024

Capitalize, a platform that helps consumers and financial institutions digitally find and transfer retirement assets, announced the closing of a $19 million Series B funding round led by RRE Ventures. The funding round included participation from existing Capitalize investors, including Canapi Ventures and Bling Capital, and new investors, including Industry Ventures.

Since launching in 2020, Capitalize has rapidly expanded its platform to digitally locate and transfer legacy retirement accounts and is now processing several billion dollars of rollover volume annually. Both rollover volume on the Capitalize platform and Capitalize’s revenue have grown by about sixfold in the last 18 months.

A major driver of Capitalize’s recent growth has been its Enterprise business, which allows leading financial institutions to embed Capitalize’s rollover technology directly into their onboarding and funding flows, helping customers find and transfer legacy employer-sponsored retirement accounts such as 401(k)s into a new account of their choice. And Capitalize now offers a full suite of enterprise-grade APIs, led by the recent launch of its Embedded Rollover API, which allows partners to leverage Capitalize technology to power rollovers in a native, seamless way.

Every year, millions of Americans change jobs and either leave behind or prematurely cash out their 401(k) account. And others are forced to address the manual 401(k) rollover process to transfer their assets into a new retirement account.

This rollover process has historically caused significant administrative burdens on individuals, forcing them to contact multiple financial institutions, fill out tedious paperwork, handle phone calls, and often receive and forward physical checks.

The result is that over 29 million Americans have forgotten or left behind over $1.65 trillion in 401(k) assets in their former employer’s plan. And the rollover process has also made it harder for consumer-focused financial institutions to fund new retirement accounts and grow their retirement assets. Capitalize’s proprietary rollover technology solves this problem for individuals and retirement account providers by digitizing the approximately $1 trillion of 401(k) rollovers annually.

Capitalize will use the new funding round to accelerate technology investment in its core rollover platform and expand to serve partners and consumers with additional features and transfer types. The funding will also be used to support ongoing growth in new and existing Enterprise partners and serve additional segments of the market, including financial advisors and recordkeepers.

KEY QUOTES:

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with RRE for this latest funding round, a firm we’ve long admired for their mission-driven approach and deep expertise within financial services and fintech. Together we’re excited to keep modernizing the antiquated rollover process so that Americans can better move and manage their money, and our partners can serve their users more efficiently.”

  • Gaurav Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Capitalize

“We’re honored to support Capitalize in its journey to bring retirement account transfers into the digital age. We’ve known Gaurav and the Capitalize team since 2020, and have been incredibly impressed by the thoughtful, systematic approach they’ve taken to building a great company in this important industry.”

  • Raju Rishi, General Partner at RRE Ventures