Digital Retirement Rollover Firm Capitalize Raises Series B Funding

Capitalize Money Inc., a firm that digitally transfers retirement savings from accounts such as 401(k)s to individual retirement accounts, announced Wednesday it raised $19 million in a Series B fundraising round.

Venture capital firm RRE Ventures led the campaign, which included participation from existing funders Canapi Ventures and Bling Capital and new investor Industry Ventures. The firm’s Series A fundraising round, led by Canapi, was in 2021 and brought in $12.5 million.

The funders are backing Capitalize’s business model of creating a more seamless system for transferring assets from retirement accounts into IRAs, including from consumers, recordkeepers and via financial firms offering IRAs. Capitalize makes money from its partner network when a rollover is made with one of its preferred IRA partners, when a user pays an additional fee to roll over into a non-preferred provider or when a user pays for premium services. Capitalize does not allow preferred partners to alter content on its platform, according to the firm.

The market for IRAs in the U.S. is massive. The investment vehicles accounted for the most retirement assets at $14.3 trillion as of the year’s first quarter, according to the Investment Company Institute. Defined contribution assets came in second among retirement pools at $11.1 trillion.

Capitalize, which launched in 2020, is processing “several billion dollars” of rollover volume annually, according to the firm. Both rollover volume and its revenue have grown by about six times in the last 18 months, according to the firm. Much of that growth has come from its “enterprise” model, called Embedded Rollover API, which offers financial firms the ability to embed Capitalize’s rollover technology directly into onboarding and funding flow for customers moving legacy, employer-sponsored retirement accounts into an IRA.

Capitalize’s enterprise partners, as listed on its website, include Betterment, Charles Schwab, M1 Finance, Robinhood and SoFi. The firm did not immediately respond to comment for a list of preferred partners.

“Together [with funder RRE], 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,” said Gaurav Sharma, Capitalize’s co-founder and CEO, in a statement.

The firm notes the “manual” 401(k) rollover process that often involves paperwork and communication between multiple financial institutions to roll over employer-sponsored retirement savings. The firm, which has issued its own study on the subject of left-behind 401(k) assets, pegs the market at some $1.65 trillion.

The issue of leftover accounts has also been a focus of the Retirement Clearinghouse LLC, which started the Portability Services Network, currently made up of the country’s six largest recordkeepers. The network is designed to automatically transfer defined contribution assets between providers, should someone leave or forget their assets with a partnered provider.

In a separate announcement made Tuesday, a firm called Equity Trust Co. launched a self-directed IRA for its clients, designed to provide more options available in the savings vehicle.

Equity Trust’s Universal IRA allows users to invest their savings in both traditional and alternative assets. The firm, which has $52 billion in assets under custody and administration, has set up the IRA to provide the option of investing in assets, including real estate, private equity and cryptocurrency, according to the announcement.

“This capability eliminates the cumbersome process of managing accounts at multiple IRA companies to achieve true diversification,” the firm wrote.