New York, Nov. 08, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FinTech trailblazers and founders of The Bancorp, the mother-son duo Betsy and Daniel Cohen, announced today that they are combining their firm’s public, private, and venture investment activities under a new name – Cohen Circle. Formerly known as FinTech Masala, the name change is a move to reflect their diverse investments across multiple sectors and stages of company growth.
Said Mrs. Cohen, “As we grow our scope beyond fintech, we felt now was the right moment to change our firm name. As former CEOs, operators, and founders our new name reflects our team’s significant relationships established over decades in the field. When someone joins our circle, they get access to the depth of our industry experience and breadth of our significant network,” she said.
To date the Cohen Circle team has raised over $5bn in capital across various investment vehicles while successfully bringing five companies to the public markets via SPACs, earning Mrs. Cohen the title of SPAC Queen.
Said Mr. Cohen, “While the recent macroeconomic environment has been challenging, SPACs have become established as a viable path for great companies that are ready for the transition to the public markets. We will continue to be opportunistic and seek out transactions in this space.”
The Cohens have extensive experience in the banking and finance ecosystems – they founded the Bancorp in 1999 – a digital bank providing banking services to thousands of fintech companies, including Paypal. Mrs. Cohen founded three banks and was one of the first women in the U.S. to receive a bank charter. Mr. Cohen founded Cohen & Company, an asset manager with $2.2 billion of AUM.
Since 2015, the Cohen Circle team has invested in over 25 fintech companies, including payments platform Payoneer, bill pay provider BillGO, and the document automation platform Ocrolus.
“We remain enthusiastic about the opportunity in fintech in light of what we view as more reasonable valuations, more advanced technology, and the validation of our long-held belief that embedded finance is central to consumers and businesses,” said Mr. Cohen.
The team is equally excited about their growing impact focus, and they are creating an all-woman team to lead this initiative.
Said Mrs. Cohen, “We see the impact space as an opportunity to leverage our expertise operating and growing businesses to make investments in companies solving critical social issues while also generating compelling returns. Social needs are high and global valuations are lower than they’ve been in a long time.”
In addition to the Cohens, Amanda Abrams serves as Chief Executive Officer of the firm, joining from the management team of CardConnect after she and the Cohens took the integrated payments company public via their first SPAC in 2016.
Said Ms. Abrams, “The Cohen Circle name signifies our team’s commitment to supporting founders throughout the full lifecycle of their company, from raising early rounds to preparing for an exit. We like to say that we don’t do transactions, we do relationships and partnerships. People who work with us know that we always bring the right people to the table.”
To support their growing scope, the Cohens have also added new operations and investment team members, bringing on a new COO, Head of Finance, CMO, Vice President, and Analyst since 2021. In addition to changing their firm name and updating their visual branding, Cohen Circle has also launched a new website, cohencircle.com.
About Cohen Circle
Cohen Circle (formerly FinTech Masala) is an investment firm founded by financial services pioneers, Betsy Cohen and her son Daniel Cohen. Since 2015, the firm has provided transformative capital to late stage fintech growth companies. Today, we make investments across the capital structure in the fintech, technology, and impact spaces, with $5bn+ in capital raised.
Our decades-long experience as founders, operators, and innovators uniquely positions us to capitalize and transform companies through our significant networks and expertise.
For more information visit cohencircle.com.
General information: info@cohencircle.com
Press inquiries: press@cohencircle.com
Photo to run with the post
Photo Credit: Ben Hider
