Alterest wins free legal advice from Simmons & Simmons

ALTEREST, the credit-investment platform, has been selected as one of first four fintech start-ups that will receive free legal advice from City law firm Simmons & Simmons.

The company, which provides data and analytics, is seeking to service both the peer-to-peer finance industry and the banks that are providing funding to P2P platforms.

Simmons & Simmons launched its fintech fund in May this year in order to help early stage fintech businesses solve some of the legal problems they may encounter. The law firm has set aside £100,000 a year to support the startups.

The other businesses that will receive free legal advice are hourly car insurance firm Cuvva, banking platform RailsBank and automated invoicing firm Tallysticks.

Simmons & Simmons said it will provide further details on each of the businesses and their plans later this month.

“We were impressed by the strength of the start-up businesses we met through our evaluation process and we’re delighted to have identified four promising and exciting businesses to work with through the Simmons & Simmons Fintech Fund,” said Angus McLean, partner and head of the firm’s international fintech team.

“For these start-ups, the fintech fund could make a real difference, or could even be what gets them off the ground, and it’s through this support that we hope to make a significant contribution to the wider fintech community.”

To qualify for support through the fund, the fintech businesses must have received no more than £1m of investment and need to have been accepted onto one of the UK fintech accelerator programmes, or have been referred to the law firm by a leading fintech-focused venture capital investor.