Helvetia Venture Fund takes stake in Zurich-based start-up Taxly

The Helvetia Venture Fund is investing in tax tech company Taxly. Using a radically simple yet impressive process, the Zurich-based start-up helps its customers to complete and file their tax returns.

09.02.2021 | Media releases

The Helvetia Venture Fund is investing in Taxly. The Zurich-based tax tech company provides a simple solution for completing and filing tax returns. Prompted by specific questions, the customer is guided through the process and ends up with a filled-out tax return. The software was developed jointly with tax experts. A flat fee (CHF 25 up to age 25, CHF 49 for everyone else) is charged for completing a simple tax return. The fee is higher for more complex tax cases such as property owners. Taxly also offers a B2B model that allows tax advisers to use the Taxly software. The start-up was founded in 2019 and launched its own product range in February 2020 for the cantons of Aargau, Basel-Land, St.Gallen and Zurich There are a lot of expats and students among Taxly's users. Taxly aims to use funding from the financing round to further improve its offering for the coming tax period and extend it to other cantons.

Interfaces provide opportunities for cooperation
In addition to the funding investment made through the Venture Fund, Helvetia also aims to establish operational cooperation with start-ups. Taxly offers some interesting link-ups here: for instance under Helvetia's "Home" ecosystem, which MoneyPark, Switzerland's largest independent mortgage and real estate specialist, is part of. Acquiring property always throws up questions regarding tax and tax-optimized financing. "With Taxly we are piloting an interesting complementary service for sections of our customer base. On the other hand, our financing and real estate experts provide help with tax-optimized property searches and financing", is how MoneyPark founder and CEO Stefan Heitmann describes the partnership. Helvetia also plans to use Taxly to assist customers with pension matters. "Taxly's radically simple yet impressive process strikes the right chord with customers. Thanks to digital interfaces, the start-up also offers interesting opportunities for cooperation with partners when providing additional services", remarks Martin Tschopp, Chief Customer Officer of Helvetia Switzerland, summing up the reasons for the investment. Daniel Kershaw, founder and CEO of Taxly, adds: "With a company like Helvetia backing us, more and more people will start to notice us. Together with the planned product improvements, this creates the ideal basis to achieve our ambitious targets in the coming tax period."

Contact information

Analysts
Susanne Tengler
Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +41 58 280 57 79
investor.relations@helvetia.ch

Media
Jonas Grossniklaus
Head of Media Relations

Phone: +41 58 280 50 33
media.relations@helvetia.ch

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About Helvetia

The Helvetia Venture Fund invests in start-ups from the insurtech segment and in young companies whose business models provide a link to or support Helvetia's insurance business. The fund is a subsidiary of Helvetia Swiss Insurance Company Ltd and is domiciled in Luxembourg. It focusses on start-ups from throughout Europe and places an emphasis on those countries in which Helvetia operates, namely Switzerland as well as Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Spain. The total volume stands at CHF 55 million.

www.helvetia.vc

About the Helvetia Group

In over 160 years, the Helvetia Group has grown from a number of Swiss and foreign insurance companies into a successful international insurance group. Helvetia is one of the leading all-line insurers in its home market of Switzerland. With the countries Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain, which have been combined to form the Market Area Europe, the company has a second strong pillar. With its Specialty Markets market area, Helvetia is also present in France and in selected regions worldwide. Some of its investment and financing activities are managed through subsidiaries and fund companies in Luxembourg. The Group is headquartered in St.Gallen, Switzerland.

Helvetia is active in the life and non-life business, and also offers customised specialty lines and reinsurance cover. Its business activities focus on retail customers as well as small and medium-sized companies and larger corporates. With some 11,500 employees, the company provides services to more than 7 million customers. With a business volume of CHF 9.45 billion, Helvetia generated an IFRS result after tax of CHF 538.1 million in financial year 2019. The registered shares of Helvetia Holding are traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol HELN.

Cautionary note

This document was prepared by Helvetia Group and may not be copied, altered, offered, sold or otherwise distributed to any other person by any recipient without the consent of Helvetia Group. The German version of this document is decisive and binding. Versions of the document in other languages are made available purely for information purposes. Although all reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the facts stated herein are correct and the opinions contained herein are fair and reasonable, where any information and statistics are quoted from any external source such information or statistics should not be interpreted as having been adopted or endorsed as accurate by Helvetia Group. Neither Helvetia Group nor any of its directors, officers, employees and advisors nor any other person shall have any liability whatsoever for loss howsoever arising, directly or indirectly, from any use of this information. The facts and information contained in this document are as up to date as is reasonably possible but may be subject to revision in the future. Neither Helvetia Group nor any of its directors, officers, employees or advisors nor any other person makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this document.

This document may contain projections or other forward-looking statements related to Helvetia Group which by their very nature involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and there is a risk that predictions, forecasts, projections and other outcomes described or implied in forward-looking statements will not be achieved. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause results to differ materially from the plans, objectives, expectations, estimates and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements. These factors include: (1) changes in general economic conditions, in particular in the markets in which we operate; (2) the performance of financial markets; (3) changes in interest rates; (4) changes in currency exchange rates; (5) changes in laws and regulations, including accounting policies or practices; (6) risks associated with implementing our business strategies; (7) the frequency, magnitude and general development of insured events; (8) mortality and morbidity rates; (9) policy renewal and lapse rates as well as (10), the realisation of economies of scale as well as synergies. We caution you that the foregoing list of important factors is not exhaustive; when evaluating forward-looking statements, you should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to Helvetia Group on the date of its publication and Helvetia Group assumes no obligation to update such statements unless otherwise required by applicable law.