Insurance coverage big IAG’s enterprise capital arm, Firemark Ventures, has appointed former Fintech Australia boss Rebecca Schot-Guppy a basic companion alongside firm veteran Bradley Armstrong.
The corporate initially recruited Schot-Guppy as its leverage and portfolio administration supervisor in late 2021. Armstrong has been with the enterprise for practically a decade, working his manner up the ranks from analyst to director in 2020, and now basic companion.
The duo purpose to lift consciousness of their portfolio firms and speed up Firemark’s ambition to be a high world insurance coverage VC.
Schot-Guppy mentioned she plans to steer the fund’s concentrate on open information and local weather tech, and hopes to advertise consciousness of pathways to the enterprise capital business, particularly for younger men and women.
“I’m very proud to be a Normal Companion of IAG Firemark Ventures to proceed to ship on our objective to deliver the skin world into IAG,” she mentioned.
“I’m additionally trying ahead to serving to develop the notice of the pathways to the Enterprise Capital business in order that different younger men and women can be part of our rising business.”
Bradley is targeted on increasing Firemark Ventures’ attain and impression by searching for new funding alternatives by way of companions and networks and prioritises creating development alternatives for the crew.
“I’m excited concerning the problem and alternative to collectively drive IAG Firemark Ventures from good to nice whereas serving to to form the way forward for IAG by supporting purpose-aligned, distinctive founders to grasp their imaginative and prescient.”
Firemark has $150 million underneath administration and their areas of focus for 2023 will probably be on the rising applied sciences of information, synthetic intelligence, machine studying, the Web of Issues, platforms, and ClimateTech.
The VC fund’s investments embrace UpGuard, main a $25 million spherical into the cybersecurity startup in 2021.
In February final yr, Firemark launched $75 million second fund.
Its first fund kicked off in 2016 and invested in 18 startups in 33 rounds, together with satellite tv for pc Web of Issues creator Myriota, information science analytics firm Hyper Anna, Tim Fung’s ASX-listed jobs market Airtasker and the kid monitoring app Life360.