A London fintech startup wants regular investors to get in on IPOs. It just lured former Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan execs.

• London startup PrimaryBid has made senior hires as it looks to build following a recent fundraising.
• The company wants to democratize access to capital markets for retail investors who don't enjoy the same benefits as larger institutionals when businesses go public.
• "We are on a mission to democratize public equity offerings," CEO Anand Samabsivan told Business Insider in an interview.
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London's fintech scene has been booming in recent months, amid record funding, and continues to be a hotbed for innovation in finance from payments solutions to increased transparency.

Amid a continuing race amongst banks and startups to attract retail investors, particularly millenials, to their platforms, fintech competition is hotting up with apps like Robinhood coming to the UK and challenger banks like Revolut offering stock trading.

London-based startup PrimaryBid is aiming to take things a step further by getting investors into previously inaccessible areas. PrimaryBid is an online platform which provides retail investors access to new share issues from listed companies at the same discount as institutions.

Bankers onboard

PrimaryBid has bulked up its core team following a recent £7 million ($8.6 million) Series A fundraising. The company has brought in Eric Low, formerly a client portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in New York, who joins as global head of business development. The fintech has also hired James Deal as COO from JPMorgan's Cazenove unit in the UK, where he had roles in equities and investment banking.

The company recently signed an agreement with pan-European exchange, Euronext.

The company was founded in 2015 by Anand Samabsivan and Kieran D'Silva. Prior to setting up PrimaryBid Samabsivan was co-founder and chief executive of AIM fund Darwin Strategic and worked in investment banking in New York and London for Credit Suisse and Bank of America. While D'Silva also worked with Samabsivan at Darwin Strategic.

"We are on a mission to democratize public equity offerings," Samabsivan told Business Insider in an interview. "Everyday investors are a vital part of the stock market and yet unable to buy discounted share deals - a longstanding imbalance in the public markets. Our online platform addresses this challenge, giving small investors the same access as traditionally afforded to large institutional investors."

Generally, when a company comes to IPO, large institutional investors such as pension funds and insurers get early access to the a share offering to buy at a significant discount to the subsequent offer price.

An analysis by Shares magazine last year found that institutional investors, "such as actively-managed funds and pension funds, would have made an average 11.8% gain if they'd bought all of the 77 companies floating on the London Stock Exchange," assuming they paid the IPO offer price.

Retail investors, if they could buy at the first opportunity on the first day of trading, would have made an average 2% gain, the analysis found. Herein lies PrimaryBid's proposition to retail investors, you can now trade like the big guys.

Uphill battle

The Primary Bid founders say they dont have competitors in this space as of yet, but it's still likely to be an uphill battle, despite the potential opportunity. The UK has added some 2.2 million new retail investors since 2013 while the size of the UK investment market doubled to $500 billion assets under administration (AUA) between 2013-2017, according to the FCA.

But that's still a fraction of the numbers in the US, where around half of family households own stocks.

Still, backers see potential: PrimaryBid has sourced more than £65 million via its service, across 48 transactions and has raised a total of $12 million to-date from Outward VC, Pentech Ventures, and Lombard Odier.