Banking technology provider Amount cut 25% of staff

Dive Brief:

Banking technology provider Amount laid off 130 employees in January, about 25% of its workforce, the fintech has confirmed to Banking Dive.
The cuts, which were first reported by Crain’s Chicago Business, are the firm’s second round of layoffs in less than a year. The Chicago-based company, which had 600 employees a year ago, cut 18% of its staff in June, according to Payments Dive.
Amount, which spun out from online lender Avant in January 2020, is the latest fintech to pare its workforce as high inflation and rising interest rates have contributed to a global drop in funding.

Dive Insight:

Amount, which was valued at $1 billion in 2021, has felt the strain of the current macroeconomic and capital markets environment, Amount CEO Adam Hughes said in a statement to Banking Dive.

“January was the right time to adjust our cost structure, accelerate to profitability, and drive innovation on our unified consumer and [small business] lending technology platform,” he said. “With ample capital on our balance sheet and supportive investors, we remain well capitalized to continue investing toward being the market leading loan and account origination platform for modern times.”

Amount’s technology helps financial institutions offer personal loans and credit cards as well as facilitate buy-now-pay-later financing. The fintech, whose bank partners include TD Bank and Barclays, has about 24 direct partnerships with banks and payments companies, Hughes told Payments Dive in May.

The firm said its clients collectively manage more than $3 trillion in U.S. assets.

Over the past year, the firm has made progress toward developing a technology platform that helps financial institutions offer consumer and small business lending, Hughes said.

In February 2022, Amount bought Reston, Virginia-based Linear, a small and midsize business loan and account origination platform, for $175 million in cash and stock.

It took on Linear’s 190 employees and renamed that arm of the operation Amount Small Business, Payments Dive reported.