Why we invested in Bound
By Jay Wilson, Partner
Posted
Amidst geopolitical tension and economic shocks, foreign exchange risk is now a board level agenda item for all businesses. Until recently, only large corporations could access sophisticated FX hedging tools. For more than 95% of SMEs, FX volatility is an invisible tax on every international invoice. Bound is changing that. We are delighted to announce our lead investment in Bound’s Series A funding round ($24.5m). Bound makes FX hedging simple and accessible for every business, leveling the playing field for SMEs.
The Currency Risk Gap for SMEs
For internationally active SMEs, currency volatility can silently erode profit margins. Yet the vast majority of these businesses remain unprotected against exchange rate swings. In fact, only 4% of UK SMEs hedge their foreign currency exposure, compared to 94% of Fortune 500 companies. This creates a huge market failure. Many smaller firms “hope for the best” or price in a buffer, often at the expense of competitiveness or margin.
“Three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and losing money to exchange rate volatility,” as one small business owner lamented. This grim joke captures how SMEs often see currency losses as unavoidable, and recent macroeconomic events have only underscored the issue. From Brexit-driven pound fluctuations to pandemic and geopolitical shocks, we’ve seen double-digit percentage swings in major currencies. For an SME operating on tight margins, a 10% unfavorable FX move can mean the difference between profit and loss for the whole year’s trading.
SMEs are increasingly doing business across borders, but most lack the tools to manage the accompanying currency risk. The results: billions lost collectively each year in avoidable FX costs. This is a large, urgent problem hiding in plain sight.
Bound’s Solution – Automated Hedging Made Easy
FX risk management is a capability not a quote and trade activity. The team at Bound is building an automated FX hedging solution that brings enterprise-grade risk management to the SME level. In plain terms, Bound acts as a smart copilot for managing currency exposure. It bridges an education, insight, and access gap plaguing SMEs. Set up takes minutes not weeks with ongoing exposure monitored and automated execution across forwards, options, and rolling hedges.
It’s rare and exciting to see a level of product abstraction that enables such simplicity and automation in the complex world of hedging. The time is right. FX risk management is an industry reliant on many legacy systems. It is ripe for disruption. Bound is bringing the best of modern financial technology and industry-wide connectivity to a problem that hasn’t yet been tackled. At the same time, SME adoption of digital finance tools is at an all-time high and post-Brexit and post-COVID volatility have made CFOs painfully aware of FX risk.
Currency hedging used to require a treasury team, a banking relationship, and six-figure minimums. It doesn’t anymore.
Founder-Market Fit and Unique Insight
Co-founders Seth Phillips (CEO) and Dan Kindler (CTO) have exceptional founder-market fit and we have been inspired by their personal conviction for this problem.
Both founders cut their teeth in the world of institutional trading and risk technology. They met while working at Paxos, where they built software for large financial institutions to manage commodities and FX risk. In the world of high velocity, automated transaction systems, real, on the ground insight and experience is irreplaceable. This makes Seth and Dan the perfect combo to lead Bound. At the same time, they’ve personally felt the pain point that Bound addresses, Seth and Dan lived in London as expats during COVID watching their GBP salaries yo-yo with exchange rates. Dan Kindler watched his father lose money to exchange rates for twenty years before Dan decided to fix it.
The Bound team understood that the real challenge is not better execution. It is helping businesses decide when and how much to convert in advance – a more complex, predictive problem that only cutting-edge technology and automation could solve.
Seth and Dan are building an incredible team to scale their vision and bring Bound’s capabilities to a much broader market.
Traction and Tailwinds
The platform is used by customers across multiple industries from SaaS to e-Comm to manage their FX exposure. The value Bound provides is evidenced by its growth metrics: the company’s annual transaction volume exceeded $2 billion in 2025 (>2x 2024). We are excited by this clear signal of product-market fit and customer trust.
Customer feedback has been stellar. Many CFOs initially approached FX hedging with caution, but after using Bound they report feeling “in control” of currency risk for the first time. We heard stories of clients who previously lost six figures to FX moves, now sleeping easier because Bound’s dashboard shows their worst-case exposure is capped. It’s often hard to hear consumer-like product advocacy in complex B2B technology – Such qualitative wins translate into quantitative success for Bound through strong retention and word-of-mouth referrals. In an industry where trust is paramount, Bound’s early traction is the ultimate validation of its approach.
It’s also a sign of a generational shift: younger finance teams are more willing to adopt fintech solutions over calling their bank’s FX desk. Together these factors are driving demand for Bound’s technology right now with the level of buyer urgency increasing and decision-makers changing their behavior.
Closing Thoughts
Over the next few years, we expect Bound to fundamentally shift how SMEs think about FX risk—moving hedging to expected best practice for every business trading internationally. If Bound succeeds, the 4% SME hedging adoption rate will look as antiquated as businesses operating without cloud accounting software. Our investment in Bound reflects AlbionVC’s broader commitment to backing category-defining fintech companies that leverage technology to level the playing field in financial services – we’re proud to support Dan, Seth and the entire Bound team on this journey.
Our investment in Bound reflects AlbionVC’s broader commitment to backing category-defining fintech companies that leverage technology to level the playing field in financial services – we’re proud to support Dan, Seth and the entire Bound team on this journey.
Jay Wilson, Partner, AlbionVC
