Irish payments and FX group Fexco has invested 7.5 million pounds in UK fintech Tenora, backing its expansion from foreign exchange into wider corporate treasury management, a deal that matters broadly because it strengthens Fexco's stake in a fast-growing corporate treasury platform, and matters specifically to accountancy professionals because the treasury functions Tenora targets sit directly on top of hedge accounting under IFRS 9, one of the most technically demanding and audit-sensitive areas finance teams handle. The investment comprises 5.5 million pounds in equity and a 2 million pound funding line.

Fexco is a Kerry-headquartered Irish payments and foreign exchange technology group founded in 1981, providing international payments, FX and business process outsourcing services globally, with financial services chief Sean Crowe joining Tenora's board as part of the deal.

Tenora is a London-based fintech founded in 2025 by former Argentex chief executive Harry Adams, an FCA-authorised electronic money institution providing an FX risk management and treasury orchestration platform, backed since 2024 by Australian investment group Macquarie, which holds a 33 per cent stake.

Adams said Fexco's decades of payments and FX infrastructure experience would help Tenora "build the next generation of corporate treasury infrastructure" as it expands beyond FX execution.

That expansion targets a genuine accounting pain point. Hedge accounting under IFRS 9 requires formal documentation of every hedging relationship at inception, ongoing effectiveness testing, and evidence that the hedge ratio used matches actual risk management practice, requirements auditors treat strictly given how commonly insufficient documentation is flagged as an audit issue.

Platforms like Tenora's Treasury Orchestration tool, which brings FX execution, hedging and cash management into a single workflow, address that pain point directly by generating documentation and effectiveness data as a by-product of execution rather than as a separate manual exercise finance teams must reconstruct for auditors.

That connects to a wider pattern in accounting-adjacent fintech: specialist platforms are increasingly building infrastructure that makes complex standards, hedge accounting here, VAT and e-invoicing elsewhere, auditable by design rather than dependent on manual reconciliation.

For the sector, Fexco's investment reflects growing recognition that treasury technology and accounting compliance are converging, with finance teams defending hedge accounting treatment as the direct beneficiaries.

Source: FF News / City AM / FTI Treasury