Over the last decade, banks have competed furiously to woo customers by transforming their front-facing systems.
Yet despite this, back office operations remain stubbornly manual, expensive, and plagued by inefficiencies – made worse by an ever-expanding web of regulatory requirements that demand more documentation, compliance checks, and audit trails.
Meanwhile, operations budgets have flatlined as workloads surge, resulting in burnt-out teams and a heavy reliance on outsourcing. COOs are caught between rising operational complexity and stagnant headcount, creating chronic backlog risk that ties up capital and exposes institutions to avoidable penalties.
That’s why we’re backing Porters in their €2.7m raise in pre-seed funding to revolutionise how financial institutions handle back-office processes
Porters is building the autonomous back office for financial institutions, combining cutting-edge AI with the founders’ deep operational knowledge of banking processes, with the ambition of running entire services end-to-end through AI.
At launch, Porters will be focusing on two operational processes that have historically been both time and labour-intensive, generating minimal revenue for banks but can result in costly fines: garnishments and insolvency processes — a €3bn market, within the broader €50bn banking operations sector.
The founding team brings deep expertise in banking processes. Konstantin Kotulla spent four years at Upvest, a fintech enabling financial services companies to offer investment products via a stock trading API. Christopher Barth also comes from Upvest, following earlier consulting experience at McKinsey. Together, they hold degrees in economics, finance, international business, and banking from the University of St. Gallen, ESADE, and Maastricht University. Rounding out the team is Dr. Michael John, who holds a PhD from ETH Zurich, and has built applied machine learning systems and led large-scale technology transformations at McKinsey.
“Banking operations have remained stubbornly manual despite decades of digitalisation efforts,” said Konstantin Kotulla, Co-Founder at Porters.
“We’re solving this by building an AI-native service that doesn’t just automate tasks, but truly allows scaling without adding headcount. All while maintaining the resilience and compliance that financial institutions require. This funding accelerates our mission to redefine financial service operations for the AI era.”
"We're building an AI-native service that doesn't just automate tasks, but truly allows scaling without adding headcount."Konstantin Kotulla ~ Porters
Felix Martinez, Investor at Seedcamp, commented on the raise: “Banks are facing a widening gap between rising operational workloads and flat or shrinking ops budgets.”
“Porters addresses this head-on by automating some of the most complex, low-leverage processes in banking, helping institutions reduce risk while freeing up capital and people for higher-value work.”
Konstantin Kotulla on working with Seedcamp: “Although we’ve only just started our journey with Seedcamp, the impact has already been huge. They’ve helped us make better decisions faster, put us in front of the right people at the right time, and been a steady, supportive sounding board for the team.
On top of that, they’re simply great people to build alongside. We feel lucky to have them in our corner!”
"Although we’ve only just started our journey with Seedcamp, the impact has already been huge. They’ve helped us make better decisions faster, put us in front of the right people at the right time, and been a steady, supportive sounding board for the team."Konstantin Kotulla ~ Porters
The round was led by Earlybird, with angel investment from notable fintech operators, including Martin Kassing (Upvest), Alexandre Prot (Qonto), Lukas Zörner (Penta and Integral), and Adrien Treccani (Metaco).
Check out open roles at Porters here.