Monarch acquires banking infrastructure firm MBI, folding former HMBradley team into a new Monarch Labs unit
The personal finance platform’s move to buy the company formerly known as HMBradley lands the same week Monarch says it crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with MBI co-founder Zach Bruhnke leading the new division.
Personal finance platform Monarch said October 1 that it has acquired MBI, a banking infrastructure firm formerly known as HMBradley, in a deal whose financial terms were not disclosed. The MBI team will move into Monarch to form a new internal division called Monarch Labs.
Monarch Labs will be led by MBI co-founder and chief executive Zach Bruhnke, according to the companies, and is described as focused on building new financial products and automation tools for Monarch’s member base, which the company puts at more than one million users.
The acquisition announcement coincided with Monarch disclosing it has crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, a milestone the company tied to the same news cycle as the MBI deal without detailing how the two are connected financially.
MBI’s background as a banking infrastructure provider — rather than a consumer-facing budgeting app like Monarch itself — suggests the deal is aimed at giving Monarch in-house infrastructure capabilities it would otherwise need to license or build separately, though neither company has specified which products Monarch Labs will ship first or on what timeline.
Monarch has not disclosed what happens to MBI’s prior banking infrastructure customers, if any, following the acquisition, or whether MBI will continue operating any external-facing business lines distinct from its new role inside Monarch. Those integration details were not addressed in the October 1 announcement.