SEP has led a £17.5 million financing round to take a minority stake in Media Ingenuity, a fast growing online marketing technology company, which owns financial comparison site, TotallyMoney.com, and is the UK’s largest online advertiser of financial services.

The investment will support the next phase of growth including the development of own-brand financial products. Media Ingenuity, which launched in 2006, has pioneered a unique formula for scalable online marketing of financial services. The company was ranked 14th in the 2010 Sunday Times Tech Track 100 list of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies. It has made significant inroads into the UK price comparison space through TotallyMoney.com, successfully challenging established brands and receiving more than one million unique visitors a month.

Will Becker, co-founder of Media Ingenuity, said, “We are delighted to welcome SEP as an investor in Media Ingenuity. The deal will enable us to strengthen our offering in existing verticals and move rapidly to exploit the very exciting opportunities we have identified in new areas.”

Andrew Davison of SEP said, “The performance and growth of Media Ingenuity since its creation less than five years ago has been very impressive and we see significant scope for it to make further inroads into the £750 million UK online financial services market. We look forward to working with the team as it evaluates new growth opportunities and the expansion of its market offering.”