A website that enables customers to rate their solicitors has received a £3.6m cash injection as it aims to become the top online comparison tool for professional advisers.

VouchedFor.co.uk, which originally allowed customers to rate their financial adviser, expanded its service last year to include reviews of solicitors who agree to be rated.

The London-based website announced this morning that it had closed a £3.6m Series A investment round, advised by law firm JAG Shaw Baker. 

‘Series A’ is the first round of financing for a business, which tends to occur when a company is generating some revenue from its business model.

Series A investors are mostly venture capital funds (investment funds that manage money from investors seeking private equity stakes in startup or small- and medium-size businesses) or ‘angel’ investors (usually family and friends).

VouchedFor’s Series A investment round was led by Octopus Investments and supported by Samos Investments. It intends to use the new money to invest in its technology and marketing platform.

Before this investment round, VouchedFor received a ‘seed’ investment of £986,286 in 2014, led by DN Capital, with ‘participation’ from Octopus Investments and Samos Investments.

VouchedFor was set up in 2012 and uses over 35,000 vetted client reviews and consumer data to match consumers with their ‘ideal’ financial or legal professional. Professionals get a free profile but must pay if they want to be contacted directly through the site.

VouchedFor said it has over 7,500 professionals listed on the site, including more than 2,000 solicitors.

Chief executive Adam Price said the latest cash injection would enable the website to ‘build a reputation economy and ultimately help bring us closer to our ambition of becoming the number one destination to find trustworthy, well recommended professional advisers – no matter what an individual’s circumstance’.