Amsterdam regtech startup Fourthline raises €50M to fight financial crime using AI: Here’s how

Amsterdam-based Fourthline (previously Safened), a startup that provides AI-powered and compliant KYC and AML solutions, announced on Monday that it has raised €50M from Finch Capital and other new and existing investors. 

Fourthline says it will use the funds to become the ‘undisputed tech platform of choice’ to alleviate the compliance burden for European-regulated institutions.

Krik Gunning, co-founder and CEO says, “We are on a mission to help regulated entities fight ever more complex financial crime. The huge leaps forward in technology over the last decade have been a double-edged sword: while consumers benefit from easier and quicker access to banking products, the nefarious actors have leveraged technologies such as deep fakes and social engineering such as money mules to increase the sophistication of their fraudulence.”

Fourthline: Fights financial crime 

Founded by Krik Gunning and Chris van Straeten in 2018, Fourthline helps banks and fintechs by verifying the identity of thousands of new customers.

The company provides a complete suite of proprietary tech products that adhere to local KYC, AML, and GDPR requirements in Europe and beyond.

Fourthline’s compliance solutions, powered by AI, enable businesses to meet regulatory requirements throughout their entire lifecycle, starting from onboarding, verification, and analysis, to investigations and continuous KYC at all stages of business growth.

Since its inception, the company claims to have grown more than 80 per cent annually. 

Gunning continues, “To hold back the tide of financial crime, a raft of KYC, AML, and anti-fraud technologies have been developed. Simultaneously, legislators have tried to keep up, which has increased the regulatory burden on companies.” 

“However, a lot of RegTech point solutions do not truly alleviate the compliance burden on regulated entities as evidenced by the thousands of employees performing manual checks at banks that have deployed point solutions. At Fourthline, we provide financial institutions with a single, banking-grade solution for continuous, ‘lifetime’ financial compliance. This is what we do,” says Gunning. 

Fourthline employs over 270 people across The Netherlands, France, Spain, and the UK. 

It works with European fintech leaders such as N26, Trade Republic, Qonto, and Scalable Capital, and other regulated financial institutions such as NN, Solaris, and Western Union.

Fourthline says it verifies millions of new customers annually, performing around 200 checks that automatically examine ID documents, biometric data, current residence, and worldwide sanction lists, among others. 

With these checks, Fourthline discovers 60 per cent more fraud and achieves an accuracy rate of 99.98 per cent, claims the Amsterdam-based company. 

Radboud Vlaar, Managing Partner of Finch Capital, comments, “We’re big believers in tackling the compliance challenges in this industry through a focused growth strategy leveraging a platform approach using proprietary technology.”