This London startup is accelerating fight against financial crime with machine learning, snaps €42.6M funding

ComplyAdvantage, an AI-based financial crime detection startup has announced the close of a $50 million (approx €42.6 million) Series C funding round, bringing the total investment to date to $88 million (approx €75 million). 

The round was led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board along with existing investors Index Ventures and Balderton Capital. London-based startup intends to use the funding toward rapid product and market expansion across the United States, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. 

“Ontario Teachers’ deep experience and credibility with global financial institutions made them a natural choice to lead the round,” said Charles Delingpole, Founder, and CEO of ComplyAdvantage. “Ontario Teachers’ takes a long view of investing that is genuinely aligned with our own vision at ComplyAdvantage to transform how companies mitigate risk. This funding allows us to accelerate the development of our industry-leading data and suite of products to serve institutions with diverse clients and complex risk exposure.” 

Aims to neutralise financial crimes

ComplyAdvantage is on a mission to neutralise the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption, and other financial crime. The platform uses machine learning and natural language processing to help regulated organisations manage their risk obligations and prevent financial crime. 

“ComplyAdvantage offers mission-critical technology solutions for combating financial crime and keeping pace with an ever-evolving regulatory landscape,” said Olivia Steedman, Senior Managing Director, TIP, at Ontario Teachers’. “The company is well-positioned to continue its rapid growth as its powerful technology platform transforms the compliance and risk management process for its clients.”

Identifies tens of thousands of risk every day

The company’s proprietary database is derived from millions of data points that provide dynamic, real-time insights across sanctions, watchlists, politically exposed persons, and negative news. This reduces dependence on manual review processes and legacy databases by up to 80% and improves how companies screen and monitor clients and transactions. 

ComplyAdvantage actively identifies tens of thousands of risk events from millions of structured and unstructured data points every single day. As per the company claims, more than 500 enterprises in 75 countries rely on ComplyAdvantage to understand the risk of who they’re doing business with through the world’s only global, real-time database of people and companies. 

Founded by Charles Delingpole in 2014, the company has four global hubs located in New York, London, Singapore, and Cluj-Napoca.

“Detecting financial crime in billions of transactions that take place around the globe has become nearly impossible without the application of data science and machine learning. It is this approach that has made ComplyAdvantage into a leader in the category, and the go-to partner for organizations who seek to automate what are still very often manual or inadequate processes,” said Jan Hammer, Partner at Index Ventures.

Main image credits: ComplyAdvantage