LONDON & VIENNA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--kompany, the award winning RegTech platform for Business KYC (KYB) announced today new investment of almost €6 million, the company’s largest single investment round to date. It will use the new funding to accelerate growth and expand its new product lines, the AI-based shareholder analysis tool UBO discovery® and the DLT-based audit-trail solution KYC onchain.
Growth Funding Round
Fairway Global Investment led the round, together with Global Brain, a major venture capital firm based in Tokyo, Japan, who acted as co-investor. Both are global investors in RegTech, FinTech and the payment sector and expect their portfolio companies to benefit from kompany’s technological lead in Business KYC (KYB). Existing shareholders, including the European Super Angels Club and the kompany management team also participated in this round.
“kompany’s Business KYC services have been shown to bring significant efficiency gains for their clients and are particularly relevant to our investments in the payments sector and also our corporate partners. We look forward to leveraging this new partnership with kompany to support our other portfolio companies and partners” said Naoki Kamimaeda, Partner at Global Brain.
“The smart money understands that RegTech is about turning the burden of compliance into a competitive advantage by enabling customers to drastically reduce client onboarding times by 90% and by completely digitizing the process and customer experience,” stated kompany Founder & CEO Russell E. Perry.
RegTech – a €55 billion industry by 2025
The kompany team has doubled in the last year to outpace the new regulatory realities of highly enforced Anti-Money Laundering regulation in Europe (AMLD 4&5) and the pending US AML regulation. Additionally, in wake of the Covid-19 stimulus measures, governments are pumping trillions into the global economy. This has inadvertently caused a market rush to rapidly digitize and automate formerly manual compliance processes.
As a result, market interest has seen the value of kompany’s sales pipeline increase to an eight-figure number in the last twelve months. “The current market and regulatory situation warrant a far more automated, audit-proof business verification with an exponentially lower margin of error, as compliance risks have never been higher, and clients increasingly move to seamless digital services.” Johanna Konrad, COO of kompany, highlighted.
John Vorrias, Chief Investment Officer at Fairway Global Investment added: “RegTech generally, and kompany specifically has the potential to be a game-changer in terms of the broad use-case applications across multiple industries and segments. And kompany operates the only real-time proprietary global register network that connects to primary source commercial registers and financial & tax authorities in over 200 countries and jurisdictions.”
The new fundraising round directly supports the further development of two key technologies: the AI-based instant shareholder discovery and the fusion of Digital Identity with Business KYC (KYB) for cross-border payments.
“Our vision is to enable the 5 second cross-border payment with full AML and KYB compliance embedded”, explained Russell Perry. “If you have ever wondered why an international bank transfer can take hours or frequently even days to post - it is directly linked to regulatory requirements and our platform replaces those legacy practices.”
About kompany
kompany is the leading RegTech platform for Global Business Verification and Business KYC (KYB) for AML compliance. Its advanced API platform and collaborative web-based KYC workspace provide financial institutions, payment providers, insurers and other regulated corporations the automation platform and tools required for Business KYC (KYB) and audit-proof business verification for anti-money-laundering compliance. Clients include global and international banking groups, FinTechs, Big Four accounting firms, law firms, Banking-as-a-Service and compliance platforms, as well as multinational corporations.
kompany is an alumnus of Mastercard Startpath, Plug and Play FinTech, Raiffeisen Bank International’s Elevator Lab, the Oracle Scale Up programme and founding member of the International RegTech Association and the Austrian Blockchain Association.
It is headquartered in Vienna, Austria and has offices in London, New York, and Singapore. kompany is a government licensed clearing house and official distributor for commercial and business registers in many countries worldwide. Find out more at kompany.com, or follow on LinkedIn.
About Fairway Global Investment
Fairway Global Investment is an independent Swiss Asset Manager and Multi Family Office based in Zurich. It offers an innovative Spectrum of Services for discerning Private Clients, Entrepreneurs and Families with complex Assets and Holdings, whilst fully understanding its clients’ needs, expectations and jointly elaborating long-term solutions. Find out more at fwgi.ch.
About Global Brain
Global Brain supports startups that tackle numerous problems, create innovation, and contribute to the stimulation of the Japanese economy. Its high-achieving, experienced professionals identify excellent startups through multiple global locations and provide hands-on growth support. The total asset under management is more than US$1 billion, making it the largest domestic independent venture capital firm. To learn more visit globalbrains.com.
