Eliminating sources of funding for crime and terrorism

ComplyAdvantage, a startup that develops AI systems to detect financial crime, has raised $50 million in a Series C financing round.

Funding came from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures and Balderton Capital.

The company, founded in London in 2014, leverages data science and machine learning to model risk, with the data updated in minutes, while still being reviewed manually.

The new funding is aimed at accelerating development of data and technology to detect and mitigate complex risk exposure in the financial industry.

“ComplyAdvantage is one of the most exciting companies currently being built in Europe’s burgeoning fintech industry,” said Suranga Chandratillake, general partner at Balderton Capital. “This technology and the products it powers may be invisible, but their impact will be felt by all of us.”

Looking for the bad guys

The company has built an AI platform and a global, connected database of people and companies to help detect financial crime.

The data can help expose links to “relatives and known associates, ultimate beneficial owners and state-owned entity directors.”

Companies including Visa, Inpay, Santanda, and Azimo use ComplyAdvantage for automating or optimizing their risk-related processes.

“Some of the worst atrocities on earth—terrorism, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation— are funded by financial crime,” Charles Delingpole, founder and CEO of ComplyAdvantage, said in a blog post.

“Financial crime can only be eliminated when organizations have the data and technology necessary to flag and revoke criminals’ access to the financial system.”

Trillions of dollars are laundered annually through financial crime, with less than three percent being recovered, according to ComplyAdvantage. “At its best, this industry faces a 97 percent failure rate. There is work to be done,” Delingpole said.