Chilean anti-corruption startup lands in Miami to bring compliance to blockchain
By Riley Kaminer
In Miami, innovation is all around us. And as a founder learned, innovation can even be found by the pool.
Meet Chilean entrepreneur Susana Sierra, who is on a mission to fight large-scale corruption. Sierra is the CEO of BH Compliance, a company that monitors and measures compliance programs for companies. Globally, corruption remains a major problem. It is also an expensive one, costing the world economy around $ 3.6 trillion each year.
Since its inception in 2011, Sierra and BH Compliance have helped businesses across Latin America reduce compliance risks. In 2017, the company created a platform to help companies visualize their key compliance indicators.
In December 2021, Sierra moved to Miami to further expand BH Compliance’s business. For years, Sierra has been interested in blockchain technology and curious to use it as another tool in its anti-corruption arsenal. “But in Chile, I never came across anyone with the blockchain knowledge to make it happen,” she said Update Miami.
That changed one day while she was with her daughter by the pool in her Miami apartment. When her daughter became friends with another child by the pool, Sierra began talking to that child’s parents. It turned out that she was talking to a blockchain expert.
“He said to me, ‘Oh, this is very simple,'” she remembered. The light bulb had gone off, and a new chapter of BH Compliance was born.
Sierra and the team quickly started working on the blockchain element on their platform. Since the data they collect is sensitive – which describes the companies’ business practices – BH Compliance keeps the core of the information secure on their servers. But the blockchain creates a kind of fingerprint for each document. Think of it as a digital way to seal a folder. In this way, auditors can prove whether this information has been tampered with.
There is a wide range of benefits to the blockchain-powered platform, Sierra explained. “If something happens to the company, they can prove they did everything right. All the evidence is stored in the blockchain.” In the worst case, this constitutes invaluable insurance, and in the same way it promotes ethical business practices, while at the same time providing cost savings for companies by streamlining compliance procedures.
BH Compliance already has 150 companies using this platform, including major brands such as Walmart Chile, GM Financial and Telefonica. “When we told our customers we were using the blockchain, we got a good response,” Sierra said. “They see the value in our innovative use of this technology.” She also signaled that BH Compliance plans to integrate artificial intelligence to further offer value to customers.
BH Compliance is just one outlet for Sierra to accomplish this mission. She has been recognized as a young global leader of the World Economic Forum and participates in a few organizations that promote ethical governance, while co-authoring a book condemning common bad practices in Latin American business.
Miami continues to play a key role in BH Compliance’s development. While the company still has the majority of the team of 20 people in Chile, Sierra plans to hire more technical talent in the United States.
BH Compliance has also recently completed Endeavor Miami’s ScaleUp program. “I was very lucky to be a part of this program and the Endeavor community,” Sierra claimed.
READ MORE IN UPDATE MIAMI:
