Fourthline raises 50 million euros in funding – Fintech Finance

Fourthline, the RegTech leader providing AI-powered and compliant KYC and AML solutions, has raised €50 million from new and existing institutional investors.

The Fourthline platform provides banks and financial services providers with a complete suite of proprietary technology products that comply with local KYC, AML and GDPR requirements in and outside of Europe. Fourthline’s AI-powered solutions unlock compliance for the entire lifecycle, from onboarding, verification and analytics, to investigations and continuous KYC, at all stages of business development.

Since its launch in 2018, the company has grown more than 80% annually. Fourthline now employs over 270 people across the Netherlands, France, Spain and the UK; and working with European fintech leaders including N26, Trade Republic, Qonto and Scalable Capital; and other regulated financial institutions such as NN, Solaris and Western Union.

Krik Gunning, co-founder and CEO, says: “We are on a mission to help regulated entities fight increasingly complex financial crime. The huge leaps forward in technology over the past decade have been a double-edged sword: while consumers benefit from easier and faster access to banking products, the nefarious actors have leveraged technologies such as deepfakes and social engineering as money mules to increase the sophistication of their fraud. Currently, approximately 1.8 trillion euros are laundered each year.”

Gunning continues, “To stem the tide of financial crime, a variety of KYC, AML and anti-fraud technologies have been developed. At the same time, regulators have tried to keep up, increasing the regulatory burden on businesses. However, many RegTech point solutions do not truly ease the compliance burden for regulated entities, as evidenced by the thousands of employees performing manual checks at banks that have implemented point solutions. At Fourthline, we provide financial institutions with a single, bank-grade solution for continuous ‘lifetime’ financial compliance. This is what we do.”

Fourthline has taken a radically different approach to technology-enabled compliance by offering regulated institutions a single technology platform. The platform includes:

• A proprietary technology fully developed in-house; explainable automation powered by ethical AI.
• A single API to eliminate complexity: Fourthline’s API eliminates the need to integrate multiple point solutions, supporting new geographies, products and user journeys.
• A single, reusable core identity: establishing a single source of truth increases quality and automation and eliminates the need to ask clients for the same information twice, significantly helping to increase conversion and retention, instead enriching it with additional information there it is necessary.
• A product suite that covers all KYC and AML requirements, from initial onboarding, to daily AML monitoring, authentication, qualified electronic signatures, periodic reKYC, enhanced fraud investigations, document renewal and when necessary offboarding.

Radboud Vlaar, Managing Partner at Finch Capital, has increased his stake in this round after leading Fourthline’s previous round, investing alongside new institutional investors. Vlaar comments, “We strongly believe in addressing the compliance challenges in this industry through a focused growth strategy that leverages a platform approach using proprietary technology.”