RelyComply, a South African anti-financial crime platform, is expanding to the UK.
The firm specialises in Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know-Your-Customer (KYC), and Know-Your-Business (KYB) processes. It says it plans to vastly overhaul how financial crime is combated across the country.
The platform significantly decreases the likelihood of financial crime through enhanced identity verification, with integrated bias mitigation and region-based government identification capabilities, perpetual KYC, and enhanced transaction monitoring capabilities through its AI and machine learning models.
Founded in 2020, it says the business is one of a new wave of RegTechs focused on global problems that may not be considered ‘flashy’ yet can quietly save financial institutions and FinTechs millions of pounds.
“Trust is in our DNA, and it is what our platform underpins – trustworthiness,” said Bradley Elliott, CEO at RelyComply.
“The UK is becoming a hotbed for financial crime and desperately needs modern solutions. The sector is slowly facing the reality that FinTechs are now operating at the same scale and risk level as traditional banks, but are still playing catch-up.
“This will only bring more sorrow to an industry dealing with tens-to-hundreds of millions of pounds in fines relating to financial crime, and institutions relying on FinTech M&A in recent years to prove shareholder value in a less-than-desirable investment environment.”
As financial crime becomes a much more sophisticated affair in the UK – with criminals stealing £1.17bn through fraud in 2024, and banks preventing £1.45bn – the FCA has responded by overhauling the regulations protecting customers, whilst financial institutions and FinTechs deal with the rise in fines for AML and KYC failures.
Failure to Prevent Fraud, APP Fraud Reimbursement Regime and Consumer Duty have all rolled out over the past 26 months, yet these regulations will take time to yield significant results for those impacted the most.
Elliott continued: “This is a clear signal that reactive controls are not enough. Financial crime has become a headache for the majority of Financial Institutions (FIs) and fintechs still using legacy, rules-based compliance tools that generate biased, false positives. Reimbursing victims is liability management; preventing fraud is protection.
“The cheapest fine FIs (financial institutions) will ever get is the fraud they never let through. With cross-industry data and explainable AI, RelyComply helps PSPs and banks stop fraud before it starts. For those who can’t prove fairness for vulnerable customers, they can’t meet Consumer Duty. We eliminate that bias in onboarding and monitoring, ensuring every customer gets a fair chance.”
Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank in assets under management, and FinTechs in the Southern Africa region have already utilised RelyComply’s platform. The firm claims it has helped them to reduce false positives by 40%, compliance costs by 30% and customer onboarding times by up to 300%.
“RelyComply won’t be content with rebuilding the wheel; the purpose is to deliver a holistic platform that FIs can implicitly trust without doing the legwork needed throughout not just compliance, but risk as an entire function,” added Elliot.
“There is no reason why identifying potential opportunists for financial crime can’t be painless. With all the work we have done in Africa, and within our home in South Africa, where even the country as a whole is working hard towards leaving the greylist and becoming more financially trustworthy.
“We are confident in our ability to add value to the UK’s financial ecosystem from London to Edinburgh, and everyone in between, and we are all very excited to be joining such an innovative community.”
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