Encompass, a provider of automated Know Your Customer (KYC) solutions, has completed a capital raise of £25 million. The funds will be used to accelerate global growth, particularly in the US where the company opened its first office in New York in October 2021, and in Europe where an office was recently opened in Amsterdam. Some of the funding will also be used for ongoing product innovation and development at the company’s engineering centres in Sydney, Belgrade, and Glasgow.
Encompass says the raise follows a year of significant growth in revenue, new accounts, and the addition of specialist industry experts to business teams across the UK, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the US. It was led by Perennial Partners, an Australian investment management company, and joined by financial services focused investing firm Serendipity Capital, Seven Seat Capital, and FinTech investment firm Microequities Asset Management. Follow-on investments were made by existing shareholders including Alan McIntyre, former global head of banking services at Accenture, Tim Frost, ex-chairman of IHS Markit, and technology investor Ray Scott.Roger Carson, co-founder at Encompass, says: “Expanding into new markets will add greater value to our business in a way that better serves existing customers and attracts additional global banks as new customers.”
Register here for A-Team Group’s 24 March, 2022 webinar on the future of KYC and AML: How to tackle the challenges and gain the opportunities of perpetual KYCFrom an investor’s perspective, Sean Harpur, co-founder at Serendipity Capital, says: “Encompass’s successful funding represents the increasing value of solutions that digitise and automate regulatory screening and due diligence for the corporate KYC market. Designed to help banks simultaneously create a better customer experience and mitigate compliance risk at scale, we believe Encompass is exceptionally well-positioned to deliver in these areas for global banks.”The £25 million raise follows a funding round in March 2021, which raised an undisclosed amount and was part of a series of outside investments that contributed around £9 million to the company.
