- What can you tell us about your company and your products & services?
kompany helps financial institutions and corporations turn the burden of regulatory risk and compliance requirements into a competitive advantage by enabling significant efficiency gains through its regulatory technology (RegTech) platform. The platform provides a global live network to commercial registers in more than 150 jurisdictions, covering 100 million companies. It offers real-time, audit-proof company information, including documentary evidence, from primary government sources for Business KYC (KYB) and verification purposes. The service fully meets AMLD4, MiFIDII and forthcoming AMLD5 regulatory requirements. kompany is a commercial register government clearing house and an official distributor of the European Business Register and local commercial registers worldwide.
- How came you up with the idea and what drives you?
The founders and the start-up team have worked together on various ventures in the last 15 years. They often encountered difficulties finding reliable and authoritative company information on business partners whilst working projects and therefore set out to solve this issue. With the CTO’s background as Chief Enterprise Architect for UK’s commercial register and the CEO’s experience in building digital businesses, they built a structure to connect commercial registers worldwide to create a real-time platform for primary source company information.
- What is it that makes your company different from others?
We are currently the only company that can provide KYB information based on audit-proof company information coming directly from the primary source. We base our work on 7 years of development to create a global real-time network to commercial registers worldwide. Hence, we can ensure that the regulatory requirements of AMLD4/5 and MiFID II can be met when using our solution. Current competitors rely on aggregated database information. Such information can be used for more general analysis but is not valid for regulatory compliance purposes.
With kompany clients can:
– Audit-proof their business KYC compliance while meeting global regulatory requirements.
Why: kompany provides audit-proof company information from primary sources, time-stamped and with data integrity guaranteed. Leadership teams can instantly limit their personal liability and that of their company.
– Immediately reduce KYC costs and risk exposure.
Why: With up to a 50% KYC cost reduction through instant access to audit-proof information, client onboarding is reduced from months to days by fully or partly automating manual processes.
– Outperform competitors by serving their clients faster.
Why: kompany’s RegTech platform combines automation with artificial intelligence to deliver global audit-proof information on demand in real-time.
- Where are you based?
kompany is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
- When was the company launched?
In 2012.
- What traction have you made? Can you tell us about your biggest achievements so far?
Over 50,000 business customers from 115+ countries use kompany’s service. Amongst them, we serve multiple international banking groups, large investment banks, big 4 accounting firms and more than 3,000 law firms.
We are a:
– A RegTech 100 company (http://fintech.global/regtech100/)
– A Top 60 Europe RegTech company (https://www.cbinsights.com/research/regtech-europe-market-map/)
– A top 10 RegTech supplier (http://www.marketfintech.com/)
- What advice could you give to other entrepreneurs and start-ups?
After our start-up period where our main focus was on building our global real-time network, we engaged with large players in the financial industry via different corporate programs to be able to tailor our service to the requirements of our key customers. This proved a great strategy not only for informing our product development but also to get the chance to develop proof of concept projects with our future customers. For smaller companies it can be hard to compete against known names – even if their solution is superior. The various FinTech accelerators and corporate innovation programs that have been established over the last few years are a great way to overcome this and improve time to market.
- What can you tell us about your team?
Through the expertise of its management and its international team of experts, kompany has grown to the leading provider of KYB information for company verification. kompany’s developers and compliance specialists continuously work on building and expanding the real-time network to commercial registers worldwide and the layer of advanced applications based on AI and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to support its use.
The CTO was formerly the Chief Enterprise Architect for Companies House UK. He is one of few persons worldwide who have designed and implemented a commercial register architecture. Given his experience he is also an expert on the data structure of registered company information. He leads a strong team of specialized developers and a research cooperation in the field of AI supported data analysis with the Technical University of Vienna.
The CEO, amongst other projects, built the largest people-search engine with more than 50 million monthly uniques, operating in 13 countries in 11 languages. He expanded the company from a garage operation to a profitable business within six months and oversaw the sale to a publishing company for EUR 15 million. He has significant experience in building, scaling and operating digital service companies.
The COO held global positions in strategy and planning within Vodafone, Ericsson, Telekom Austria for over 15 years, before founding and building three companies prior to joining kompany. She has extensive experience in designing and operating growth strategies and new business models.
- What’s next for your company?
kompany is currently developing a tool called UBOdiscovery® to support the analysis of the relationship between companies, their shareholders and the ultimate beneficial owner in real- time. The service is based on live data from commercial registers worldwide. Fuelled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the required information is extracted directly from commercial registers and filed company documents and is analysed ‘on the go’. In short, UBOdiscovery® maps company structures in real-time, using audit-proof data within jurisdictions and cross-border.
- How do potential customers and investors get in touch with you?
Customers can reach us via: support@kompany.com
Investors are welcome to contact: office@kompany.com
“The Business Spotlight on…” is a new section at PlanetCompliance that looks at the companies active in the sectors we cover, tells their stories and introduces the solutions to give them a platform to show what they’ve got and who they are. If you want to know more about how you can get featured in this section, contact us at launch@planetcompliance.com or on Twitter at @PlanetComplianc
