London fintech crime prevention startup raises £150k in seed round

A London based financial crime intelligence startup has raised £150k in a pre-seed funding round from SFC Capital.

Schwarzthal Tech uses AI to fight financial crime by gathering publicly available information and building an individual’s network to support investigations into potential criminals.

The firm will use the funds to further develop the platform, build a marketing team as well as filing for an intellectual property patent on their “Know your Network” methodology.

Know Your customer processes take place when a bank or financial institution onboards a new client and are aimed at assessing the level of potential risk the customer could pose. The goal prevent banks from storing money resulting from criminal activity, including mob activity, terrorism or drug trafficking.

However, the globalisation of financial crime means that it rarely involves only one individual or company, which is why knowing not only your client but also their network has become increasingly important for financial institutions across the world.

Schwarzthal Tech’s know your network (KYN) methodology introduces a multi-dimensional view of a clients’ connections to give financial institutions a holistic risk assessment.

It’s AI-driven platform aims to provide better and faster tools for investigators and compliance professionals and to democratise the fight against financial crime. The platform’s technology uses algorithms to enable users to assess potential customers’ connections with criminal or suspicious networks and perform in depth assessment.

Schwarzthal Tech’s platform gathers publicly available information in different languages across databases globally - political exposure and sanctions list, company registries, social media, etc. - to build an individual’s network and create a visual presentation of the network to present to the customer.

Users are then able to assess potential customers’ connections with criminal or suspicious networks and perform in depth assessment. Furthermore, the platform’s AI is trained to connect information found on databases, media and other public sources to establish connections on an ongoing basis and keep the networks updated.