News
Bank of Ceylon enhances KYC & KYB with Sikoia
Sikoia is thrilled to announce its new partnership with Bank of Ceylon, designed to streamline their KYC and KYB processes, enhancing efficiency and compliance.
The round was led by MassMutual Ventures, a global venture capital firm with over $1bn AUM, with participation from Earlybird, Seedcamp and Coalition Capital.
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London, 16 February 2023: London-based Fintech Sikoia has successfully raised $6m in seed funding, bringing its total capital raised to over $8.3m, including a pre-seed round from the previous year. This milestone caps an exceptional year for Sikoia, which saw the company grow its international client list, make key senior hires, and generate strong momentum across credit and lending, payments, and international e-commerce.
Sikoia is a category-defining Unified Data Platform (UDP) that centralises client financial and identity data to simplify onboarding and verification, monitoring, and risk evaluation. It is accessible through the Sikoia portal, an intuitive 360° Customer dashboard and decisioning tool for risk and compliance teams, or a comprehensive suite of APIs for developers. Sikoia’s UDP includes access to a growing marketplace of international data partners and compliance services, including credit bureaus, public registries, identity verification, fraud screening, AML screening, and more. Their customers can choose to use their existing providers or expand their capabilities with ready-to-go, turnkey agreements.
Regulated businesses and financial institutions in particular have to manually collect, validate, and verify customer information across siloed sources. This can be time-consuming, costly, and prone to errors - often leading to delays in onboarding new customers and increasing the risk of fraud.
“Besides assessing consumers applying for financial products, many Sikoia customers also onboard and verify international business clients,” said Alexis Rog, Sikoia’s CEO. “They need to assess information from multiple public and private data sources, covering the corporate entity itself as well as the directors, shareholders and associated entities. This often results in poor customer experience and unnecessary operational costs.”
The round was led by MassMutual Ventures, a global venture capital firm with over $1bn AUM, with participation from Coalition Capital and existing investors Earlybird and Seedcamp following-on. Ryan Collins, MMV managing partner, said: “Sikoia’s platform is set to transform financial institutions’ client management throughout the lifecycle – especially onboarding, underwriting and ongoing monitoring – streamlining risk and compliance processes, and measurably improving financial performance. Sikoia's extensive identity and financial data coverage is well-suited to complement and enhance our own business verification efforts. We are delighted to bring Sikoia to the MassMutual Ventures ecosystem. “
“Last year has been an exciting and transformative year for us. We scaled up the team, expanded our platform capabilities, and supported our ever-growing list of customers and marketplace partners. We’re excited to continue delivering on our ambitious targets for 2023 and beyond,” said Sikoia CEO, Alexis Rog. “This capital will help Sikoia accelerate our international expansion, deliver further data coverage and workflow automation, and develop unique technology to help our clients deliver exceptional client experiences.”
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Sikoia is a category-defining Unified Data Platform (UDP) and orchestration layer that enriches and aggregates customer data from disparate sources and systems to automate compliance and risk processes, such as customer onboarding and verification, or portfolio monitoring. Client engagement and risk operations teams use the Sikoia Portal to access a fully-enriched, 360° view of the customer, and power operational efficiencies, delivering faster decisioning and powering best-in-class customer experiences. For more information, visit www.sikoia.com
MassMutual Ventures (MMV) is a multistage global venture capital firm investing in financial technology, enterprise SaaS, digital health, climate technology and cybersecurity companies. With teams based in Boston, Singapore, and London, MMV manages over $1 billion in investment capital across the globe. We help accelerate the growth of the companies we partner with by providing capital, connections and advice. With our deep expertise and extensive Fortune 500 network, MMV helps entrepreneurs build compelling and scalable companies of value. For more information, visit www.massmutualventures.com
Earlybird Venture Capital focuses on European technology companies. Founded in 1997, Earlybird identifies and backs exceptional early-stage companies on a pan-European basis and supports them through their growth and development phases – providing financial resources, strategic support, plus access to an international network and capital markets. Earlybird invests out of a family of independently-managed funds. Flagship funds with early-stage focus include Digital West (Western Europe), Digital East (Emerging Europe), and Health. Newer funds Earlybird-X (pre-seed in Western Europe & university spinoffs) and Growth Opportunities (a pan-Earlybird growth fund) offer even more agility. With €2 billion under management across all fund streams, 8 IPOs, and 31 trade sales, Earlybird is one of Europe’s most established and active venture capital firms. For more information, visit www.earlybird.com
Seedcamp is Europe's seed fund, identifying and investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. The Seedcamp Nation includes over 450 startups building breakout businesses that change the way people live, interact, and consume and includes publicly listed UiPath, Wise, and unicorns Revolut, Hopin, Sorare, Pleo, wefox, Grover and viz.ai, along with fast-growing businesses such as Ramp, THIS, Maze and Synthesia. Seedcamp fast-tracks a founder's vision and creates value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support, and a global network built upon more than a decade's experience backing exceptional talent. For more information, visit www.seedcamp.com
Sikoia Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an Account Information Service Provider (AISP) under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (FRN: 942979) and as a credit reference provider (FRN: 942616). Sikoia Ltd is a credit broker and not a lender. Credit is subject to status.
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