Currently, around 17% of bank statements, utility bills, and paychecks used for various purposes like loan applications and KYC regulations are manipulated. Additionally, approximately 15% of company registration certificates submitted globally for opening bank accounts are fraudulent.
Money laundering is also a significant issue, with the United Nations estimating that 2-5% of the world’s GDP is involved in illicit financial activities each year. Furthermore, there is a growing concern regarding automated AI-driven attacks that can create large numbers of fake identities for fraudulent purposes. The financial industry needs a new approach to combat financial crime, especially in light of these evolving threats.
Czech Republic-based Resistant AI, an AI and machine learning security company, has developed state-of-the-art techniques that enable financial services to be protected from manipulation and attack.
Series A extension round
In a recent development, Resistant AI has announced the extension to its Series A funding by raising $11 million. This takes the total funding secured in the round to $27.6 million. The extension round was led by Notion Capital, which backed Griffin and m3ter. This adds to the existing funding from investors, including GV, Index Ventures, Credo Ventures, and Seedcamp.
The new investment builds on Resistant AI’s expansion of its product, team, and geographical presence to meet the growing demand from financial institutions to protect their onboarding and transaction systems from malicious attacks.
Martin Rehak, CEO and Founder of Resistant AI said, “With this investment from Notion Capital we are able to build on this success and bring our solution to more institutions in the face of these increasingly pernicious threats. We are excited to be working with Notion Capital, particularly because of their expertise and track record in successfully growing computer security companies.”
Kamil Mieczakowski, Principal at Notion Capital said, “Security and fintech are 2 of the largest areas of focus for Notion and we love how the Resistant AI proposition ties them together. Synthetic identity fraud has been named the fastest-growing financial crime in the US, with $6bn in total losses to the banking sector in 2021 alone, and the Resistant AI product is the only comprehensive solution out there that moves as fast as the fraudsters do. We’re excited to be working with them so they can meet the growing demand for their solution.”
AI-based protection against financial crimes
Resistant AI was founded in 2019 in Prague by a team with deep expertise in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computer security. The same team was behind Cognitive Security, which was sold to Cisco in 2013.
Its approaches include Document Forensics, which can analyse bank statements, utility bills, payslips, and other digital KYC documents in seconds for signs of forgery or fraud; Transaction Forensics, which overlays existing rules-based AML transaction monitoring systems to provide 5x increases in fincrime investigation productivity; and Identity Forensics, which takes in outputs from various data sources across an organisation.
Resistant AI’s solutions look for anomalies in documents, transactions, and behaviours to provide a 360 degree view of each customer which can up to double the amount of threats detected.
The company’s solutions are already protecting a number of banks, insurers, and fintech companies across the whole customer life cycle, and are being used to detect document forgery, serial fraud, synthetic identities, account takeovers, money laundering, and other evolving risks that threaten financial institutions. Customers include Dun and Bradstreet, Payoneer, Habito, Planet42 and ComplyAdvantage.
Witnessed 4x growth
This investment follows a very successful 2022 where the customer base more than doubled, ARR increased 6x, monthly usage increased 4x YoY. Also, its products were recognised by multiple awards, including winning the ACAMS Digital Crime Fighter of the Year awards twice in a row, winning The Europas Awards, and being listed in the AI Fintech 100 for the second year in a row.
Currently, Resistant AI now has over 80 team members working across offices in Prague, London, Brussels, and New York.
