Sikoia, a London-based fintech startup that centralises customer financial and identity data to simplify onboarding, verification, monitoring and risk assessment, has raised $6M in a seed funding round.
The investment was led by US-based VC firm MassMutual Ventures (that also backed Zluri recently), with participation from Coalition Capital and existing investors Germany-based Earlybird and European seed-stage venture capital fund, headquartered in London, Seedcamp.
The latest round brings the total funding raised to $8.3M.
The majority of regulated businesses and financial institutions manually collect, validate, and verify customer information across siloed sources. It can be time-consuming, costly, and prone to errors, often leading to delays in onboarding new customers and increasing the risk of fraud.
Consequently, this UK startup founded by an ex-SoftBank Vision Fund investor aims to change it by building a unified data layer.
“Besides assessing consumers applying for financial products, many Sikoia customers also onboard and verify international business clients,” says 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.”
Streamlines compliance and risk processes
Founded by Alexis Rog, Stephen Simmons, and Alastair Bulger, Sikoia is a Unified Data Platform (UDP) that centralises client financial and identity data to simplify onboarding and verification, monitoring, and risk evaluation.
The data can be accessed through the Sikoia portal, a 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.
“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,” says 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.”
