During the past few years, financial crime, especially fraud, has seen a meteoric rise due to the explosive growth of the fintech industry.
Whilst international criminal organisations collaborate consistently, financial institutions mostly lack the functionality to securely exchange information on suspicious activity – operating in silos, they only have a partial view of potential criminal activity. This is where Estonian regtech firm Salv, which combats financial crimes, comes into play.
With participation from German G+D Ventures and existing investors, the Tallinn-based company has secured €4 million in a seed funding round extension led by a New York-based venture capital firm that specialises in providing seed-stage and early-stage funding to technology companies – ffVC and also invested in HoneyBee recently. To date, Salv has raised €7M in venture capital investments.
Taavi Tamkivi, CEO and co-founder of Salv, comments, “The digitalisation of the financial industry has resulted in an avalanche of financial crime, and the numbers are only projected to grow. Our collaborative-crime fighting platform, Salv Bridge, is proven effective against money laundering, sanctions, and fraud. The funds allow us to add functionality to our modular AML toolset and expand to new markets, helping more companies improve their crime-fighting measures and thereby protect their end-customers.”
Financial crime prevention
Founded in 2018 by former Wise and Skype employees including Taavi Tamkivi (CEO), Jeff McClelland (COO), and Sergei Rumjantsev (CTO), Salv offering entails all the necessary AML (Anti Money Laundering) functionality for financial services companies, such as automatically identifying and prioritising suspicious activity and processing vast amounts of data in real-time.
By leveraging the collective power of its network, Salv Bridge’s collaborative crime-fighting platform minimises non-compliance and financial crime. As a result, it helps network members solve fraud cases in minutes, not days.
Additionally, the company has 60+ employees, including former Skype and Wise employees with financial crime fighting experience.
Andres Kitter, Deputy CEO of LHV UK, said, “LHV Bank took part in the Bridge pilot and saw excellent results in a short timeframe – authorised push payment fraud cases dropped significantly cross the network. In the UK, where we process payment volumes worth hundreds of millions every day, Salv’s solutions allow us real-time communication with other institutions within the network and provide us with tools to apply effective countermeasures to constantly changing patterns of financial crime.”
Mateusz Zawistowski, Managing Director of ffVC, commented on their investment, “We invested in a working solution that has already proven effective against financial crime. For us, an important element was that 21 financial institutions in Europe have already joined the collaborative crime-fighting network and collectively solved almost 7000 investigations, helping to prevent €6-7m from reaching criminals. We see a huge potential for geographical expansion and more financial institutions joining the network to improve compliance and crime-fighting capabilities.
