Tech
Warburg Pincus just backed a startup that helps detect financial crime. Here’s an exclusive look at the pitch deck it used to raise the $153 million round.
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- Contextual data startup Quantexa has raised $153 million in Series D funding.
- The round was led by major New York private equity fund Warburg Pincus.
- Quantexa claims to have grown 108% year-on-year in part due to rising financial crime.
A contextual data startup that helps some of the world’s biggest banks tackle financial crime has raised $153 million.
London-based Quantexa, which was founded in 2016, deploys automation at financial firms to address issues around compliance, anti-money laundering, and fraud.
The company, which counts the likes of HSBC, Danske Bank, and Standard Chartered among its customers, raised the funds in a Series D round led by New York private equity investor Warburg Pincus.
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Vishal Marria, Quantexa chief executive, said the pandemic had proven to be a boon for the company, as the adoption of digital solutions accelerated and financial crime increased.
“Our subscriptions and user numbers have doubled over the past year because of increasing fraud and new patterns of money laundering,” Marria told Insider.
“We’ve seen an increase in demand from clients for our products because of their acceleration to digital from COVID-19.”
The company, which claims to have grown by 108% year-on-year, offers a range of products to help organizations bring together siloed or disconnected data sets and then applies machine learning and AI to solve use cases like anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud.
In addition to financial services, Quantexa also deploys its tech in government agencies to improve decision-making, and also in the insurance and communications industries.
Global authorities issued $13.74 billion in AML fines as of October 2020, per Finbold’s 2020 bank fines report. Since the Panama Papers leak in 2016, governments and financial institutions have been under increasing pressure to crack down on illegal and fraudulent activity.
Marria compares the company’s contextual data approach to buying a house.
“You wouldn’t decide on buying a house just by looking through the letter box,” he said. “You would do a thorough tour of the interior and then also consider external factors like schools, crime rate, places to eat, this is the context we are providing value on for customers by aggregating those big data sets in a scalable and efficient way.”
Quantexa began its fundraising process at the beginning of June. Marria said the process being done over video was useful to help sieve out time wasters in the process.
The startup also raised $65 million last July with Marria adding: “If you’d told me pre-COVID-19 that we’d have done two investment rounds over Zoom I would have laughed.”
The Series D round was led by New York private equity giant Warburg Pincus with involvement from existing investors such as Dawn Capital, AlbionVC, Evolution Equity Partners, HSBC, ABN AMRO Ventures and British Patient Capital.
Quantexa declined to comment on valuation but the round is believed to be close to but not yet at unicorn status.
Funding will go towards continuing Quantexa’s growth beyond financial services and into winning government contracts as well as geographical expansion into the Middle East and Africa as well as Japan. The startup has around 350 full time employees across offices in Europe, Asia, and North America.
Check out Quantexa’s (partly redacted) pitch deck:
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