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OakNorth Bank, leading UK bank, partners with innovative AML provider, ComplyAdvantage

OakNorth Bank, a leading UK bank that provides fast, flexible and accessible debt financing to growth businesses, today announced its partnership with ComplyAdvantage, the global technology company transforming financial crime detection.

This partnership allows OakNorth Bank to offer a seamless onboarding experience to its customers, fully comply with AML regulations and continue its growth journey with confidence that no suspicious activity will go unnoticed.

ComplyAdvantage’s technology uses best-in-class machine learning and natural language processing to help regulated organizations manage their risk obligations and prevent financial crime. The company’s proprietary database is derived from millions of data points that provide dynamic, real-time insights across sanctions, watchlists, politically exposed persons, and adverse media.

ComplyAdvantage’s suite of financial crime detection tools integrates into OakNorth Bank’s workflow, enabling the bank to screen for risk at onboarding and to monitor entities in real-time throughout the customer lifecycle, including their transaction activity and any adverse media connected to them. This reduces dependence on manual review processes and legacy databases by up to 80% and improves how companies screen and monitor clients and transactions.

As a fast-growing business we are always looking for ways to innovate, and achieving robust compliance is a key factor in supporting our innovations” James Cashmore, Chief Risk Officer at OakNorth Bank. “In ComplyAdvantage, we have a partner that understands our business objectives and their solutions seamlessly integrate into our systems. We look forward to finding new synergies as we grow our partnership going forward.”

OakNorth Bank was founded in 2015 to address the well-known challenges of securing debt financing from High Street banks. The company funds its lending to businesses via a range of fixed-term, easy-access and notice savings accounts for both retail and business customers. Accounts can be applied for, funded and managed online and via its app.

“ComplyAdvantage was built for high-growth fintechs and complex financial institutions. OakNorth Bank needed a solution that was fundamentally different than anything on the market,” said Vatsa Narasimha, COO of ComplyAdvantage. “With ComplyAdvantage, OakNorth Bank has a trusted data and financial risk management technology partner that will be able to support them as they scale further. We are proud of the solution we have today and are excited to partner with one of the top digital banks in the world.”

OakNorth Bank has attracted over 140,000 savings customers and has been experiencing rapid growth, with its pre-tax profits increasing by 95% YOY in 2019 to £65.9m. It is now considered to be one of the most successful digital banks in the world, with performance metrics that rank it amongst the top 1% of banks in developed markets.

About OakNorth Bank plc

OakNorth Bank provides fast, flexible and accessible debt finance (from £500k to £50m) to fast-growth businesses and established property developers/ investors. It has debt finance teams in London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and East Anglia.

Since its launch, the bank has:

  • Lent over £4.5bn, directly helping with the creation of 15,000 new homes and over 19,000 new jobs in the UK;
  • Raised deposits from c.144,000 savers;
  • Supported several hundred businesses across the UK with the debt finance to pursue their growth ambitions.

It is authorized by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority.

Visit www.oaknorth.co.uk for more information.

About ComplyAdvantage

ComplyAdvantage is the financial industry’s leading source of AI-driven financial crime risk data and detection technology. ComplyAdvantage’s mission is to neutralize the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption, and other financial crime. More than 500 enterprises in 75 countries rely on ComplyAdvantage to understand the risk of who they’re doing business with through the world’s only global, real-time database of people and companies. The company actively identifies tens of thousands of risk events from millions of structured and unstructured data points every single day. ComplyAdvantage has four global hubs located in New York, London, Singapore and Cluj-Napoca and is backed by Ontario Teachers’, Index Ventures and Balderton Capital. Learn more at complyadvantage.com.