11 Feb 2021

Auckland compliance start-up eyes emerging markets

2:43 pm on 11 February 2021

An Auckland start-up has its eyes set on reducing the cost of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance in emerging markets.

Avid AML founders Daniel Rogers and Andrew Weston.

Avid AML founders Daniel Rogers and Andrew Weston. Photo: Supplied

Avid AML was founded in 2019 and provides compliance software for small to medium sized businesses to monitor transactions, verify customers identities and detect any anomalies.

The company had a presence in New Zealand and Australia but was targeting Pakistan, South East Asia and North Africa because the AML compliance markets there had not yet matured, it said.

"What we want to be able to do is provide a service to regions where technical skills as well as staffing skills aren't readily available," Avid AML co-founder Daniel Rogers said.

"If we're going to make sure that the market is complying or coming up the curve on AML, we need to make sure that's the whole market."

He said its clients would be lawyers, accountants, people who work in real estate and small finance firms.

The company had already partnered with a consulting firm in Pakistan, Transformation Professionals, as well the Australian software company, Data Zoo, which sells customer verification tools.

Rogers said that he and the firm's other co-founder, Andrew Weston, had put their own money into the company to get it off the ground.

He said the firm was expanding into emerging markets quite quickly and it was now looking to raise $2 million to fund its growth.

"We're looking for an investor that can really add value to the organisation itself.

"So it's not necessarily just the money that we're looking for, we're looking for someone with technical capabilities, someone who can add value to the organisation."

Avid AML's software was available to businesses on a monthly subscription basis.