A consortium of top US, European and UK banks have backed a $24 million Series B round in operational risk network Acin.
The consortium of banks comprise JPMorgan, Citi, BNP Paribas, Barclays, and Lloyds Banking Group.
The funding round was also supported by existing investors Notion Capital, Talis Capital and Fitch Ventures.
The firm currently counts double-digit Tier 1 banks as clients, using its network to quantify their operational and non-financial risk and controls through a standardised, industry-wide inventory. The net result promises significant balance sheet benefits by reducing the operational risk capital that banks are required to hold in the future
Paul Ford, CEO and founder of Acin, commentes: "Acin was conceived to make the industry safer, by enabling risk control content to be transformed into data and shared collaboratively, through anonymised benchmarking and sharing of best practice. This investment demonstrates that the market shares our vision of transforming risk management with data across the entire financial sector. This strategic consortium is a testament to the shared vision of banks and a strong signal that there is a shared commitment to addressing operational risk from leaders within the industry."
Kirsy Rutter, fintech investment director at Lloyds, says: "Our investment in Acin, a leader in risk and control management, demonstrates our commitment through our new fintech investment team to invest in companies that will enhance the Group's data and technology capabilities. Working together, we will be able to use the Acin platform to benchmark our control frameworks and deliver greater data-led risk management across the Group."
Ryan Hayward, head of strategic investment, Europe & Asia, Barclays, adds: "A data driven approach to operational risk could be transformative in driving consistency across different areas of risk. Acin's product offering enables businesses to take a more holistic and objective view of exposure relative to the market, which supports the industry in increasing safety in global financial markets."
Notes to Editors
About Acin
Founded in 2018, the Acin platform is the defining global operational risk network for connecting and quantifying data from the world's largest financial institutions.
Acin's data analytic capabilities reveal gaps, duplication, and granular areas of weakness, enabling faster remediation at lower costs for completeness and optimised operations. This insight gives member firms exponentially deeper insights across their risk management landscape and against peer best practices.
Acin is making the financial services sector safer, delivering prioritisation and acceleration of value to transformation and simplification programmes, plus ongoing dynamic risk management value across all three lines of defence, enabling significant operational cost savings. Combined with substantial contributions to loss/penalty avoidance and the ability to evidence industry comparison and progress towards stated goals, reinvigorated discussions are now possible at both board and regulator level around residual risk and capital allocation.
Acin has achieved global industry recognition, including Risk.net's OpRisk Innovation of the Year 2022 (second year in a row), Best ESG Risk Data Provider 2022, FS Tech Awards Risk Management Software of the Year 2021, and was named one of the most innovative regtech companies in 2019 and 2020.