Maven leads £3.5 million investment in Contego Fraud Solutions

Maven has led a £3.5 million investment in Contego Fraud Solutions (now known as NorthRow), to support the continued growth of the business through new product and market development. The transaction is being jointly funded by Maven and NVM Private Equity, which are investing £1.8 million and £1.5 million respectively, alongside £0.2 million being committed by existing investors.

Contego provides an automated compliance solution across a wide range of industries, helping organisations in the property, banking, financial services and public sectors to gain a full understanding of their customers and employees by automating onboarding, monitoring and data enrichment processes, including providing complex, real-time compliance and fraud checks. Its comprehensive software platform enables customers to improve the operational efficiency of their compliance processes, and minimise operational costs, helping to reduce risk when dealing with people, companies and identity documents. Contego performs a wide range of screening, verification and vetting assessments including: Know Your Customer (KYC); Anti Money Laundering (AML); Right to Work checks; Right to Rent checks and Counter-Party Risk Management.

The company operates in an attractive niche of the Regulatory Technology (“RegTech”) market which is estimated to be worth US$2 billion globally and is expected to grow at over 14% per annum. Demand is being driven by additional regulation, such as GDPR and MiFID II in the UK, and by increased enforcement that is creating additional complexity and operational costs for businesses, as well as significantly raising the risk of financial penalties and reputational damage.

Contego was founded in Oxfordshire by CEO Adrian Black in 2010 with a focus on identity and fraud prevention and has recently become established in the City of London. In 2016 Contego acquired proprietary technology conceived by specialist immigration law firm Davison Morris and offers an integrated enterprise solution recognised as an industry leader.

Melanie Goward, Investment Director at Maven said: We are delighted to lead the fundraising to support Contego’s continued growth and product development. Contego has a strong business model and has already proven its reputation for developing market leading products and solutions, as well as its ability to successfully enter and grow its presence in new markets. We have every confidence that the highly experienced management team, led by Adrian Black, will be able to deliver the growth that our investors have come to expect from Maven. We look forward to working with Adrian over the coming years to achieve this.”

Adrian Black, CEO of Contego commented: “Given increased regulatory pressures and the significant benefits our platform has demonstrated with clients to date, we are pleased to receive investment from Maven and NVM that allows us to expand our operations to support customer demand and new partnerships. We know that clients value being able to tailor our platform to perform complex checks for a variety of scenarios. They can choose from the widest range of available data, seamlessly integrating into their existing processes, backed by high levels of security, robustness and availability. We will be using this funding to continue to expand our capabilities, driven by the evolving needs of clients who also see Contego as their strategic innovation partner of choice.”