Global Screening Services (GSS), a London-based regulatory compliance platform that helps financial institutions meet global sanctions obligations, has raised $47 million in a funding round.
The increase comes amid a surge in economic sanctions, with the United States imposing trade restrictions and asset blockades on countries including Russia, China, and Iran.
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Tom Scampion, co-founder and CEO of GSS, previously served as head of financial crime for Deloitte's EMEA division, leaving the firm in 2020 to become general partner at consulting firm AlixPartner. It became. GSS was originally founded there and spun out as an independent entity in 2021.
In fact, the company raised a similar amount of funding last year from major backers, including Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), one of the world's largest banks. GSS has revealed another financial giant as its backer in its latest funding. That is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), with Cynosure Group and AlixPartner participating in the capital injection.
Because of their role in controlling the flow of funds around the world, banks are often on the front lines of sanctions enforcement. But it's not always easy to know who is sending money to whom. In 2019, Standard Chartered was fined $1.1 billion by regulators in the UK and the US for inadequate money laundering controls, including breaches of sanctions against Iran and other countries. Five years earlier, BNP Paribas was fined a hefty $8.9 billion for processing financial transactions with countries subject to U.S. sanctions.
Investors have therefore continued to back compliant companies in recent years, with New York-based Droit and others raising $23 million last year, just after London-based SteelEye secured $21 million in funding.
GSS sells a sanctions review platform to help banks and other financial institutions comply with regulations. These institutions enter transaction data into GSS's cloud-based platform and return alerts when matches are found against a standardized set of sanctions lists from around the world. GSS also “enriches” these lists with additional data points, such as date of birth. , International Maritime Organization (IMO) ship numbers and data from local financial transfer systems in sanctioned countries such as Russia and China.
GSS also provides an “enhanced” list for screening, including companies partially owned by individuals/companies/governments sanctioned by OFAC, the EU, or the UK.
With an additional $47 million in the bank, GSS is now moving from the “development stage” to the fully operational stage, preparing to go live with its first customer.