News
Signicat Acquires UK-based Anti-Fraud and Identity Technology Company Sphonic
April 2022 by Marc Jacob
Signicat is acquiring all shares in the UK-headquartered anti-fraud company Sphonic for an undisclosed sum. Existing management shareholders will reinvest a substantial part of the consideration into Signicat.
Signicat has been growing rapidly in the last years, both organically and through acquisitions. The digital identity pioneer aims to be a single provider for the entire digital identity and anti-financial crime lifecycle across Europe. This includes identity solutions to support customer onboarding, authentication, e-signing, fraud management and risk management. Since 2019 Signicat has acquired five companies, including in the last year mobile authentication company Encap, electronic signing provider Dokobit, and identity proofing innovator Electronic IDentification.
Sphonic was founded in London in 2012 and is a pioneer in automating compliance decision processes. The company has a unique track record of helping financial services, fintechs, gaming operators and the payments ecosystem manage their client onboardings and risk assessments including activities such as credit checks, affordability checks, and other compliance checks. With this acquisition, Signicat will be able to extend its leading existing identity platform with Sphonic’s know your customer (KYC), know your business (KYB) and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions.
Sphonic’s primary product, Workflow Manager, enables clients to customise, automate and manage compliance workflows seamlessly. Sphonic leverages around 100 of the world’s leading data and technology providers allowing banks and other institutions to access the best-in-breed technologies via a single API. The solution improves the quality of data and increases end-user insights that the customers can use to make an onboarding decision. It also reduces a client’s customer onboarding time from days to seconds and prevents customer drop-off rates. It prevents fraud and provides an experience fit for the digital age.
Sphonic has recently expanded its solution offering with a highly scalable real-time fraud & AML transaction monitoring solution in addition to a case management system that also offers tools for visualising identity, fraud and AML data.
Sphonic will continue as a separate business entity, named “Sphonic, a Signicat company”, for the short term, and then be fully integrated into Signicat. The Sphonic management team will form part of Signicat’s wider senior management team and Andy Lee will also take on the role as Signiant’s Signicat’s UK Country Manager.
