- Surveillance startup Shield has raised $15 million in a Series C round.
- It aims to boost its AI platform to help institutions monitor employees and detect compliance issues.
- The rise in hybrid working during the pandemic has revealed serious challenges around compliance.
An Israeli startup that uses artificial intelligence to help financial institutions detect market abuse and provide surveillance over their employees has raised $15 million in fresh funds.
Tel Aviv-based Shield, which was launched in 2018, has developed a platform that can spot anomalies in compliance and automate surveillance over “all employee communication channels,” such as
Slack
,
Zoom
, and Teams. The startup’s tech also offers behavioral analysis as well as social media monitoring.
The Series C round was led by Australian financial services firm Macquarie Capital and startup investor OurCrowd, with additional participation from Mindset Ventures, an early-stage VC fund.
Compliance has become an increasingly difficult and costly issue for companies over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the shift to remote and hybrid working has exposed challenges in monitoring.
“The ability to access and understand new and evolving communication channels is increasingly becoming a pain point for organizations, no matter the industry,” said Shiran Weitzman, co-founder and CEO of Shield.
Compliance has long been an expensive exercise for financial firms with the average loss per fraud case tallying at more than $1.5 million, according to data from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an industry body. The median loss per case was closer to $125,000.
Meanwhile, research from legal data firm LexisNexis found the “projected cost of financial crime compliance” in the US and Canada was $49.9 billion in 2021 – up 19% from the previous year.
Shield said it will use the fresh funds to bolster its compliance platform and boost its presence in the US with an office in New York, while expanding its presence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. It said it recently signed a deal with an undisclosed global bank.
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