Simplifying client onboarding and risk evaluation, Sikoia raises $6 million

London-based Sikoia (not to be confused with Sequoia, although you’d be forgiven in the pronunciation) has raised $6 million in a seed round led by MassMutual Ventures (MMV) with Coalition Capital and existing investors Earlybird and Seedcamp doubling down on their commitment.

Surveying the increasingly fragmented and often confusing fintech service provider landscape, Sikoia’s mission is to help companies make better use of the data already available to them. 

By unifying third-party data and APIs and combining automated workflows with a series of detailed analytics, Sikoia promises faster decision-making capabilities, increased efficiency, and reduced regulatory risk.

The new capital brings Sikoia’s total raised to $8.3 million following a pre-seed round that was announced in late August of 2021. According to Sikoia CEO, co-founder, and ex-SoftBank Vision Fund investor, Alexis Rog, the new influx, “will help Sikoia accelerate our international expansion, deliver further data coverage and workflow automation, and develop unique technology to help our clients deliver exceptional client experiences.”

With regulated businesses and financial institutions in particular having to manually collect, validate, and verify customer information across siloed sources, the process can be time-consuming, costly, and prone to errors - often leading to delays in onboarding new customers and increasing the risk of fraud. And therein lies precisely the problem Sikoia is addressing.

“Besides assessing consumers applying for financial products, many Sikoia customers also onboard and verify international business clients,” explained Rog. “They need to assess information from multiple public and private data sources, covering the corporate entity itself as well as the directors, shareholders and associated entities. This often results in poor customer experience and unnecessary operational costs.”