OakNorth Bank, a leading UK bank that provides fast, flexible and accessible debt financing to growth businesses, today announced its partnership with ComplyAdvantage, the global technology company transforming financial crime detection.
 
This partnership allows OakNorth Bank to offer a seamless onboarding experience to its customers, fully comply with AML regulations and continue its growth journey with confidence that no suspicious activity will go unnoticed.
 
ComplyAdvantage’s technology uses best-in-class machine learning and natural language processing to help regulated organizations manage their risk obligations and prevent financial crime. The company’s proprietary database is derived from millions of data points that provide dynamic, real-time insights across sanctions, watchlists, politically exposed persons, and adverse media.
 
ComplyAdvantage’s suite of financial crime detection tools integrates into OakNorth Bank’s workflow, enabling the bank to screen for risk at onboarding and to monitor entities in real-time throughout the customer lifecycle, including their transaction activity and any adverse media connected to them. This reduces dependence on manual review processes and legacy databases by up to 80% and improves how companies screen and monitor clients and transactions.

"As a fast-growing business we are always looking for ways to innovate, and achieving robust compliance is a key factor in supporting our innovations,” said James Cashmore, Chief Risk Officer at OakNorth Bank.

“In ComplyAdvantage, we have a partner that understands our business objectives and their solutions seamlessly integrate into our systems. We look forward to finding new synergies as we grow our partnership going forward.”

OakNorth Bank was founded in 2015 to address the well-known challenges of securing debt financing from High Street banks. The company funds its lending to businesses via a range of fixed-term, easy-access and notice savings accounts for both retail and business customers. Accounts can be applied for, funded and managed online and via its app.

“ComplyAdvantage was built for high-growth fintechs and complex financial institutions. OakNorth Bank needed a solution that was fundamentally different than anything on the market,” said Vatsa Narasimha, COO of ComplyAdvantage.

“With ComplyAdvantage, OakNorth Bank has a trusted data and financial risk management technology partner that will be able to support them as they scale further. We are proud of the solution we have today and are excited to partner with one of the top digital banks in the world.”

OakNorth Bank has attracted over 140,000 savings customers and has been experiencing rapid growth, with its pre-tax profits increasing by 95% YOY in 2019 to £65.9m.

It is now considered to be one of the most successful digital banks in the world, with performance metrics that rank it amongst the top 1% of banks in developed markets.