Let’s start with a brief introduction, what can you tell us about Arctic Intelligence and your RegTech offering?
Arctic Intelligence has innovated the enterprise risk assessment process by developing enterprise software by industry experts for the financial services sector and other regulated entities. Arctic focuses on the governance aspect of financial crime in areas including anti-money laundering / counter terrorism financing, anti-bribery and corruption, sanctions, fraud and other risk domains.
What are some of the biggest challenges your solutions you solve for your clients?
Breaching AML regulation can result in hefty fines and reputational damage which can be hard to recover from. However, Arctic Intelligence helps clients protect their reputation and their balance sheet while saving time and resource. Our software provides process efficiency and effectiveness to provide our clients with peace of mind across additional risk areas such as anti-bribery and corruption, sanctions, fraud with more risk domains such as modern slavery, human trafficking and wildlife trafficking to follow.
Could you give us a use case of why a client came to you and how they are using your solution to solve their particular challenge?
Often, clients will approach Arctic Intelligence because they are concerned about not having the right systems in place to pass an AML/CTF audit by a regulator. Our solutions provide a smart workflow on our platform which provided a high level of confidence in their financial crime risk management processes and procedures.
Clients will either approach us pro-actively, to ensure they have the right systems in place to do things right in the first instance. We helped by training them on our software, which allows for effective documented risk management. They now have a high level of confidence in their processes and procedures. Whilst others may contact us re-actively after they have identified or experienced a problem. For example, a client wanted to have an auditable history of assessing its exposure and risk assessments around Bribery & Corruption. We deployed our SAAS which provided a simple and effective solution.
How would you describe the differences between your offering from others in your RegTech category?
Arctic Intelligence’s software is designed by industry professionals, for industry professionals. Replacing the manual and archaic use of spreadsheets with smart workflow solution that is future-proofed. Therefore, you get the combined intelligence of industry professionals merged into a seamless technology platform. And using a prompted workflow means there is less room for errors when compared to a spreadsheet. We provide an audit trail, action and issues tracking, breach and incident reporting, ongoing notifications of AML regulatory changes and enterprise risk analytics which gives you defendable output for regulators and your board. Our customers have experienced increased efficiencies completing their risk assessments, easily demonstrate compliance with documentation and reporting, peace of mind knowing our solution is updated as per compliance obligations, risks and technology evolves, broader enterprise and entity level views of their risks all at an affordable cost. Depending on their requirements, our technology can help provide a pragmatic approach to help solve for the challenges many regulated businesses face today.
What advice would you give to decision makers when choosing a RegTech solution such as the ones your offer?
Our software is purpose-built to help businesses with their enterprise level risk management. By replacing spreadsheets, which is currently the risk assessment solution of choice, with RegTech, our customers can identify, assess, manage, and mitigate risks effectively using a simple and seamless workflow. A digital problem requires a digital solution, and with many emerging financial crime issues arising it is important to keep up to date with the latest technology. We provide a cost-effective solution for all businesses regardless of size as we know the cost of non-compliance is far greater regarding a financial and a social impact sense.
Due to the global pandemic a lot has changed in the world in the last year. How has your company changed in the in the last 12 months?
The first few months, the world seemed to stand still as we were in unchartered waters. However, financial crime is also a global issue and whilst the eyes were on the pandemic, criminals were adapting to the new environment. For regulated businesses, staying vigilant is the only option and we saw activity pick up in the second half of 2020. As a technology provider, remote working conditions was a simple and natural progression for Arctic Intelligence.
Can you tell us about some of your most recent achievements or milestones you’ve reached?
Each year Arctic Intelligence achieves several accolades and more recently was awarded RegTech Exporter of the Year and RegTech of the Year with the RegTech Association. We are very honoured to also announce that after 3 years since launching our first solution, our technology is used in 8 countries and we have over 200 clients.
What is drives you as company what is Arctic’s long term vision?
As a business, we are very passionate about delivering cost-effective and seamless solutions to help regulated entities adhere to financial crime compliance obligations. Our contributions to simplifying the risk assessment process help to combat the societal impacts of financial crime. This means that our solutions evolve for the needs of our clients so our product innovation team are busy making regular enhancements. Soon we will introduce more risk domain content such as Human Trafficking, Wildlife Trafficking and Modern Slavery. All areas very close to our hearts.
What are some of the important developments you are seeing in the RegTech industry?
Firstly, it is great to see greater awareness of RegTech globally and greater collaboration between regulators, regulated entities and RegTech providers. This helps inform regulated entities of the capabilities available to them with many not being aware that purpose-built workflow platforms can replace manual spreadsheet-based processes.
The increased collaboration and coordination through RegTech associations is highlighting how many RegTech providers there are. The financial crime risk area has many RegTech providers trying to solve different parts of the problem. For us at Arctic, we have not seen many other enterprise risk assessment solutions available in market. Many focus on KYC, identity verification and transaction monitoring rather than overall business risk.
Technology is also advancing quickly and solutions are becoming more innovative. As an example, we have recently been recognised for the global architecture of our leading financial crime risk management platform which allows our global clients to store their data within their region, whilst all accessing via a single application instance – a design that has not yet been widely adopted so we are proud to be leading the thinking on how to solve those sorts of customer challenges.
What’s next for Arctic Intelligence
Arctic’s biggest competitor is a spreadsheet, our solutions have gained interest across Europe and North America and naturally we are focusing our efforts into scaling in those regions. To complement this, we are also evolving our available content for enterprise-wide risk assessments rapidly to cover additional financial crime topics. Areas such as Modern Slavery, Human Trafficking and Wildlife Trafficking are growing concerns in those regions so we are continuing to adapt to market needs.
Why should I use Arctic Intelligence to help solve my AML / CTF requirements?
Efficiency: Fixed methodology, out-of-the-box. faster than using spreadsheets
Auditability: our software provides a history of your assessments and programs ready for regulator audit
Reliability: the software has been built by industry experts, for industry experts. Our 200+ clients in 8 countries are regularly providing us with feedback, as well as a network of Australia’s leading AML consultants
Cloud Based: Access securely from anywhere
Continuous Monitoring: Country Risk, Regulatory Updates: Continuous Monitoring of these considerations and alerts provided to you when something changes, so that you can rest easy at night
What’s the best way for potential clients or investors to get in touch with you? Visit our website, or drop us an email at info@arctic-intelligence.com