Kiwi system fights money launderers
The global crackdown on money laundering has created a big opportunity for one New Zealand technology start-up.
‘‘This is a globally scalable business,’’ said Milan Cooper, one of the three founders of First AML, which helps real estate agents, lawyers, and accountants to avoid unwittingly taking on the likes of crooks, drug dealers and despots as clients.
The company has just secured $2.5 million from investors to take its automated customer-vetting systems global.
Those investors include Chris Heaslip and Eliot Crowther, the cofounders of Pushpay, a $1 billion technology business that helps charities around the world accept mobile donations. The global crackdown on money laundering has dented the reputations and wallets of many banks and financial services companies including the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (the owner of ASB), Britain’s HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank, and America’s US Bancorp.
First AML was formed following the ramp-up of anti-money laundering laws in New Zealand, which have expanded to include real estate agents, lawyers and accountants.
But while it had won clients, Cooper said: ‘‘We needed capital to scale this in New Zealand, Australia and beyond.’’
Cooper said First AML was the first start-up Heaslip had invested in since stepping down earlier this year as chief executive of Seattle-based Pushpay, which he founded in Auckland with Eliot Crowther in 2011.
He believed Heaslip’s experience would help First AML in its push to expand.
‘‘We are excited to be partnering with First AML to help scale the company with many of the lessons we learned running Pushpay,’’ said Heaslip.
The big sell for First AML’s clients was that its automated system made checking prospective customers weren’t crooks faster, and more reliable.
‘‘Having been an accountant myself, I can empathise with the frustration the additional administrative burden weighing on companies needing to comply with the new regulations,’’ said Heaslip.
The company initially launched with seed backing from the Icehouse Ventures Flux Accelerator.
Cooper’s cofounders were Bion Behdin and Chris Caigou, who were working as corporate bankers when New Zealand first began cranking up its anti-money laundering regulation in 2013.
Cooper hoped to build what is sometimes referred to as an invisible exporter creating wealth for New Zealand by exporting services. Some back office service providers from New Zealand have hit the big time, and created millionaires on these shores.
They include the FNZ fintech business which created many New Zealand millionaires when Al Gore’s investment company bought a stake in it in 2018.
FNZ provided services for big fund managers around the world, and at the time the deal was done, it had over $670b in assets under administration held by around 5 million customers of some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including Standard Life Aberdeen, Santander, Lloyds Bank, Vanguard, Generali, Barclays, Quilter, UOB, Aviva, Zurich, UBS, and BNZ.