A Singapore-based artificial intelligence start-up that combats money laundering and terrorism financing has won the top spot at the RegTech Association Australia’s inaugural pitch fest which attracted global participation.
Silent Eight bagged the main prize, edging out 10 finalists with roots from the US, UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
The pitch fest was held in conjunction with the RegTech Association’s maiden #ACCELERATE RegTech 2018 event in Sydney recently. It aimed to showcase innovative solutions where regulatory technology (RegTech) could be used to address regulatory challenges and problems.
Three companies scored honourable mentions for their offerings:
- Auraya, a specialist biometric voice verification technology developer
- Quantexa, a big data and analytics firm
- Registry Direct, a platform to streamline share registry management
Other finalists included Atlas NLP, Audeamus Risk, Dotd, enteruptors, Pax Republic, RegComp and TRAction FinTech.
What does this mean for Silent Eight?
Silent Eight CEO Martin Markiewicz said the company was extremely honoured to receive the RegTech Association’s #ACCELERATE RegTech pitch fest award.
“This award endorses our proven proposition in helping financial institutions to leverage AI to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
“We strongly believe that innovation in AI technology has a transformative effect on banking services and we look forward to working closely with banks in Australia so they can benefit from our powerful technology,” Mr Markiewicz said.
RegTech Association chair Julian Fenwick congratulated Silent Eight on its win and commended all pitch fest finalists for their entries.
“We had tremendous interest from RegTechs around the world to come to Sydney and pitch their business to potential customers – Australia’s banking sector which contributes $140 billion to GDP each year,” Mr Fenwick said.
“These were world-class propositions that can address an ever-growing problem. Juniper Research predicts that RegTech spending globally will hit approximately US$76 billion in 2022, up from around US$11 billion in 2017, as banks try to avoid costly regulatory fines.
“It’s clear that there are immense opportunities for RegTechs to help financial institutions meet their regulatory obligations with the speed, accuracy and transparency that stakeholders expect,” Mr Fenwick said.
Mr Fenwick thanked pitch fest judges Michelle Deaker of One Ventures, Melissa Widner from NAB Ventures, Deloitte’s Mandy Green and David Michayluk from the University of Technology Sydney Business School.
