RegTech Firm Ascent Raises $19.3 Million in Series B Funding Round to Expand Compliance Automation Solution

Ascent, an AI-driven solution that helps customers automate regulatory compliance, announced today the closing of its Series B funding round of $19.3 million. The round was led by Drive Capital and includes investments from global banks ING and Wells Fargo, Series A investor lead Alsop Louie, and Series A participant The University of Chicago. Now entering its fourth year of operations, Ascent will use this round to fuel the continued growth of its team, product, and brand awareness in the financial compliance space.

“Keeping up with regulation is mission-critical for businesses,” said Brian Clark, Founder and CEO of Ascent. “While digital transformation of the enterprise is happening everywhere, compliance has been largely left behind, which is unthinkable considering the risk involved in compliance work. We are thrilled to partner with our Series B investors to help customers achieve certainty in their compliance operations, and we’re excited to advance Ascent’s mission to reduce the cost of compliance and protect the rule of law.”

Ascent’s proprietary RegulationAI™ processes and analyses regulatory text, doing automatically what takes individual Compliance Officers, consultants, and lawyers hundreds of hours to accomplish manually.

By delivering customers actual regulatory knowledge in the form of a dynamic obligations register—in other words, the obligations and regulatory changes that apply specifically to their business—Ascent dramatically reduces the mundane and error-prone manual efforts of regulatory research and analysis that permeate the industry today.

Ascent is actively exploring partnerships with government, risk management, and compliance (GRC) solutions with the ultimate goal of helping its customers achieve end-to-end compliance.

“The ‘RegTech boom’ of the past few years is evidence of the pressing need for innovation in not only financial services, but in every regulated industry,” said Andy Jenks, Partner at Drive Capital. “We’re proud to support the Ascent team as they enhance their solutions and continue pioneering in an industry hungry for progress.”

Built using sophisticated machine learning and natural language processing technologies, Ascent’s groundbreaking solution helps businesses mitigate their regulatory and reputational risk while often obtaining seven and eight figure compliance savings for its customers.

Benoit Legrand, CEO of ING Ventures and Chief Innovation Officer of ING, says: “As the regulatory environment becomes increasingly demanding, so is the pressure on firms to remain compliant. In order to keep up with this ever-changing landscape and help relieve the mounting strain on resources, the financial services sector is continuously looking for more automated, intelligent and cost-effective ways to manage compliance. ING is keen to support innovative and visionary firms, such as Ascent, which will play an essential role in shaping the industry’s future.”

Ascent announced last month that major U.K. regulations – namely the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) — are now available on the Ascent platform, accelerating the company’s expansion into the U.K. market. Ascent is currently engaged with the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN) in a cross-border pilot that seeks to analyse the similarities and differences of a firm’s obligations across jurisdictions. With a rapidly growing team based in Chicago, Ascent serves major financial institutions around the world, including in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Asia.

To learn more about Ascent or to request an interview, please reach out to Vanessa Yeh at vanessa@ascentregtech.com.