Validis Secures Strategic Investment From Citi and Barclays to Transform Commercial & Corporate Banking Services

By Dominic Sow · 14 January 2025

Validis, a market leader in financial data collection and standardization, today announced strategic investments from Citi and Barclays. The announcement marks a milestone in furthering efforts to modernize business lending through automated data standardization, encompassing corporate, commercial and working capital finance products, including invoice finance, receivables finance, and asset-based lending. Citi and Barclays will leverage Validis' platform to automate financial monitoring, deliver underwriting-ready data faster, and reduce application and credit review time significantly. This standardized approach will support existing robust decision-making processes, important for managing risk in today's dynamic lending environment. "This strategic investment from two of the world's leading banks validates our vision of making standardized accounting data the cornerstone of modern lending," said Stephane Besson, Chairman of Validis. "We're eliminating historically time-consuming and high-cost data processes, particularly for complex commercial clients, enabling lenders to make faster, smarter decisions based on clean, reliable data," added Michael Turner, CEO of Validis. The investment enables Validis to accelerate its growth while benefiting from the strategic guidance of two global lenders. The investment will fund continued product innovation and expanded sales and marketing efforts. James Binns, Managing Director, Global Head of Trade & Working Capital at Barclays, said: "By automating data collection and standardization, we can not only deliver faster decisions and better service, but also offer client focused working capital funding products at scale. This enables us to meet our customers' unique needs while still meeting our credit assessment standards." "The depth and quality of Validis’ data enables real-time access to standardized financial information, enabling proactive financial support to our commercial bank clients. Improving credit process automation and the scope and timeliness of data available helps capital flow more freely into businesses of all sizes and close critical funding gaps across the market." said Andrew Murray, Head of Institutional Strategic Investments at Citi. Validis' technology has proven equally transformative beyond lending. Working with over 100 accounting firms, Validis delivers the granular, transaction-level data required for audit processes. This same depth of data, unprecedented in lending, enables financial institutions to make more robust decisions based on audit-grade financial information.