Former S & P Boss Leads Round of Funding for Compliance Startup
Regtech and compliance startup iComply has wrapped up an initial funding round spearheaded by Deven Sharma, the former boss at Standard and Poor’s.
The company whose primary focus is building standard compliance mechanisms especially for ICOs announced Monday that it raised a seven-figure number during its funding drive, but it did not elaborate on the exact sums raised. Other companies that participated in the funding drive include DMG Blockchain and Block X Capital.
iComply said in a news release that former CFTC executive Jeff Bandman, former Nasdaq and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) official Manny Alicandro, MIT fellow Praveen Mandal and lawyer Thomas Linder have all joined the startup as consultants.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Sharma said he chose to invest in the company due to the startup’s “focus on compliance and risk services for ICOs.” He argues that compliance will help ease worries that regulators may have by providing openness regarding ICO processes.
Sharma is also optimistic that the firm can help further adoption of the industry by offering support to conventional financial establishments hoping to embrace the technology.
“My interest is to see iComply evolve into a benchmark that investors can use to assess credibility of issuers, sustainability of underlying services and the price of ICOs,” he said.
Matthew Unger, the man behind the startup, said in an statement that new ICOs and cryptocurrency platforms will be answerable to regulators including FINRA, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, among others.
“iComply’s patent-pending software enables both security and utility tokens to monitor and document compliance, governance and risk procedures, before a public blockchain executes an immutable trade, providing trust, integrity and transparency for our clients,” he said.
Sharma pointed out that new devices like blockchain requires clarity so as to gain investor confidence. This, he said, , “will allow for more growth of innovative ways of raising funds and investment – I see iComply as a critical component of making the entire ICO space more successful, because it provides the confidence.”
He believes that openness and trust are the main factors behind his enthusiasm for the blockchain.
‘There have been a few ICOs that had a fundamentally robust offering that I understood and did interest me [but I] missed the opportunity. Others that have transparency from a service like iComply, I would [invest in],” Sharma concluded.
