BrazilAnti-fraud tech firm Featurespace receives $32 million funding
Just a few weeks after NTT DATA Group’s technology driven consultancy Everis announced it has intensified its ties with Featurespace to better curb financial fraud, the tech platform has received a capital injection of $32 million.
Featurespace is an anti-fraud and risk management firm. Leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and adaptive behavioral analytics, the company brings new insights into risk management through a data-driven approach.
Established by a Cambridge University professor Bill Fitzgerald and his PhD student Dave Excell – a fitting name for someone in the field of data and communication science – the company teaches machines to act and to think like humans. Featurespace left the Cambridge’s Engineering Department in 2008, when Betfair – an online gambling company – asked Featurespace to build the first system to outwit fraud attacks by thinking like each one of their customers.
Fast forward just over ten years and the firm has seen an investment of $72 million pumped into its coffers, according to Crunchbase. The funding round is the firm’s largest to date, and included further funding from the firm’s existing investors. “The additional funds will enable us to continue rapidly growing the business internationally by focusing on our products, our people and our customers,” said Martina King, CEO of Featurespace.
“We have significantly strengthened our senior management team and operational infrastructure, and opened an office in Atlanta, Georgia,” King added. “We have also grown our financial services customer base and now are working with 17 banks across continental Europe, the UK, US and Latin America.”
Everis is a Spain-based consulting and technology firm that offers digital transformation advisory, implementation support as well as outsourcing services. The company has an employee base of over 21,000 workers worldwide generating an annual turnover of $1.3 billion, of which $360 million comes from Latin America.
“The application of artificial intelligence in financial processes is still limited,” said Sergio Hermida, an expert indigital banking at Everis. “Featurespace’s machine learning solution is one of the most advanced on the market and allows us to offer our customers world-class technological tools for financial risk management and to significantly reduce transaction fraud.”
The firm's strategy in the region is to invest in, develop, and distribute IT technologies that will transform and empower the firm’s clients. Everis currently advises on tech development areas such as digital and legacy transformation, blockchain, big data analytics, artificial intelligence and robotics.
Everis currently delivers Featurespace's ARIC Fraud Hub platform to banks in 16 countries, including the UK, US, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Brazil and other Latin American countries where the consulting firm operates. Currently Everis has offices in Chile, Colombia, Peru, Argentina as well as multiple in Mexico and Brazil.
“Fraud is one of the most prominent, ubiquitous challenges that banks around the world are facing, making Everis’ commitment to improve efficiencies and mitigate threats vital to the health of the industry,” concluded King.
