Melbourne-based FrankieOne, a regtech platform that connects insurers and banks to hundreds of global identity and fraud-monitoring providers, has successfully closed an oversubscribed $20 million round to fund its offshore expansion.

FrankieOne says it can save insurers millions in regulatory fines and IT costs and protects customers from fraud. Afterpay and Westpac are among its customers.

The company has offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Seattle and the funds raised will further its international footprint, which already connects more than 350 third-party providers and data-sources across 46 countries. FrankieOne will also offer transaction monitoring for both fiat and cryptocurrencies later this year.

“Our aim is to connect every third-party identity and fraud-prevention provider from across the world into our single platform,” it says.

CEO Simon Costello and Aaron Chipper co-founded the startup in 2017 after finding the customer onboarding process “disjointed” globally. International sales now make up around half of revenue after adding 80 new clients in 18 months, and FrankieOne has doubled its headcount in three months and appointed former McKinsey & Co associate partner Warren Oakes as COO. It plans to hire a sales and marketing team.

Mr Costello says the focus of financial services providers on compliance has been at the detriment of the customer experience.

“Our mission is to create a platform that provides fintechs with the convenience of consuming the world’s identity verification and fraud-prevention services via a single unified API. This allows fintechs to “switch on” geographies and services as they need, enabling them to focus on innovation and their core business,” he said.

The funding round was led by venture capital firms AirTree Ventures and Greycroft.

AirTree Partner John Henderson says digital identity verification is a board-level issue for insurers and banks and current manual systems are “both bespoke and broken” and the “world needs a better solution”.

Greycroft Partner Will Szczerbiak says identity verification and anti-fraud checks can force companies to turn away potentially great customers because of a reliance on inadequate systems.

“FrankieOne’s APIs extracts the complexity away, allowing its clients to onboard more great customers while delivering a delightful end user experience,” he said.