The Fourthline Quarterly - New fraud trends, product launches and 145% growth

Dear team, clients, and friends of Fourthline,

I hope that you and your loved ones are keeping well during what continues to be a challenging time for us all. In spite of the hurdles that the early part of the year has thrown our way, the first quarter of 2021 has borne witness to several positive developments:

New fraud trends

At Fourthline, we are committed to identifying new fraud trends and further improving our 99.98% fraud detection accuracy. Recently, we witnessed a rise in identity fraud attempts involving deepfakes and high-quality silicone masks. We are continuing to monitor these developments to tackle fraudsters every step of the way.

Exciting client news

Q1 2021 has brought a number of updates from our clients:

• Solarisbank, Europe’s leading Banking-as-a-Service platform, signed a multi-year collaboration with Fourthline to power expansion across domestic and international markets.

• German online broker Trade Republic, backed by €80 million in funding from Accel and Founders Fund,

  expanded to France

  with Fourthline.

• N26, continental Europe's largest digital-first bank, extended its multi-year collaboration with Fourthline.

• Similarly, Yolt, an open banking provider born from Dutch lender ING, further extended its multi-year collaboration with Fourthline.

Partnership with French police

We were delighted to announce a new partnership with the French National Police, strengthening our efforts to fight financial crime. Christiaan van der Does, Strategic Operations Lead at Fourthline: “We are proud to work alongside the French police to create a safer financial ecosystem in France."

Product updates

Here are a few highlights in Q1:

• Business continuity and quality – As a licensed Payment Institution, we adhere to similar quality levels as our regulated clients. I am proud of our teams for meeting all SLAs and fraud quality scores, despite Fourthline’s high volume growth (145%) and the volatile trading markets for online broker clients like FlatexDEGIRO and Trade Republic.

• The launch of our SaaS solution – Clients can now process verifications with their own KYC/CDD analysts via Fourthline’s highly automated Analyst Portal.

• Web SDK - Next to our Fourthline API and Mobile SDK, we now offer a full (hosted) web solution, optimised for HTML5 on (mobile) browsers.

• Mobile SDK - We’ve continuously improved our Mobile SDK offering for both iOS & Android, making UI and UX improvements while optimising for NFC adoption.

• What’s next? We are currently finalising our Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) for the European market, Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality for our SaaS offering and a standalone PEP/Sanction API that completely outsources false positive investigations.

New leadership hires

• Ro Paddock

  joined Fourthline as Head of Anti-Financial Crime. She brings a wealth of AML experience across tech and financial services, most recently in her role as Head of AFC at N26. At Fourthline, her teams prevent an additional 20 to 30% of fraudulent activity through enhanced post-signup monitoring.

• We welcomed

  Martin Kers

  into the Fourthline family after he joined as Head of Implementation. Martin has a decade of experience working in chip technology and private equity, with a background in Aerospace Engineering and Sinology. Martin’s teams will double down on Fourthline’s integration process.

Fast growth

• Following our

  fast expansion

  during 2020, we posted 145% year-on-year growth in Q1 2021.

• We have signed several large institutions (stay tuned for announcements!) and expect our growth rates to accelerate to an even higher rate.

As we look ahead to the rest of 2021, Fourthline remains committed to setting new standards in digital identity for regulated institutions. Far from generating complacency, the achievements in the first quarter of the year spur our teams to double down on our fight against financial crime. With our clients by our side, it’s a fight we are certain to win.

Fourthline CEO, Krik Gunning