25.01.2022Insight

Year in review: Fourthline closes 2021 with 170% YoY growth

Our Co-founder and CEO Krik Gunning shares his reflections on 2021 and what Fourthline has in store for the coming year.

Profile of Krik GunningBy Krik Gunning - CEO
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Dear team, clients, and friends of Fourthline,

I'm pleased to share our highlights from 2021, and I'm proud to announce we closed the year with record growth. We're grateful for the trust of our clients and the dedication of all Fourthliners.

Growth: with a team of 240+ Fourthliners we support 30+ businesses, including unicorns like Trade Republic, Scalable Capital, N26, and Solaris, achieving 170% year-over-year revenue growth.

Product: financial crime does not stop after initial KYC at onboarding, which is why we launched a range of new continuous KYC products that combat fraud throughout the customer lifecycle.

Partnerships: we built partnerships with Europol and the French National Police to further strengthen our mission of building a safer financial ecosystem.

Recognition: we were recognized as a Top Startup by LinkedIn and a Top Growth Scaleup by Erasmus Centre of Entrepreneurship.

Highlights from some of the businesses we support

  • We assisted our customers Trade Republic, N26, Solarisbank, and Vivid Money in their impressive growth. They currently rank among the highest valued private fintech companies in the EU after a series of successful funding rounds.

  • We welcomed Xapo as one of our customers and are excited to support one of the first bitcoin-friendly banks in their growth.

  • We continue to support Flatex-DEGIRO with its commitment to being the largest retail online broker in Europe with a mission to grow to 7-8 million customer accounts within five years.

  • We partnered up with Scalable Capital, a Munich/Berlin-based neo-broker that became a unicorn in their last funding round.

  • We're proud to be supporting Dutch online broker LYNX and its vision for trading on a global scale.

  • We announced a

    partnership with Wish

    . We're excited for the opportunity to bolster the company's identity verification processes in the EU.

Partnerships with leading public authorities

This year, we strengthened our efforts to fight financial crime by partnering with the French National Police. We also joined Europol’s seventh European Money Mule Action (EMMA 7) to crack down on money laundering in Europe. This Action resulted in the identification of 18,000 money mules and 1,803 arrests.

Products we shipped

- SaaS solution: Clients can now review and resolve verifications with their own KYC/CDD analysts via a dedicated client-specific Analyst Portal.

- Web SDK: Next to our Fourthline API and Mobile SDK, we now offer a complete (hosted) web solution optimized for HTML5 on (mobile) browsers to transform the user experience.

- Mobile SDK: We improved our Mobile SDK offering for both iOS & Android, making UI and UX improvements while optimizing for NFC adoption.

- Proof of Address: We built a proprietary PoA solution creating a more reliable and customer-centric alternative to traditional PoA.

- Qualified Electronic Signature (QES): We built a QES service that can be issued without a video interview alongside our bank-grade KYC offering.

- AML screening & monitoring: We launched AML screening & monitoring to enable our clients to monitor their customers daily.

“With a market that's shifting towards continuous KYC, we are expanding our product suite with solutions that combat fraud throughout the customer lifecycle” - Jesse Westrate, Head of Product.

Company news and highlights

We welcomed senior hires to the Fourthline team:

  • Previously at N26, Ro Paddock joined Fourthline as Head of Anti-Financial Crime.

  • Martin Kers, previously Product Manager at ASML, joined as Head of Implementation.

  • Niall Grant joined from DEGIRO as Compliance and Data Protection Officer.

  • Previously VP of Global Marketing and Product Management at GlobalCollect (now Worldline), John Snoek joined the team as Head of Pay.

We also proudly achieved ISO 27001 certification and secured a spot in LinkedIn’s 2021 Top Startups in The Netherlands. The company joined the Erasmus Center for Entrepreneurship's Top 250 Fastest-Growing Scaleups in Europe and for the second year in a row, Fourthline made the 2022 RegTech100.

Final word

In 2022, we aim to have an even bigger impact in the fight against financial crime by growing alongside our existing and new partners, pushing innovative products, building international partnerships and pushing the boundaries of the positive impact our technology can have on society at large.

Fourthline Co-founder and CEO, Krik Gunning