London Regtech GSS Raises $47 Million to Help Banks Screen for Global Sanctions

Global Screening Services (GSS), a London-based regulatory compliance platform, has raised $47 million in funding

The company helps financial institutions meet their global sanctions obligations

The raise comes amid a spike in economic sanctions, with the U.S

issuing trade restrictions and asset blocking against states including Russia, China, Iran and more

GSS was initially incubated at consulting firm AlixPartner before being spun out as a standalone entity in 2021

The company previously raised a similar amount of funding from big-name backers including Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), one of the world’s largest banks

For its latest raise, GSS revealed another financial powerhouse as a backer: the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), which is joined by Cynosure Group and AlixPartner for this latest cash injection

GSS sells a sanctions-screening platform to help banks and other financial institutions comply with regulations

These institutions feed transaction data into GSS’s cloud-based platform, which returns an alert if it finds a match against a standardized set of sanctions lists from around the world

GSS also “enriches” these lists with additional data points, such as dates of birth, International Maritime Organization (IMO) numbers for ships and data from the local financial transfer systems of sanctioned countries such as Russia and China

GSS also provides “enhanced” lists for screening, including companies that are partly owned by people / companies / governments that have been sanctioned by OFAC, the EU or U.K

With another $47 million in the bank, GSS is now transitioning from “development phase” to fully operational, as it prepares to go live with its first customers.