Circit CEO David Heath. Image: Circit
CEO David Heath told SiliconRepublic.com that Circit is to auditing verification what Stripe is to payments.
Irish open banking start-up Circit has raised €6.5m in funding for its financial auditing management platform.
The Dublin-based fintech has developed a platform for managing financial auditing used by banks, solicitors and brokers. Circit is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland as an account information service provider under PSD2 – the EU regulation for open banking.
Investment in this Series A round was led by New York-based Aquiline Technology Growth and Luxembourg-based MiddleGame Ventures, both of which are fintech-focused VC firms.
CEO David Heath told SiliconRepublic.com in an interview that a number of team members in Circit have come from auditing backgrounds in big firms who think the industry, which is going through its “biggest reform in decades”, could do with more digitalisation.
“We saw a lot of manual processes that were going on that we felt could be automated, which would free us up to do more valuable work for the client,” said Heath, who was previously an auditor with Grant Thornton and a director with E-Commerce Accounting.
“Rather than wait for regulators to prescribe the change, we proactively re-imagined and designed a platform that gives auditors a new way of obtaining independent audit evidence that both reduces risk and cuts verification time from weeks to minutes.”
Heath said the open banking platform frees up auditors from manual and time-consuming processes, providing automation for third-party confirmations and verified insights on bank and digital asset transactions.
“Our aim is to help auditors become highly skilled in addressing the future risks facing businesses and the economy,” he added. “In a way, what Stripe is for payments, Circit is for auditing verification.”
Founded in 2017, Circit counts more than 200 audit businesses including Deloitte and PwC among its clients. While headquartered in Dublin, it has operations in the UK and Spain, and clients all over Europe, the United States, Australia and the greater APAC region.
Circit grew significantly during the pandemic, which saw its workforce shoot up from just seven to a team of 35. It raised €1.1m in a July 2020 funding round to accelerate its international expansion and create 20 new jobs.
Last year, Circit acquired UK-based Audapio, a tech company that builds data analytics tools for financial auditing and fraud monitoring. In February, it signed a deal with Danske Bank UK to integrate its tech with the bank’s audit confirmation response operations.
Heath told SiliconRepublic.com that the latest funding will be used to invest in further developing the Circit platform and pushing for the company’s growth internationally.
Patrick Pinschmidt, general partner for MiddleGame Ventures, said that while Circit is addressing a “persistent pain point” by digitising the audit confirmation process, he sees broader use cases for the company’s tech.
“The combination of open banking tools and the integration of financial institutions and corporates into Circit’s solution will lower costs and improve transparency as the company helps digitise a cross-section of workflows for a global customer base.”
Pinschmidt, along with Giovanni Nani of Aquiline Technology Growth, will join Circit’s board as a result of the investment to help scale the company’s international expansion.
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