Recap sees rapid growth with AML solutions tailored for early-stage businesses

Recap uses smart technology to provide merchants across the UK with embedded funding and working cash advances through cloud-based platforms. Its mission is to give these small businesses the freedom to grow, partnering with leading payment service providers to give them access to pre-approved offers in real-time. 

This funding is unrestricted and unsecured, meaning businesses can prioritize their spending for growth and repay loans as a proportion of sales rather than through fixed monthly payments. This makes flexibility and growth central to Recap’s offering – qualities that needed to be seamlessly integrated into its compliance framework, ensuring a balance between security and scalability.

The cost of legacy compliance solutions 

Working in the SME market exposes Recap to significant anti-money laundering (AML) risks, with the landscape subject to an ever-increasing rate of financial crime. However, before partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Recap’s compliance setup was slow and inefficient, causing serious problems for the company. 

Legacy solutions, and the siloed systems and workflows they created, caused unnecessary delays in onboarding customers. As a result, the businesses Recap served missed out on opportunities for vital funding, and Recap itself could not scale its customer base fast enough. Rather than enabling growth, regulatory compliance had become an obstacle to it. 

Streamlined compliance unlocks faster growth

As a result, Recap chose to use ComplyAdvantage’s customer screening and ongoing monitoring software as part of its customer onboarding process. Our solutions combine proprietary risk data – covering sanctions, watchlists, adverse media, and politically exposed persons (PEPs) – with AI-powered matching algorithms, allowing firms to speed up onboarding while reducing the number of false positive alerts they receive. 

Thanks to these features, Recap boosted its customer acquisition rate, demonstrated compliance to regulators, and reported suspicious activity where necessary. ComplyAdvantage’s automated ongoing monitoring, which flags changes to customer risk profiles in real-time, removed the need for Recap’s analysts to conduct labor-intensive re-screening. Alongside the speed of customer screening, Recap’s compliance team also mentioned the usability of the ComplyAdvantage interface as a differentiating factor against alternatives. 

As a result, Recap has implemented effective compliance procedures across different teams within the organization, ensuring the company’s goals of risk management and business growth are consistently aligned. 

“We’ve been able to use the ComplyAdvantage platform to onboard customers quickly, comply with regulations, and make sure our customers get access to cash. As a result, we’ve been able to experience rapid growth while maintaining regulatory compliance.” 

Candice Ewing, Financial and Risk Manager, Recap 

Tailored support and compliance expertise provide enduring value

After partnering with ComplyAdvantage for twelve months, Recap chose to renew the relationship on an ongoing basis. The proactive support from the ComplyAdvantage team – during both implementation and the fine-tuning of rules and parameters to enhance Recap’s screening processes – was pivotal in this decision. Stakeholders specifically praised our team’s responsiveness and flexibility.

“We have loved working with the ComplyAdvantage team. Being able to have an account manager who was always available, someone who you could bounce ideas off, was very important for us.” 

Candice Ewing, Financial and Risk Manager, Recap 

This support was especially valuable given that the complexities of regulatory compliance can threaten to overwhelm early-stage businesses like Recap, which lack the time and budget to devote endless resources to compliance. In addition to the ongoing support from our Customer Success team, Recap used our range of free-to-read compliance content to help navigate the compliance maturity curve, finding invaluable insights and advice on financial crime trends in our reports and guides. 

“The content that ComplyAdvantage creates through its blogs and its State of Financial Crime report is hugely useful for us. Our business is quite siloed in the industry we operate in and the customers we serve. Being able to have access to other sources of information that open our eyes to financial crime across the globe is exceptionally useful for us.”

Candice Ewing, Financial and Risk Manager, Recap

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Compliance solutions tailor-made for early-stage businesses 

Recap initially partnered with ComplyAdvantage using our ComplyLaunch program, which provides early-stage FinTechs with free access to our market-leading AML software for 12 months. At the end of this period, it graduated to our Starter Plan, allowing them to buy smaller volumes of our PEP, sanctions and watchlist, and adverse media databases to meet customer due diligence (CDD) requirements. 

“Businesses in their start-up phase looking to make sure they maintain regulatory compliance should definitely start up with ComplyAdvantage. It’s cost-effective and you get the support you need to navigate the complicated regulatory landscape.” 

Candice Ewing, Financial and Risk Manager, Recap 

ComplyAdvantage, through ComplyLaunch and the Starter Plan, has helped Recap meet regulatory obligations at different stages of its development without overspending on compliance, a balance that remains crucial in driving growth. Today, ComplyAdvantage continues to enable Recap to: 

• Protect against its financial crime risks with best-in-class, real-time data. 
• Automate manual, labor-intensive processes. 
• Boost customer acquisition and retention by removing needless friction. 
• Scale operations with API-first integration and enhanced data security. 

This combination of world-class data, automation capabilities, and technical support leaves senior Recap decision-makers with no hesitation in recommending ComplyAdvantage to similar firms. 

“The ComplyAdvantage Starter Plan is an amazing platform for businesses like ourselves that are in a high-growth phase. It will facilitate our business to protect our customers in the ever-increasing environment of financial crime.” 

Candice Ewing, Financial and Risk Manager, Recap