Regcheq will expand to Brazil and Mexico
From left to right: Pedro Feres, Cristóbal Concha, Cristián Neely and Gonzalo Restini.
El Mercurio article:
Capital Raising
Last December, Regcheq, the firm that through software digitizes, automates and centralizes the management of the entire compliance flow of companies against money laundering, marked a milestone. It finalized its second round of financing, managing to raise US$ 1.6 million. The process involved the entry of important investors to the ownership of the company: the Consorcio group; the Sable holding company, owned by businessmen Isidoro Quiroga and Héctor Gómez; Cornershop co-founder Daniel Undurraga; the co-founder and CEO of Houm, Benjamín Labra; the CEO of Buk, Jaime Arrieta, and the founder of Nearpod, Felipe Sommer.
With the entry of the new investors, the founding partners of Regcheq Pedro Feres, Cristóbal Concha, Cristián Neely and Gonzalo Restini reduced their participation in the property, from 75% to 60%. In the first round of financing they carried out a year ago, in which they raised US$400,000, Fernando Tisné, a partner at Moneda Asset Management, had already entered the property; Fernando Zavala, partner of the investment manager Alza Group; in addition to English investors Charlie Delingpole, founder and CEO of ComplyAdvantage, and Andrew McKay and Will Armitage, shareholders of Mercado G.
In the year that it has been operating in Chile, the firm completes a portfolio of more than 60 clients from different industries, who are charged between 10 UF and 30 UF per month. Now, with the resources obtained, Regcheq will start a second stage: regional expansion. They will leave for Brazil and Mexico, for which they will open offices in Sao Paulo in March -led by Renata Vaz Guimarães- and in Mexico City, led by Pedro Feres. In these markets, the focus will be on small and medium-sized Fintech and companies linked to the financial world. The goal, by the end of 2022, is to reach 300 clients in the three countries. ‘We want to be number 1 in Latin America. It is an industry that has enormous potential, because the processes to comply with the regulation are the same in all countries,’ says Cristóbal Concha, CEO of the firm. ‘The global expenditure of companies on compliance amounts to US$ 300 billion, growing 30% a year. In Latin America it is of the order of US$ 8,000 million, and in Chile, around US$ 750 million. Best practices generate value for companies’, adds Gonzalo Restini, executive director.
In addition to internationalization, the firm wants to develop new models and technologies in software.
Consortium, the largest investor.
In Regcheq’s recent financing round, Consorcio – the country’s largest insurance group – was the main investor, contributing US$1 million of the total, with which they will have the right to appoint a director. ‘We are constantly looking for opportunities and in the case of Regcheq it seemed to us that it is a company that has managed to satisfy a need that is in the market in a very good way, we see that it has a huge potential market to continue growing in clients and in adjacent solutions for complement the current value offer. For all this, we want to accompany its growth,’ explains Tomás Zavala, corporate development manager at Consorcio, who leads the financial group’s investments in venture capital.
The recent investment is part of the Corporate Venture Capital program that Consorcio launched in 2019, through which it seeks to invest in companies with high growth potential in the Fintech group in the region. The mandate of the program was to have an initial budget of up to US$10 million to invest, in investment amounts ranging, for the most part, between US$500,000 and US$2 million per financing round. The investments are made by the insurance company and so far, Zavala mentions, they have invested US$6 million in five different companies, with a clear strategic definition: always take minority stakes, aiming to be between 10% and 20% of participation. ‘We do not seek to be controllers of these companies, but we want to be a partner. We don’t want to limit the capacity and speed of innovation of these companies, whose DNA is closely linked to the founders’, he explains.
When they complete the initial budget of US$10 million, ‘we will increase it anyway. The company is super enthusiastic and committed to continuing to develop this business,’ says Zavala, who reveals that every month they analyze between 10 and 20 companies as investment options.
