Anderson Strathern advises on £2.75m AI tech deal
Scottish AI company Aveni.ai has secured an investment of £2.75 million to deliver the expansion of its Aveni Detect platform to the financial services and utility markets across the UK. Its ground-breaking conversational intelligence technology is set to lead the way in a new era of speech automation for regulated industries.
Aveni Detect uses the latest advances in AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to draw intelligence and automate processes directly from the customer voice and other communications channels. This allows companies to achieve greater efficiencies in quality
assurance (QA) while significantly improving client experience, sales performance, staff training, and the ability to identify vulnerable customers.
The funding round was led by The TRICAPITAL Syndicate LLP and Par Equity supported by Scottish Enterprise. Anderson Strathern advised Aveni on the legal aspects of the investment. The investment will accelerate Aveni’s growth and see it move beyond financial services into other regulated industries such as utilities, while building a team to support rapid UK expansion.
Joseph Twigg, CEO, Aveni explains, “Consumer Duty will fundamentally change the regulatory landscape across the Financial Services. The FCA is shifting from human-centric supervision to an emphasis on data-first evidentiary requirements. As executive teams are asked to supply increasingly large datasets to the regulator, with growing frequency, Boards will be asking themselves ‘do we know exactly what’s in that data?’. The answer to that will be a resounding ‘no’.
“Monitoring and assurance teams today typically assess 1-2% of customer interactions through highly manual processes. This will have to fundamentally change. Aveni uses cutting edge machine learning to introduce a paradigm shift in Risk Assurance. Our ‘Machine Line of Defence’ allows companies to monitor 100% of customer interactions, triaging high risk cases for human review and transforming the management of regulatory and reputational risk.”
The development of Aveni’s platform is timely as it coincides with significant moves from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to considerably increase its regulatory control over companies’ actions as it relates to consumer duty of care. It is unclear how companies will be able to meet these expansive regulatory changes without the sort of comprehensive monitoring and analytics capabilities that technology such as Aveni’s platform provides.
Alastair Moore, Investment Manager at Par Equity comments, “We are hugely excited to be partnering with Aveni through this funding round. The technology that the team has developed is truly game changing for regulated firms in Financial Services and Utilities and
will deliver a step change in how service and advice is delivered and reported, all benefiting the end customer. It was evident from speaking to customers and partners that they love Aveni’s Detect platform and were impressed at how quick it was to deploy. With this further funding, the company has a fantastic opportunity to establish itself as a category leader in automated conversational intelligence and we’re looking forward to supporting Joseph and the team along the way.”
Moray Martin, TRICAPITAL’s Managing Partner, adds, “We are delighted to be able to continue supporting the Aveni team and also to welcome Par Equity to the co-investment panel. The next chapter in Aveni’s evolution looks particularly exciting as it drives to scale. We are confident, having nurtured the business from seed to pre-Series A, that the fundamentals are firmly in place to deliver the success the business is looking for and deserves.”
Joseph Twigg concludes, “The funding we have secured is a testament to the belief our investors have in Aveni’s vision and the team that will deliver it. It’ll allow us to significantly broaden our distribution footprint as we expand nationally and continue developing our
platform that will fundamentally change the way companies serve their customers. It’s a pivotal time for the business, and I’m proud of what we’ve done to date and excited for what this funding will now enable us to achieve.”