The Israeli startup Shield has developed a system for detecting manipulations and fraud of employees in banks and financial organizations. Now, after 4 years of bootstrap he is announcing a $ 15 million fundraiser
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A few weeks ago, the huge investment bank JP Morgan was fined $ 125 million by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The reason? Bank employees used their private telephones to communicate with customers, thus bypassing means of communication such as organizational mail subject to federal supervision. But what if there was a system that could monitor all means of communication used by the organization, and warn in advance of attempted fraud or deception? Well, that’s exactly what the Israeli startup Shield is doing.
From emails to zooms
The system developed by Shield provides banks and financial organizations around the world with a platform for collecting, documenting and analyzing AI (how not) internal and external organizational interactions of traders and employees – in accordance with the stringent regulatory requirements for investor protection, capital market integrity and fraud prevention.
This documentation and analysis includes almost every means of communication available – from e-mails and chats, to phone calls, zooms, teams and others, with the aim of enabling the company to detect fraud attempts ahead of time. Such attempts include for example an impact on securities, execution, internal trade and more. According to the company’s data, the platform monitors over 3 million interactions daily performed by about 150,000 employees in dozens of organizations using a variety of tools including language processing, behavior analysis and content.
Shiran Weizmann, co-founder and CEO of Shield, says that financial companies around the world are responsible for the activities of their employees, if they do not monitor this activity – in accordance with the strict regulatory conditions aimed at maintaining integrity, transparency and investor protection.
“According to Weizmann, the technological acceleration of recent years and the move to work from home have preyed on companies’ cards after employees switched to managing their work with a wide range of tools, conducting hundreds of millions of dollars from their home or private WhatsApp transactions – fertile ground for fraud and violations.” This situation has created a regulatory and operational challenge that obliges banks to turn to technology companies for help, such as Shield Weizmann.
The startup was founded in 2018 by Shiran Weizmann and Ofir Shabtai, but until now it was run in a bootstrap format and existed with the help of revenues of “tens of millions of shekels.” Today (Thursday) the startup announces the completion of a $ 15 million round of funding led by Macquarie Capital and OurCrowd and with the participation of Mindset Ventures. It is true that the company employs 60 people in the development center in Ramat Gan and in offices in London and New York.
Ofir Shabtai, co-founder and chief technology officer of the company, added that the platform could be used in the very near future for a wide range of other uses that will improve the internal conduct of organizations, including detecting racism, abusive language or harassment, identifying misconduct of employees such as non-investment recommendations. Suitable for customers, even if it is not done maliciously or for personal gain.
Yaniv Avital
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