RegTech 100 company Cloud9 Technologies, a financial communications provider, has raised $14m in its Series B investment round.
The round, which was led by Barclays and included participation from JPMorgan and NEX Group, comes two years after it closed its Series A round on $30m. Cloud9 said it will use the new capital to accelerate development and global roll-out of its SaaS-based voice communications platform.
In addition to its investment, Barclays will also work with Cloud9 on the acceleration of the Company’s adoption across the industry. JPMorgan has already decided to onboard more than 2,000 internal traders and salespeople to Cloud9 as its primary tool for voice communication between the bank and its clients globally.
“Despite being a cornerstone of global financial markets, voice trading and its data have been siloed off from the intelligence that fuel capital markets strategies,” said Gerald Starr, CEO of Cloud9. “With the financial and strategic commitment of industry leaders such as Barclays, JPMorgan and NEX Group, we’re equipped to rapidly grow our role as the new standard for voice trading communications world-wide – ushering in an era in which voice is viewed as a key business asset.”
Founded in 2014, Cloud9 offers a purpose-built, end-to-end voice communication solution for institutional traders. Its technology handles millions of voice trader communications per day from a network of over 5,000 institutional users.
It digitises the entire institutional trader voice lifecycle and provides a secure and compliant means of delivering the associated metadata.
The overhaul of the EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, commonly known as Mifid II, came into force on 3 January 2018. The legislation requires all financial service providers that operate or deal in the EU to record telephone conversations and electronic communications that relate to the ‘reception, transmission and execution of orders, or dealing on own account’ – including on mobile phones, SMS messages and electronic communications, and store them for a minimum of five years.
“For the last few years, Cloud9 has proven its commitment to fostering long-overdue innovation in the trader voice space,” said Kester Keating, Head of US Strategic Investments at Barclays. “We were an early investor and believer in Cloud9, and we’re proud to support its continued growth and excited by the possibilities its technology can create.”
Last year, Cloud9 Technologies was hand-picked by a panel of industry experts for the RegTech 100, a list of companies that every financial institution should know about in 2018. The RegTech 100 is part of the Global RegTech review – an essential, in-depth analysis of the global RegTech market.
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