Aveni has secured £2.75m to deliver the expand its conversational intelligence technology platform across the UK financial services and utility markets.
Aveni Detect uses the latest advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automate processes directly from communications channels, improving company quality assurance, client experience, sales performance, staff training and the ability to identify vulnerable customers.
The funding round was led by The Tricapital Syndicate and Par Equity, supported by Scottish Enterprise. Anderson Strathern advised Aveni on the legal aspects of the investment.
The investment will also be used to further build the Edinburgh-based team.
Chief executive Joseph Twigg explained: “The Financial Conduct Authority is shifting from human-centric supervision to an emphasis on data-first evidentiary requirements, and 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?’.
“Monitoring and assurance teams today typically assess one or two percent 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.”
Alastair Moore, investment manager at Par Equity, commented: “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.
“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, added: “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.”
Twigg concluded “The funding will 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.”
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