Global professional services giant PwC has partnered with due diligence start-up Neotas to help combat financial crime. The combined offering will see PwC integrate Neotas’ open source intelligence platform with its financial services advisory expertise.
Founded in 2015, Neotas was established after its founders realised there was a vast amount of data online, including the entire digital footprints people and companies. In response to the cyber-security challenges this presents, Neotas provides an enhanced due diligence platform, specialising in uncovering and connecting disparate sources of information in an efficient and actionable manner.
It’s partnership with PwC, which is already underway, sees the Big Four firm’s intelligence business utilise Neotas’ open source intelligence (OSINT) technology. In this way, the consultancy can apply Neotas’ technology across its global reach, helping clients around the world identify, assess and report on financial, regulatory, compliance and reputational risks posed by third parties. This will enable PwC to combat core financial crime and third party risk challenges.
Craig Fitzpatrick, Corporate Intelligence Director, Forensic Services at PwC, said of working with Neotas, “Our partnership with Neotas gives our Intelligence team unrivalled access to cutting-edge open source intelligence technology, with the ability to analyse information from databases with over 198 million corporate records, alongside over 600 billion archived web resources.”
Regulators are increasingly enforcing the adoption and integration of open source technology as best practice. PwC’s partnership with Neotas can help clients adopt a more proactive model of risk management in response to this. With top challenges in open source intelligence investigations and due diligence being monitoring the wealth of online information available, Fitzpatrick added that PwC’s collaboration with Neotas can “enhance the comprehensiveness, speed and consistency of our integrity due diligence and open source intelligence service delivery for our clients.”
Incorporating a centralised platform will bring with it significant operational efficiencies, with analysts saving up to 70% of research time alone, and with data able to be analysed in over 200 languages. The time saved on this means the Neotas platform will also help strengthen PwC’s integrity due diligence “RADAR” service offering, enabling its experts to address new risk domains including ESG, financial solvency, social media and more from a single centralised platform.
Neotas Director Ian Howard commented, “We are so proud to be embarking on this partnership with PwC, who are an iconic global organisation. Our groundbreaking technology will enhance PwC’s RADAR offering, enabling their clients to uncover risks that are left unseen using traditional due diligence methods.”
