With financial scandals like the recent collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange rattling investors across the globe, Ottawa-based MindBridge says it’s seeing more demand than ever for its fraud-detection software.
“Everybody thought cryptocurrency was going to be this brilliant, transparent, immutable ledger system where you have a perfect record of what’s happening,” explains MindBridge chief technology officer Robin Grosset. “But it still leaves a lot of room for people to have bad financial practices. That’s where MindBridge steps in.”
As 2022 draws to a close, MindBridge says it’s enjoying another banner year as its artificial intelligence platform continues to get better at finding anomalies and accounting errors buried in customers’ financial spreadsheets.
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Founded almost eight years ago, the east-end firm has established itself as a market leader in the emerging automated fraud-detection space. Earlier this month, the company announced its third major product release of 2022 – a system that tracks the flow of money throughout an organization and pinpoints deviations from normal transaction patterns, such as expense claims for items that don’t jibe with a claimant’s typical spending history.
According to Grosset, it’s all part of MindBridge’s ongoing effort to evolve its platform for enterprise customers who want to ensure their books are as clean as possible before sending them to outside auditors.
MindBridge’s clients include many of the world’s largest banks and accounting firms. But its software is also gaining traction among corporations whose main business has nothing to do with analyzing financial data.
Grosset says finance departments across all industries are much more cognizant of spotting accounting errors and sussing out suspicious transactions than they used to be as transparency becomes a bigger priority for corporate boards and shareholders.
“It’s not enough just to have your external auditor review your finances annually or quarterly or whatever they do,” he says. “Businesses themselves want to prove they have good financial practices and they want to be monitoring that.”
While Grosset says the firm doesn’t expect to match last year’s torrid growth pace, when its revenues tripled from the previous 12 months, he says MindBridge is still seeing a “significant” uptick in sales as digital auditing tools become the norm.
Now at 130 employees, MindBridge operates data centres in Canada, the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia to serve its expanding global footprint. Its software has been translated into French, German and Spanish.
MindBridge’s ascent has caught the attention of industry organizations such as the Toronto-based Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which this week named the firm one of its 20 Canadian AI-based startups to watch in 2023.
Grosset says cash flow isn’t an issue for MindBridge, which has already raised more than $40 million in venture capital. But at the same time, he wouldn’t rule out another potential funding round if that’s what it takes for the company to fulfil its ambitious growth plans.
“We’re always looking at funding … because you always want to keep your options open,” Grosset says. “At the moment, it’s not a high priority for us.”
