London-based startup Zango Global Inc. today announced it has raised $4.8 million in seed funding led by Nexus Venture Partners to provide artificial intelligence agents to financial firms and banks, with an aim to transform how they deal with regulatory compliance.
Other participants in the round also included South Park Commons, Notion Capital, No Label Ventures and Start Ventures.
Software and services in the financial sector can be a labyrinthine tangle of legal questions whenever a firm wants to implement a new product or feature for clients. This remains true for current services or features because regulations change even as legislation and framework rules shift at different levels of governance from local to global.
Zango was co-founded by Ritesh Singhania and Shashank Agarwal, both second-time co-founders who have deep regulatory experience. Singhania founded ClearGlass Analytics Ltd., a pension fund regulatory platform, while Agarwal co-founded Thirdwatch Data Private Ltd., an AI-powered fraud detection startup, acquired in 2019 by Razorpay Software Private Ltd., a financial software solutions company.
Financial regulations require deep expertise to understand and comprehend and they stretch across thousands of pages. This means slow, manual workflows, Singhania explained. As a result, financial industry enterprises find themselves buried in significant costs trying to develop a clear list of requirements.
“Traditional software-as-a-service stops at Know Your Customer and anti-money-laundering, leaving the rest of compliance buried in spreadsheets and manual reviews,” Singhania said. “Zango changes that.”
Zango uses AI agents, a type of artificial intelligence software that can make decisions, do research and achieve specific goals with a degree of autonomy. Agents are designed to carry out tasks with minimal or no human oversight, while adapting to changing circumstances. This allows them to continuously integrate knowledge, including regulatory information, so they can respond to inquiries or draft consulting reviews complete with citations.
The company said its large language models and AI agents don’t just read and interpret regulations with a high degree of accuracy. They can integrate directly into a company’s day-to-day operations. In one example given by Zango, a bank involved with a regulator had a process that would have taken 48 hours, reduced to under four hours using the agentic AI platform.
Using the platform, the company said, aiming to remain compliant and launching a new product or service can be as simple as spinning up an agent and asking: “I want to launch a lending product in X market. What do I need to do?”
The agents will go to work, track down all the necessary resources and produce research, compliance requirements, records, citations, an impact assessment and a gap analysis helpful for future-proofing the product.
“We don’t sell a platform — we sell a solution,” said Singhania. “Our AI agents are paired with humans-in-the-loop to ensure 100% accuracy. Peace of mind doesn’t come from a tool; it comes from a result.”
In the United Kingdom alone, the annual costs of financial crime compliance totaled about $52 billion in 2024, according to a report from LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The report noted that cryptocurrency, digital payments and AI technology are major tools contributing to the increasing costs of illicit activity. Also, skilled individuals are in high demand and businesses are actively seeking ways to reduce labor costs while improving compliance efficiency.
Zango is actively used by established banks in the U.K., such as Novo Banco SA, the fourth-largest bank in Portugal, and said it’s gaining traction with leading digital banks in the European Union and the U.K., including Monzo Bank Ltd. and Juni Technology AB.
“For horizon scanning, Zango is a game-changer,” said Sabina Ausfelt, head of compliance at Juni. “The platform’s current and future modules are set to revolutionize the second line of defense work in regulated industries like ours.”
Zango said the funds will be used to expand its teams in London and Bengaluru, while building out its AI-native product suite. Zango also intends to expand its AI product offerings into other finance-related services outside banking, including insurance and asset management.
Image: News/Microsoft Designer
Support our open free content by sharing and engaging with our content and community.
Join theCUBE Alumni Trust Network
Where Technology Leaders Connect, Share Intelligence & Create Opportunities
11.4k+
CUBE Alumni Network
C-level and Technical
Domain Experts
Connect with 11,413+ industry leaders from our network of tech and business leaders forming a unique trusted network effect.
News Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation serving innovative audiences and brands, bringing together cutting-edge technology, influential content, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of News, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — such as those established in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) — News Media operates at the intersection of media, technology, and AI. .
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, News Media has built a powerful ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands, with a reach of 15+ million elite tech professionals. The company’s new, proprietary theCUBE AI Video cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.
