From manual to automatic: How Finch Capital transformed its compliance and risk management with 3rdRisk

Jorn Gerrits is Chief Financial Officer at Finch Capital and Frances Eikenhorst is the Compliance and Legal Counsel. Together, Jorn and Frances oversee all compliance and risk matters for the company.

Finch Capital is a growth investor that partners with European business and financial technology companies. Founded in 2013, Finch Capital manages over €450M in assets and invests in companies across multiple sectors including accounting & tax, banking & wealth, and insurance.

The chaos of manual document and risk management

Prior to discovering 3rdRisk, Jorn and Frances managed all compliance and risk documentation for their portfolio companies manually.

“When I started at Finch Capital on the compliance side, there was a lot of chaos, I would say,” Frances explains. Everything was stored and organised in a local Dropbox folder making it a cumbersome and confusing process to sort through client and investment data.

Additionally, it was impossible to get an overview of any single portfolio with this setup. Jorn would have to open files individually in order to get a detailed overview of a specific portfolio.

“Before, we had everything stored locally on a local Dropbox folder and we had to open specific files. So, there was no overview. We had to open every single file in order to get an overview. And with 3rdRisk, you just open the website and there's a complete dashboard.” – Jorn Gerrits, CFO at Finch Capital

And while this may have been manageable at first, as Finch Capital grew, so did the complexity of its processes — and the demand for data security and compliance.

For the team at Finch Capital, the tipping point came when they decided to apply for an AIMFD licence — a licence required for funds that manage over €500M in assets. In order to be eligible, Finch Capital needed to find a new way to securely store data and effectively report on third-party risk management.

That’s when they started looking for one platform to support them across three key areas: KYC, compliance, and legal.

Upgrading internal processes with ease

3rdRisk offered what many platforms in the space still lack today: a comprehensive and intuitive one-stop-shop for compliance and third-party risk management.

Jorn: “The reason we chose 3rdRisk is because they offer compliance and risk management in one solution; whereas other solutions are typically focused on either compliance or risk.”

And all this functionality came in an easy-to-use platform that is customised to  Finch Capital’s unique look and feel. “A lot of software platforms just give you the platform and that’s it,” Frances explains. “But with 3rdRisk, you really have a personal contact. So if you have new ideas, or they have new ideas for you, they will talk about it.”

This support throughout the implementation process (and beyond) has also given the team at Finch Capital the tools and resources they needed to remain compliant with various other regulations, such as EU’s DORA which will be applied starting in January 2025.