SINGAPORE - Singapore-based regulatory technology firm Tookitaki has raised US$19.2 million (S$26.1 million) in Series A funding as it seeks to expand its presence in international markets. The company has received $11.7 million in investment, adding to the $7.5 million raised earlier this year. A group, led by Viola Fintech and SIG Asia Investment, was responsible for the fresh injection of funds, which will help Tookitaki increase its employee headcount across its three offices in Singapore, India and the United States by up to 100 per cent, as well as to fine-tune its products. "Our vision has always been for our compliance technology to become globally accepted by financial institutions around the world, and (the investments) put us in a better place to deliver on that vision," said Tookitaki co-founder and chief executive officer Abhishek Chatterjee on Monday (Nov 25) Tookitaki offers two artificial intelligence-powered software platforms. The first is an anti-money laundering solution that aims to help banks better monitor and detect suspicious transactions, and comply with regulatory requirements.

Ensuring regulatory compliance can be expensive for financial services companies. In fact, the average cost nearly doubled from $16 million to $30.9 million between 2011 and 2017, according to one survey. And it's tough for most to keep up -- in 2017, over 900 agencies together issued over 200 regulatory updates each day, on average. Companies like Tookitaki aim to ease the regulatory burden through AI-imbued software. The Singapore-based startup, which was cofounded by J.P. Morgan veteran Abhishek Chatterjee and Jeeta Bandopadhyay, taps machine learning and distributed systems to tackle compliance for anti-money laundering, reconciliation, and more.