Sentinels acquired by Fenergo — a short but sweet and very rewarding ride!
It’s been exactly a year since Inkef led the Seed round of Sentinels, a company set out to revolutionize Anti Money Laundering (AML) compliance. Today, we are very proud to announce that Sentinels has been acquired by Fenergo, the undisputed global leader in the field of Client Lifecycle Management for continuous KYC/AML.
It all started when Sentinels was still a part of Slimmer AI, a B2B AI venture based out of Netherlands. Accruing to the relations between Inkef and Slimmer, we gladly offered to jointly brainstorm the idea of Sentinels spinning out of Slimmer AI and setting off on an independent journey. It was not long into our meeting with Joost van Houten (Founder & CEO of Sentinels) and listening to his vision that we knew we wanted to be a part of this journey. Sentinels was building a transaction monitoring solution that combined the traditional business rules with the latest innovations in ML that could achieve industry-leading accuracy in detecting in financial crime, protecting financial institutions from multi-billion dollar fines. And with Mollie (the Dutch payments unicorn) as a launching customer, Sentinels already had commercial traction and a demonstrated product-market fit within the payments domain.
We were thrilled to then lead the Seed investment for Sentinels and were joined by an amazing group of high-profile angel investors and industry leaders including early members of the Adyen team — Thijn Lamers (former EVP Sales), Maikel Lobbezoo (former Head of Growth). Shortly after the Seed round, we introduced PPRO (another payments unicorn) to Sentinels which led to PPRO becoming an investor, strategic partner, and a customer of Sentinels.
As 2021 then progressed, we witnessed Joost and team pursuing their vision with a laser focus — growing ARR by 4x in 12 months, signing a roster of global fintechs (incl. 2 unicorns), and more than doubling the team. Although the journey has been short, the progress made certainly makes it feels like much longer! As Inkef, we could not have wished for a more talented and charismatic CEO than Joost at the helm of the Company.
Indeed, Inkef invested with a vision that Sentinels, starting from AML compliance, would expand its presence in the value chain to become the de-facto end-to-end compliance tech solution for new age FinTechs, with the optionality later-on to aim for leadership among traditional banks. Fenergo very much shares the vision of building a continuous end-to-end compliance platform, bringing together the silos of compliance tools and data to provide companies holistic view of the end customers. At the same time, however, Fenergo approaches the market from the opposite angle, already being the clear leader in KYC orchestration for traditional banks, while meticulously executing on its Client Lifecyle Management ambitions. We are excited about what Sentinels and Fenergo will achieve together and remain very bullish ourselves on the innovation that is yet to come in the industry.
It’s been a privilege for us to be a part of the Sentinels journey. In precisely a year, the investment has generated us a stellar return on capital. More importantly, however, we are very thankful to Joost and the team for the trust they have shown in us as a hands-on partner. We also want to extend our gratitude to Slimmer AI, who played an indispensable role in the development of the company, and last but not least to all the angels and investors that joined the journey with their invaluable experience.
We wish Sentinels & Fenergo all the success for the future!
