In March 2021, StartUs Insights named Complead (formerly Sanction Scanner) one of five hand-picked startups whose solutions were shaping FinTech after COVID-19. The five were chosen from an analysis of 600 FinTech startups and scaleups on the StartUs Insights Discovery Platform, which tracks more than 1.3 million startups worldwide.
About the report
StartUs Insights publishes data-driven research on emerging technologies and the companies building them. For this report, it mapped 600 companies working on post-COVID solutions and selected five based on criteria such as founding year, location, and funding. The selected solutions covered contactless payments, cash flow management, identity verification, and anti-money laundering.
Why AML made the list
The report pointed to a simple shift: as more financial activity moved online during the pandemic, financial crime moved with it. Criminals used the gaps that lockdowns and remote onboarding created, and compliance teams had to screen more customers, faster, without ever meeting them in person.
StartUs Insights highlighted our AI-powered AML solution for FinTech companies:
- Automated sanctions screening in place of manual list checks
- Sanctions lists and watchlists collected and structured from regulatory and law enforcement sources
- Custom search settings, so each company could match screening to its own risk level
In our founder's words
“Looking back at 2021, the pandemic did not invent new kinds of financial crime. It moved the old ones online faster than most compliance teams could follow. Our answer was to automate the parts of screening that slowed people down, so analysts could spend their time on the cases that needed judgment. Being picked from 600 companies told us we were solving the right problem at the right time.”
– Fatih Coşkun, Founder & CEO
Where Complead is today
Five years on, financial crime has kept moving online, and the product has moved with it. The customer base has grown to 800+ financial institutions in 70+ countries, and screening is now one part of one AI-native platform: sanctions and PEP screening, adverse media, transaction monitoring, fraud monitoring, KYB onboarding, customer risk assessment, and case management.
The StartUs Insights report sits alongside our other recognitions, including the Finnovating Award for Top RegTech 2022, a place on the RegTech100 for 2023, and 8th place in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Türkiye.
In 2026, Sanction Scanner became Complead. We explain why in From Sanction Scanner to Complead: Why Now, and Why This Way.
The full StartUs Insights report is available here.
