The power of tech
Technology is increasingly important as outdated manual processes have been highlighted by remote working.
Evgeny Likhoded, CEO of Clausematch – an award-winning global leader in RegTech – studied Law at the University of Exeter and University of Rennes I. After graduation, he worked as a lawyer at Morgan Stanley with derivatives trading agreements for global banks and energy companies, managing contract negotiations and regulatory change remediation.
Having worked for a decade in the legal profession at Morgan Stanley and Gazprom UK, Evgeny had identified clear problems while working on trading contracts and implementing regulatory changes brought by Dodd-Frank and MiFID. As a member of the Technology Committee at Morgan Stanley, he saw the inadequacy of existing legacy and incumbent solutions on offer for compliance and legal departments.
The issues he wanted to solve were that processes were manual, outdated and inefficient. The bulk of the work was being done simply via emails and Word documents. Collecting and consolidating feedback from hundreds of versions, he and his team were spending long nights on administration rather than value-adding work.
Evgeny has always been passionate about investigating technology and modern work tools that help people in large organisations to enjoy their work and be as productive as possible. These factors were the catalysts that inspired him to start Clausematch.
A user-centric approach
Clausematch was part of the first Barclays FinTech program, the inaugural Barclays TechStars Accelerator 2014. As Clausematch was progressing through the Accelerator, it listened and adapted to what the market truly wanted, pivoting their business, go-to market strategy and product to match what was needed in the sector. Barclays was Clausematch’s first large client and this relationship continues to be developed. This industry-first partnership represents one of the largest initiatives in the space and is a reflection of a growing recognition in the financial sector that compliance must be addressed on a company-wide basis.
Expansion into the US
In 2020, Clausematch launched operations in the United States after successfully graduating from the FinTech Innovation Lab in New York, powered by Accenture and Partnerships Fund for New York.
The solution Clausematch provides is increasingly important as organisations in the US are being bombarded with regulatory obligations and oversight for compliance, particularly in financial services. There is a real need for efficient, agile solutions to manage regulatory obligations and governance documents such as policies, procedure, standards and controls.
Looking to the Future
Changing the financial ecosystem will continue to be a strong trend. Further penetration of solutions for compliance will be seen across widening variety of regulated industries, including healthcare, pharma, energy and education.
Mid-tier markets and small businesses that are growing and scaling fast are catching up with big players in compliance cloud technologies adoption. Compliance technology as a leading catalyst in the sustainability transition will play a role here too.
More and more, regulators are talking about compliance being ingrained in the DNA of the organisation, not just an outside factor. Compliance needs to be enforced, not just by the system of controls and monitoring, but also it needs to be in the internal operations of the company, the culture, in the mission and vision. There is also the push from employees to work for ethical companies, they want to work for companies that do the right thing. Compliance can no longer be approached as a tick-box exercise.
By incorporating technology, the task of enforcing compliance becomes far simpler and more effective, ensuring that companies are maintaining a high standard of necessary compliance, all the while making it an easier task than it was previously. AI-powered platforms such as Clausematch provide end-to-end policy management and regulatory compliance solutions to help organisations navigate the compliance lifecycle.
Evgeny Likhoded
Evgeny Likhoded is the Founder and CEO of Clausematch. Having worked in the legal profession for over a decade in Morgan Stanley and large energy companies, Evgeny experienced all the pains of managing compliance and sought to improve the current ways of how legal and compliance departments manage high-risk documentation. He then went on and founded Clausematch in 2012.
