Foresight Group (“Foresight”), a listed private equity and infrastructure investment manager, has completed a £3.5 million growth equity investment into Ruleguard (the “Company”), a London based SaaS technology provider supporting financial institution regulatory compliance.

Ruleguard was established by founder John O’Dwyer in 2013 as a software development consultancy. John spotted an opportunity in 2015 and developed a software platform to support the newly incoming Client Assets Sourcebook (“CASS”) regulations. Since then, Ruleguard has grown rapidly by winning business with a growing blue-chip customer base and expanded its capabilities to become one of the most competitive GRC platforms in the financial sector.

The global Regulation Technology (“Reg Tech”) market was valued at $15.9 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of 24%. This is driven by increasing regulatory burdens, the need for firms to save costs through automation and the size and complexity of financial institutions and regulated functions.

Ruleguard is uniquely positioned as a specialised platform for regulatory compliance and has broader coverage than point solution providers while being more focussed than generic enterprise grade risk management platforms. Its platform enables customers to navigate the ever-growing challenges of increasing regulatory compliance requirements with less effort and lower risk, while also enabling them to save money on audit compliance costs.

The investment from two of Foresight’s VCTs, Foresight VCT and Foresight Enterprise VCT, will help the Company to continue to develop additional platform capabilities while also scaling up sales and marketing to capitalise on a large and growing market opportunity.

Commenting on the investment, Stephan Gueorguiev, Investment Director at Foresight, said: “Ruleguard represents a great opportunity to invest in a rapidly growing Reg Tech business with high quality recurring revenues and excellent customer feedback. The Company’s target market is large and expanding, with increasing regulatory complexity necessitating increased adoption of specialised technology. Ruleguard’s well-rounded team is well placed to drive further rapid growth, and we look forward to being part of the Company’s next growth stage.”

John O’Dwyer, CEO at Ruleguard, added: “We had a lot of interest in our equity raise from the VCT sector and held numerous conversations with potential partners, but Foresight was the ideal fit. What stood out was the quality of their people, their skill at relationship building, their obvious integrity and their passion for the technology sector. Foresight understood our ambition and unique proposition for our clients better than most and we are excited that this meeting of minds will accelerate our growth as RegTech continues to transform the financial sector.”