Whiteoak Growth Fund II is Whiteoak’s flagship investment vehicle, focused on accelerating the growth of high-potential, privately held Australian companies. Through this partnership, LAB Group is streamlining the end-to-end onboarding process for both financial advisers and direct investors, helping Whiteoak scale its operations while maintaining the highest standards of compliance and investor experience.

The LAB digital onboarding framework has been tailored to Whiteoak’s specific requirements for the Growth Fund II, automating key steps in AML/CTF compliance, KYC verification, and account creation. Investors and advisers benefit from a fully branded, intuitive digital experience that simplifies data capture, document submission, digital signing, and consent processes – enhancing engagement and accelerating time to investment.

Nick Boudrie, CEO of LAB Group, said: “We are thrilled to be supporting Whiteoak with their fund engagements. Our digital engagement technology is purpose-built to handle complex investor onboarding scenarios across multiple channels, and this partnership demonstrates the power of automation and intelligent workflows in delivering a secure, scalable and seamless experience for both advisers and investors.”

This deployment continues LAB Group’s momentum in transforming how investment managers onboard and engage their clients, using regulatory technology to drive operational excellence and regulatory assurance.

Raymond Tay, Operations Director of Whiteoak, said: “LAB Group is an integral partner in our investor on-boarding process, and we are pleased to be working with them in conjunction with common third-party service providers to enable a streamlined customer application and on-boarding experience”.

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LAB is leveraging CreditorWatch’s unique and comprehensive registry and credit risk data to deliver key automation and risk mitigation features into its digital onboarding and client lifecycle platform.

The partnership has already resulted in the incorporation of UBO discovery into LAB’s digital onboarding experience for an enterprise customer, resulting in uplifted straight-through processing and countless hours saved in back-office checks. This solution also significantly reduces manual keying by the applicant, speeding up onboarding and improving accuracy.

LAB has also recently commenced the rollout of a solution to continuously monitor for key risk indicators in its customer’s investor bases through their engagement lifecycle. This is enabled by CreditorWatch’s access to more than 50 public and private data sources, including ASIC lodgements, ATO debt records, ABR data and trade payment defaults.

CreditorWatch’s platform is now integrated with LAB Verify, which orchestrates verification directly within the digital onboarding journey and throughout the client lifecycle. Having direct integration with the CreditorWatch platform empowers LAB Group customers to make better informed risk decisions and drive further efficiencies across client lifecycle management requirements.

Nick Boudrie, CEO and co-founder of LAB Group, said: “It’s been a pleasure to work with CreditorWatch who have helped LAB tailor solutions to address our customer’s unique problem statements. This integration upgrades our capabilities to meet the needs of organisations with complex due diligence requirements, leveraging CreditorWatch’s specialist expertise in business data and the robustness of its infrastructure.

“By expanding our LAB Verify capability, this integration allows us to help our financial services customers to meet their regulatory obligations and mitigate operational risk while also achieving a reduction in manual back-office overhead. We’re excited to help broaden the audience that CreditorWatch can reach, while bolstering the capabilities that LAB Group can offer to its existing and new customers.”

CreditorWatch CEO and co-founder, Patrick Coghlan, said: “We are always excited to work with businesses that are as innovative and committed to improving the customer experience as LAB Group. The synergies between our businesses will most definitely result in some very exciting outcomes. We look forward to contributing to the next stage of LAB Group’s evolution through the provision of our unique data.”

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One of Australia’s largest Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSF) Administrators, SuperGuardian ensures Australian Trustees and Financial Advisers have ready access to the facts, tools and support they need to make informed decisions and to maximise wealth creation. An independently owned, private Chartered Accounting firm and registered tax agent established in 2002, SuperGuardian provides SMSF Trustees and their Financial Adviser with up-to-date reporting, compliance and tax services.

Until now, establishing an SMSF has meant dealing with a number of different service providers and government departments, which can be complex and time consuming. This collaboration will make establishing an SMSF much simpler for advisers and more secure for their clients, who may be looking to join the growing number of Australians taking control of their superannuation in an SMSF.

This deal marks LAB Group’s entry into the new vertical of SMSF Administrators and represents its first step towards grasping broader opportunities in this attractive market. LAB Group has identified potential to leverage its existing capabilities in this space, as SMSF Administration firms have similar regulatory obligations to those which LAB Group already solves for its existing clients regarding Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF).

In welcoming SuperGuardian to the LAB Platform, LAB Group is providing its Onboarding Framework which delivers a streamlined digital engagement journey for clients wishing to establish a new SMSF or transfer the administration of an existing SMSF to SuperGuardian. With access to LAB’s Application Manager, advisers and intermediaries have also gained the ability to originate applications into SuperGuardian on behalf of their clients. Longer term, SuperGuardian and LAB Group plan to engage more closely to collaborate on further automation to onboarding processes through new integrations and features.

Beyond the LAB Platform, SuperGuardian is also utilising LAB Verify to automate a variety of identity and entity verification requirements, and is leveraging LAB extensive connectivity to facilitate the opening of new Macquarie Cash Management Accounts.

This partnership bolsters the value of the LAB Network to LAB Group’s existing customers, providing the potential for connectivity from upstream participants into SMSF Administration services. It also expands the number of intermediaries, advisers and end clients utilising LAB Group technology to sign up to financial services products, further enhancing the reach of the LAB Network.

Following a rapid deployment of 2 weeks, the solution is now live and already adding significant value across the partnership.

Nick Boudrie, CEO and co-founder of LAB Group, said: “We’re delighted to be servicing SuperGuardian and its adviser and client network. SuperGuardian is a long-standing, well-connected key player in Australia’s SMSF Administration industry, and one that recognises the unique benefits of LAB Group’s offering, particularly our extensive experience and network capabilities. We look forward to helping to accelerate and improve SuperGuardian’s customer journey and experience.”

SuperGuardian Chief Operating Officer, Josh Williams, said: “We are pleased to partner with LAB Group, to provide our clients with a straightforward and easy-to-navigate sign-up process. The new process streamlines and automates a number of manual steps, including digital identity verification for both direct and adviser-led prospects. It has also enabled integration with Macquarie Bank for account establishment and we look forward to further expanding connectivity with other financial services businesses across the LAB Network, for the benefit of our clients.”

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The incoming investor, Global Credit Investments (GCI), is a leading provider of specialist private credit and tailor-made financial products. Founded in Sydney in 2015, GCI provides flexible low-dilution funding structures that enable its investee companies to transform their businesses, funds have been used by businesses to help accelerate sales and marketing and to fund international expansion strategies – to name a few. GCI has raised and deployed c.AU$1 billion to date and specialises in empowering outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams looking to transform and scale their high growth businesses.

LAB Group was co-founded in 2010 by CEO Nick Boudrie and CTO Lyndon Webster, who retain majority stakes in the business. Since launch, LAB Group has deployed its technology across Australian and international financial services licensees, as well as businesses in other sectors, whilst establishing offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Copenhagen.

Having partnered with some of Australia and the world’s most recognised and respected institutions, LAB Group’s innovative onboarding and compliance platform solves the key governance, risk and compliance challenges that regulated entities face today. GCI’s investment will support LAB Group to accelerate its business and product development activities, providing working capital to fund domestic and international growth opportunities.

Nick Boudrie, CEO and co-founder of LAB Group, said: “We are delighted to welcome GCI as an investor in LAB Group. The backing of an investor of GCI’s calibre will bring LAB Group the support we need to further strengthen and scale up our team and accelerate our growth strategy. We are particularly pleased to have found a capital investment solution which will help us take our business to its next growth phase while minimising shareholder dilution.

“Completing the GCI facility underlines the strong market position and unique capabilities that LAB Group has developed through 12 years of evolution and innovation. Our platform delivers significant advantages to LAB Group clients, encompassing a dynamic onboarding framework providing end-to-end account opening and digital workflow management, an easy-to-integrate ID verification solution validating AML, KYC, KYB, and PEP Sanctions for all entity types, and a network of global products and jurisdictions that enables the seamless consented movement of consumer profile data.

“We look forward to a fruitful working relationship with GCI which adds value to LAB Group’s customers, integration partners, staff and investors.”

Gavin Solsky, Managing Director & Co-Founder, from GCI, said: “We are excited to announce our partnership with LAB Group as they embark on their exciting growth journey. LAB Group embodies all the qualities we seek in an emerging high-growth company, from a proven product-market fit to outstanding customer metrics. With a skilled founder-management team driving their growth strategy and a substantial market opportunity supported by structural growth, we are confident in their future success.”

Henslow Pty Ltd acted as corporate adviser to LAB Group and lead manager of the transaction.

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Nick Boudrie

LAB Group, a leading international RegTech and Australia’s best-connected onboarding provider, is pleased to announce that it has delivered a new integration with identity verification specialist IDVerse.

LAB Group’s new integration partner, IDVerse, provides best-in-class ID document verification, incorporating document scanning, fraud assessment and biometrics. Founded in Australia in 2018, IDVerse is trusted by regtech businesses, governments and global enterprises for borderless and inclusive identity verification.

IDVerse’s platform is now integrated with LAB’s customer onboarding solution and injects ID document verification directly into the digital onboarding journey. The integration provides a fully-automated solution which verifies new users in seconds with just their face, ID document and smartphone – in over 220 countries and territories with any ID document – without the burden of human intervention.

LAB Group’s new integration partner can scan, recognise and perform fraud assessment against any global photo ID, incorporating IDVerse’s pioneering Zero Bias AI platform. This generative AI technology is training deep neural network systems to protect against discrimination on the basis of race, age and gender. It is capable of recognising more of the world’s people and skin tones for more comprehensive and universal access.

The integrated solution is already live in market, servicing the requirement for age verification for online same day liquor orders with a large national retailer.

Achieving direct integration with the IDVerse platform will provide an immediate solution for LAB Group clients seeking to deliver digital age verification. This is directly applicable to customers seeking to meet the requirements of new regulatory reforms surrounding same-day alcohol delivery. However, LAB Group has identified broader applications of this technology that can add value in new contexts, particularly for those industries affected by the Tranche 2 anti-money laundering (AML) reforms which are expected to come into force soon in Australia.

Nick Boudrie, CEO and co-founder of LAB Group, said:  “We are delighted to partner with IDVerse to bring best-in-class ID document verification solutions to our customers. As LAB Group has previously led strategic integrations with IDVerse to deliver fully-automated identity and data verification, we are confident that implementing a comprehensive integration will add ongoing value to a broader set of LAB Group customers as our verification capabilities continue to evolve.

“As an Australian company taking home-grown technology to the world, we are proud to support IDVerse’s growth ambitions and look forward to jointly serving our customers’ onboarding and verification needs.”

Paul Warren-Tape, GM of APAC at IDVerse, said: “We are pleased to partner with LAB Group to integrate our ID verification services with LAB Verify. As IDVerse can provide reliable authentication across every layer of identity, documentation, and point of access, it is mutually beneficial for us to combine our platforms into each other’s workflows.

“As global awareness of algorithmic bias continues to rise, we are proud to inspire LAB Group’s trust as we strive to remain at the forefront of a more inclusive and seamless digital landscape.”

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LAB Group’s new integration partner, DocuSign, pioneered the development of e-signature technology, helping organisations connect and automate how they prepare, sign, act on and manage agreements. Today, more than 1 million customers and over a billion users worldwide use DocuSign to accelerate the process of doing business and to simplify people’s lives.

DocuSign’s platform is now integrated with LAB’s highly standardised client onboarding platform. The integration provides financial advisers with the capacity to digitise the signature and witnessing requirements for Limited Power of Attorney (POA) documentation. This accelerates advisers’ action on their clients’ behalf to open and activate new accounts.

The first organisation to benefit from LAB Group’s integration with DocuSign is Integrated Portfolio Solutions Pty Ltd (Integrated), a new customer for LAB. Integrated’s unique combination of technology and services removes the burden of portfolio administration and reporting for Private Client businesses and Family Offices. As a ‘whole-of-wealth’ non-custodial platform, Integrated enables its clients to retain an investment universe that is completely unconstrained by investment administration considerations or Excel spreadsheets.

Integrated Portfolio Solutions Co-Founder and Executive Director, Darryl Johnson, said: “We are excited to join the LAB Network and are looking forward to bringing its convenience and connectivity to Integrated customers and their clients. We are particularly pleased to partner with LAB as its integration with DocuSign goes live. It’s a clear value-add to offer our customers a virtual dotted line on which they can leave a digital wet signature which is fully auditable and verifiable. This will let our customers open new investment accounts at the touch of a button, reducing the onboarding process from days to minutes.”

Nick Boudrie, CEO and co-founder of LAB Group, said: “We are pleased to welcome Integrated to the LAB Network as we announce a new integration between DocuSign and our digital onboarding platform. This integration will bring a range of benefits: it will save advisers time in originating applications, it streamlines downstream account opening for other investment products and it builds upon our upstream and downstream connectivity in stockbroking, where the LAB Network currently offers the strongest network effects. We have built this integration in a scalable manner to benefit all members of the LAB Network. This reflects our commitment to continually deliver increased automation and greater efficiency to the financial services industry.”

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Nick Boudrie

LAB Group, a leading international RegTech and Australia’s best-connected onboarding provider, is pleased to announce that the company has expanded into a key international growth market by welcoming IG Japan, a leading Japan-based trading and investing provider, to the LAB Network.

As a LAB Platform customer, IG Japan will benefit from LAB Group’s Onboarding Framework and Application Manager. LAB Group’s multi-lingual and multi-jurisdictional functionalities have presented key value drivers to IG Japan.

Nick Boudrie, CEO and co-founder of LAB Group, said:

“We are excited to accelerate our international expansion in partnership with IG Japan. This market represents a large addressable opportunity for LAB Group, with foreign exchange alone seeing 2 million plus active traders.

“IG’s continued growth in Japan, and our companies’ long and successful association in Australia, made IG Japan the ideal partner with which to roll out a customised workflow leveraging existing frameworks to provide language support while meeting the compliance requirements of a complex jurisdiction.

“We look forward to continuing to enhance the LAB Platform’s multi-lingual, multi-product, multi-jurisdictional connectivity to improve our customers’ ability to distribute products and onboard new clients.”

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Nick Boudrie

Australia’s most connected account opening platform provider, LAB Group (“LAB” or “the Company”), is pleased to announce that it has achieved a new growth milestone with 125 enterprise customers as members of the LAB Network.

Each of these customers is now positioned to take full advantage of membership of the LAB Network, through which LAB Group seamlessly connects consumers to financial products across a range of industry sectors.

LAB Network background

Through the Company’s 10+ year history, LAB Group has remained tightly focused on simplifying the digital onboarding journey for financial services customers while staying at the forefront of innovation and change in regulatory technology (RegTech). The quality and longevity of LAB Group’s relationships with its clients has opened the opportunity for LAB Group to augment its best-in-class digital onboarding platform with services that significantly enhance product distribution across more than 15 financial services verticals.

This has led to the Company’s development of the LAB Network: a set of interconnected white labelled instances of the LAB Platform. This network allows for the seamless consented movement of consumer profile data, offering consumers an unprecedentedly efficient onboarding experience into multiple providers across the Australian financial services market.

Three elements flowing from LAB Group’s technology leadership facilitate this capability:

•  An API that allows for consumer data to be received into the LAB Network from external sources
• The LAB Network itself, which allows for the transfer of data within and between organisations on the LAB Platform
• A unique feature which allows data to move out of the LAB Network and into downstream connected systems and vendors, facilitating automated account activation (LAB Group Partners with Kyckr for Global Institutional & Corporate Verification)^[1].

An example of these three elements working in concert:

• Using the LAB Network, a financial adviser can now use a wealth management platform to push their client’s data into an instance of the LAB Platform to pre-populate client information into an equity product offering (LAB Group Integrates with Iress Xplan)^[2].
• If a new cash settlement account is also required, the client data can be sent to another LAB Network tenant to streamline and expedite a secondary onboarding process.
  The LAB Network’s downstream connectivity then allows all the consented client information to flow into a downstream pre-integrated clearing and settlement platform – so the client is up and running operating the account faster than ever (LAB Group Integrates with FinClear)^[3].
• The diagram below illustrates how the LAB Network delivers unprecedented connectivity across products and jurisdictions. This real world example requires applicants to be engaged on multiple instances of the LAB Platform across jurisdictional geographies and products.

With more than 125 LAB Group customers now active members, the LAB Network has accumulated a critical mass of organisations across a broad range of financial services verticals. This is now allowing LAB Group to realise compelling network effects to facilitate a more efficient institutional and retail investment marketplace and revolutionise the way people engage with financial services.

Plugging into the LAB Network is also a distinctly valuable opportunity for global enterprises whose operations require many upstream and downstream systems to interconnect to fulfill financial services. By connecting their cross region and cross product LAB Platform instances, the LAB Network will allow these groups to manage multi-jurisdictional differences in product and data capture requirements, minimising the information required for each engagement whilst simplifying their management of client product disclosure through LAB’s consenting framework.

Nick Boudrie, CEO of LAB Group, said: “We are proud to deliver ongoing growth in the number and complexity of our LAB Network members. Every additional member delivers new benefits to our customer base and the millions of global consumers and institutions that they count as clients.

“With digital onboarding at the core of everything we do, the continued growth of the LAB Network offers opportunities for our Australian customers to expedite their access to international markets while also improving the onboarding user experience for investors who are based in a broad range of jurisdictions.

“Through the LAB Network, we pride ourselves on delivering a simple and elegant user experience for clients and advisers in a space that was once complex and disjointed. We look forward to continuing to enhance the connectivity throughout the LAB Network to improve our customers’ ability to distribute products and onboard new clients. We also see a bright future for the continued expansion of the LAB Network, as it grows to serve a globally addressable market in which, according to Juniper Research, annual RegTech spend is expected to increase to US$127 billion by 2024.”

———-

Notes:
[1] https://labgroup.com.au/lab-group-partners-with-kyckr-to-bring-global-institutional-and-corporate-verification-to-the-lab-platform/
[2] https://labgroup.com.au/lab-group-integrates-with-iress-xplan/
[3] https://labgroup.com.au/finclear-simplify-client-onboarding/

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Nick Boudrie

Australia’s most connected account opening platform provider, LAB Group (“LAB” or “the Company”), is pleased to announce that it has signed a strategic integration partnership with global database verification company Kyckr Ltd (ASX: KYK).

Kyckr is an established and fast-growing B2B data and software company listed on the ASX. It aggregates, organises and structures the world’s company data to reduce the business risks associated with counterparty relationships such as fraud, money laundering and financial crime.

Kyckr is the leading global provider of real-time company registry information on over 170 million businesses, from 200+ regulatory sources across 120 countries. Through the combination of accurate primary source data with innovative technology, Kyckr’s solutions help organisations to succeed in the fight against financial crime while reducing operational costs associated with verification and compliance.

This strategic partnership provides LAB Group and its clients with instant access to primary source company data, enabling enterprise organisations to verify, onboard and monitor their customers. Kyckr’s deep corporate data set will increase operational efficiencies for LAB clients who require multijurisdictional data coverage and regional information extraction to manage their corporate and institutional onboarding more efficiently. Utilising LAB Group’s leading exceptions framework, this service will help organisations on the LAB Platform to further automate their complex onboarding and Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) analysis in order to increase the efficiency in meeting regulatory obligations.

This partnership aligns to Kyckr’s global growth strategy and significantly increases global distribution of their company data verification services through LAB Group’s rapidly expanding onboarding platform. This integration enhances Kyckr’s international reach and speaks to their status as the leading provider of corporate verification services globally. Kyckr’s customers can also benefit from connectivity to LAB Group’s innovative platform to streamline their onboarding processes.

Kyckr CEO, Ian Henderson, said: “We at Kyckr are excited to partner with LAB Group to enhance Kyckr’s distribution capability through a leading standardised platform. We view LAB Group’s services as highly complementary to our own and we look forward to providing increased speed and accuracy in how their clients verify and onboard customers.”

Nick Boudrie, CEO of LAB Group, said: “We are delighted to deliver a highly strategic integration through our partnership with Kyckr. The integration further refines our institutional, wholesale and sophisticated investor onboarding offering to meet the complex requirements and exemptions of global enterprise clients. This is an important step for LAB as we continue to pioneer a solution for institutional onboarding and expand our international footprint.

“Kyckr is a is partner who fits well with our high pedigree global clients who require verification options across multiple jurisdictions.”

LAB Group Global Head of Business Development, Jason Marsham, said: “Achieving this integration with Kyckr is a satisfying result following a sustained period of international collaboration in which we have worked to identify global growth opportunities to provide an innovative solution to institutional organisations who have been left behind in the onboarding space. As a global database verification company operating with a strong product set in more than 100 countries, securing Kyckr as an integration partner has been a key objective for LAB Group to help solve industry challenges around UBO and OCDD. Further to this, Kyckr is highly competitive in Australia, which provides us with opportunities for profitable growth in our home market.”

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Nick Boudrie

Australia’s most connected account opening platform provider, LAB Group (“LAB” or “the Company”), is pleased to announce that it has delivered a new integration via partnership with Praemium Ltd (ASX: PPS) (“Praemium”), which will simplify digital client management for users of Praemium’s platform.

Praemium (ASX: PPS) is a leader in the provision of technology platforms for managed accounts, investment administration and reporting. Praemium services more than 300,000 investor accounts covering over $260 billion in funds for more than 1,000 financial institutions and intermediaries, including some of the world’s largest financial institutions. This strategic integration between LAB Group’s KYC and onboarding platform and Premium’s platform technology creates efficiencies for the users of both systems by further enhancing the connectivity and the automated data flow of both platforms.

Financial planners and advisers using Praemium can now benefit from LAB Group’s unprecedented and comprehensive oversight of the new client application process.

Marcus Today, a leading independent Australian stock market newsletter and provider of Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) who uses Praemium’s platform technology to administer its clients SMAs was seeking an integration to facilitate their non-advised clients onboarding and LAB Group was the preferred solution to automate, enhance and gain insights into its clients onboarding process.

Marcus Today founder and director, Marcus Padley, said: “We are delighted by the impact LAB Group has had on our operations. Its platform has transformed how onboarding is managed within Marcus Today and has measurably improved our user experience.

“Building on our history together, we couldn’t be happier to now see LAB and Praemium integrate, as this will streamline the user experience further for all of our investors. We have long viewed this integration as a key part of our strategic journey and are glad to report it is now working as planned, providing us with immediate insight into our new clients’ onboarding journey. LAB Group has proven itself to be a strong partner to Marcus Today and the market leader in secure onboarding.”

Nick Boudrie, CEO of LAB Group, said: “Through our new partnership with Praemium, we are excited to deliver another integration for our digital onboarding platform. With Praemium an increasingly strong independent wealth technology platform provider in Australia, we see immediate potential to expand the scope of this integration to LAB clients around the globe.

“As the most connected digital onboarding platform in Australia, we are firmly committed to the rapid expansion of strategic integrations like this with Praemium, to continue enhancing our client’s product origination, distribution and fulfilment through the LAB Network.

“We remain committed to maintaining our advantage as Australia’s most connected digital onboarding platform. As our network continues to strengthen across financial services and other industries, we look forward to building out more upstream and downstream connectivity as we work toward our strategic goal of leadership in data automation across our chosen markets.”

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