Fintech Relace raises £1.2m led by Boost Capital with support from Ascension
This article covers Relace, a fintech startup, which has raised £1.2m in a pre-seed funding round led by Boost Capital to build a live regulatory management platform for financial firms. The platform aims to automate compliance interpretation and testing to help regulated firms and their advisers identify obligations and shorten the time taken to establish regulatory requirements across the United Kingdom, EU, US and Middle East.
Relace, a fintech startup, has raised £1.2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Boost Capital to build a live regulatory management platform for financial firms; the cash will be used for engineering hires, expanding regulatory coverage across the United Kingdom, EU, US and Middle East, and growing its commercial team to work with regulated firms and their advisors. The raise signals continued investor interest in regtech that automates compliance interpretation and reduces the time firms spend establishing regulatory obligations.
Why it matters
Financial firms typically rely on PDFs, inherited spreadsheets and ad hoc advice to manage regulatory obligations. That approach is slow, siloed and hard to audit, which can delay product launches and increase headcount or unmanaged risk. Relace’s premise is that much of this friction is a technology problem: if a firm can quickly map what rules apply to its operating model, products and customers, it can move faster and reduce uncertainty. For a sector where industry estimates place direct regulatory costs at more than $200 billion a year, tools that shorten compliance cycles could shape productivity across financial services.
Inside the product
Relace applies regulatory rules to the specific firm in front of it, taking into account its operating model, products and customers to establish which obligations apply and how. The platform then tests the firm against those obligations so it can see its regulatory posture, identify gaps and close them. Each conclusion links back to the underlying rule, providing an auditable trail.
Coverage is being developed for the United Kingdom, EU, US and Middle East. Relace highlights that a mid-sized firm launching in a second jurisdiction can currently spend three to six months merely establishing requirements; the company says its platform can cut that time dramatically. One named customer, Gemcorp Capital — a private credit investor with around $7 billion in assets under management — reported using Relace to complete compliance work across two jurisdictions in days rather than weeks and to a standard suitable for board review.
Who are the investors?
The pre-seed round was led by Boost Capital and joined by Ascension and Koro Capital, together with angel participation from employees at JPMorgan, Barclays and Morgan Stanley and from individuals at OpenAI and SAP. The round raised £1.2 million in total.
Relace says the funding will be deployed into engineering hires to deepen automated regulatory coverage, and into building a commercial team to work directly with regulated firms and their advisers. The presence of senior bankers and technology-company angels among participants underlines cross-sector interest in tools that can reduce the time and cost of compliance while creating auditable records of decisions.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Justin Peimani, Co-founder, said:
Regulation has a reputation it does not deserve. What slows firms down is not the rules. It is not knowing where companies stand against them. When a firm can see exactly what applies to them, what it decided and what has just changed, the perception shifts from regulation being a barrier to the foundation that they can build from. The firm moves faster, customers get better products and revenues grow.
In the announcement, Lyubomira Dimitrova, Co-founder, said:
I have spent my career building technology used by hundreds of millions of people, and regulation is the hardest problem I have worked on. It is hard because the rules are written for everyone, and every firm is left to work out on its own what they mean for it. We automate that translation, then test the firm against the answer. A firm that knows its posture and knows its gaps is a firm in control, and it can prove it.
In the announcement, Patrick Nyamangunda, Chief Compliance Officer and MLRO, Gemcorp Capital, said:
As a compliance officer, you usually have to choose between speed and depth of analysis. Relace gave us both. Work that would normally take weeks was completed in a few days, in detail, across two jurisdictions, and to a standard we could put in front of the board.
The bigger picture
Relace was selected for the second cohort of the Financial Conduct Authority’s Supercharged Sandbox, the regulator’s programme for developing and testing advanced AI in financial services. It is one of 21 firms chosen from 199 applications, and its work in the programme is focused on the Consumer Duty regime, with sandbox activity running to the end of 2026. The FCA’s backing reflects broader regulatory interest in supervised environments where AI and automation can be trialled against real-world compliance requirements.
The company’s approach — treating regulatory interpretation as a software problem and providing traceable conclusions — fits a wider trend in regtech where automation and explainability are increasingly prized by firms and regulators alike. For the UK and Europe, startups that can reduce friction around cross-jurisdictional compliance could accelerate product rollout and make regulated markets more dynamic while helping firms demonstrate oversight to boards and supervisors.
Relace’s raise adds to momentum in the regtech segment of the fintech ecosystem and underlines how investor and regulator attention is converging on technologies that make compliance faster, more auditable and less resource intensive across jurisdictions.
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