‘Xero for compliance’ platform 6clicks bags $5m

”A lot of the functionality [of 6clicks] is designed to make advisors’ lives easier and to help them help their clients. There’s also a lot of businesses that approach us directly saying they need a more cost-effective way to manage compliance.

“You need great functionality, but also lots of content, so we’ve mashed together standards, laws and regulations with templates and controls.”

The business started out targeting cybersecurity businesses, winning clients such as CyberCX and Pure Security, but has since expanded into fields such as professional services and finance.

Despite only launching last year, it has already brought on board BDO, Lander and Rogers, King & Wood Mallesons and the Victorian government as other clients.

Mr Stevens said 6click’s artificial intelligence engine called Hailey had taken 18 months to develop and in its current form speeds up the compliance mapping process by 14 times.

“Our AI engine gets smarter the more standards, laws and regulations we load into the system,” he said.

“At the moment she’s smart in identifying the similarities between different cybersecurity and privacy standards.

“For our advisors, we allow them to ingest their own content [onto the platform], providing the content that’s relevant to the sector they’re servicing. So for KWM and BDO, there’s less cyber and more financial services regulations.”

To create Hailey, the co-founders combined natural language processing technologies and machine learning, so the AI engine could understand the text it was being fed and continually get smarter.

CyberCX CEO John Paitaridis said 6clicks’ platform would be used by its risk and compliance team as part of its suite of services, while Pure Security CEO Kurt Hanson said it would not only be used by its consulting team, but also for Pure Security’s own risk management needs.

The latest capital raise takes 6clicks’ total funding to $7.7 million, with its previous raises also supported by high-profile Australian business identities.

Mr Stevens said the company had also been approached by venture capital funds, but had opted to give its existing investors the first option to support its latest raise. The $5 million round was oversubscribed within a week.

“We’re fortunate we had some significant backers in the cap table and they came to the party and were hugely supportive,” he said.

“We’re pretty confident we’ll do another raise in 2021 and it’ll be institutional because it’ll be a larger cheque size and we have discussions under way with VCs now.”

Mr Sayers, who was CEO of PwC locally for eight years until July last year, said 6clicks could be a world leader in the regtech field.

“I am seeing strong macro thematics driving the need for better management of risk and compliance across every business and the public sector,” he said.

Offshore, 6clicks has operations in the UK, US and India. Having started 2020 with only six people, it now has a team of 40, despite having to contend with the COVID-19 pandemic.

6clicks has beefed up its own governance chops, appointing former NTT Australia and Dimension Data chief executive Steve Nola to the board.

“Since my retirement from NTT, I have been looking at companies that have technologies that can redefine markets. 6clicks is such a company that offers a platform that delivers better risk and compliance outcomes for businesses and advisors,” Mr Nola said.