Industrial Tech, Private Placements

Bryan, Garnier & Co acts as Sole Financial Advisor to NetGuardians and its shareholders on the investment from Summa Equity

Founded in 2007, NetGuardians is a fast-growing Swiss FinTech company and a leader at the forefront of AI-driven fraud prevention and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions, with widespread recognition for its pioneering approach, underpinned by its proprietary 3D AI technology.

Its cutting-edge technology combines unsupervised, supervised and active learning with community scoring intelligence to create a flawless financial crime prevention system, thereby enabling the protection of individuals and businesses, maintaining trust and economic stability, and the promotion of fairness in society. By analysing user behaviour and identifying unusual payment transactions in real-time, NetGuardians significantly reduces false positives and ensures legitimate transactions are processed smoothly. Serving over 100 customers across 30 countries, NetGuardians’ innovative solutions continue to set new standards in the industry.

Bryan, Garnier & Co acts as Sole Financial Advisor to NetGuardians and its shareholders.

Bryan, Garnier & Co organised, prepared and led a competitive process with Tier-1 strategic and financial investors.  

Through its partnership with Summa Equity, NetGuardians will collaborate with Intix, another Summa Equity portfolio company specialising in Know Your Transaction (KYT) data management, to advance the financial security landscape by driving the development of next generation financial crime solutions. 

The founders and management are also reinvesting alongside Summa Equity with continued participation in NetGuardians growth journey and international expansion, thus demonstrating their strong confidence in the future of the company.  

This marks another landmark transaction for Bryan, Garnier & Co’s industrial technology for cybersecurity practice and is a further demonstration of its expertise in financial sponsor-led transactions. Other notable transactions in the space include the investment of Intera Partners in Halon, Apax Partners in Mailinblack, the investment of Tikehau ACE Capital and Bpifrance in Vade, and the investment of Parquest in Advens. 

"This transaction is a major milestone for NetGuardians. Bryan Garnier’s in-depth market understanding was instrumental in navigating the process and identifying the perfect partner in Summa Equity. With their support, we are confident this next chapter will accelerate our growth and help us further drive innovation for next-generation financial crime prevention technologies."

— Raffael Maio, NetGuardians’ Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

NetGuardians is an award-winning Swiss FinTech helping financial institutions in over 30 countries to fight financial crime. More than 100 banks and wealth managers, including 60 percent of all Swiss state-owned commercial banks and three of the top 10 private banks as ranked by Euromoney, rely on NetGuardians’ 3D artificial intelligence (3D AI) solution to prevent fraudulent payments and detect money laundering in real-time. Banks using NetGuardians’ software have achieved an 85 percent reduction in customer friction, enjoy more than 75 percent lower operating costs and have detected new fraud cases. Headquartered in Switzerland, NetGuardians has offices in Singapore, Poland, and Kenya.

Founded in 2016, Summa Equity is an impact investor focusing on three thematic areas: Resource Efficiency, Changing Demographics, and Tech-Enabled Transformation. The purpose of Summa Equity is to invest in solving our global challenges.

Summa Equity has around EUR 5 billion in assets under management and has made over 30 platform investments across the three funds raised to date. The investments have the potential for long-term sustainable outperformance because they address some of the social, environmental, and governmental challenges we need to solve as a society.

The team is located in Northern Europe, with offices in Stockholm, Oslo, and Munich. Partnerships are part of Summa Equity’s DNA, exemplified by being a certified B Corporation and collaborating with Harvard Business School and the International Foundation for Valuing Impacts (IFVI).