Norwegian audit firm Benford has raised €5 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by firstminute capital, Global Founders Capital and Sondo, with participation from industry entrepreneurs including HSO founder Peter ter Maaten, Pennylane co-founders Arthur Waller and Quentin de Metz, Qonto co-founder Alexandre Prot, and the Spandow family of Amesto. Benford provides end-to-end statutory financial audits through its proprietary AuditOS platform, which connects to clients’ financial and operational systems to automate routine audit work while qualified auditors retain responsibility for professional judgement and signed opinions. The company will use the funding to expand its London and Oslo offices, enter Sweden and other European markets, and hire across audit and engineering.
Founded by Mads Bogen Øye, Thibault Mallion and Andreas Rystad, Benford takes a vertically integrated approach to financial auditing. Rather than licensing software to existing audit firms, the company operates as an audit provider itself, combining its technology with qualified professionals who oversee engagements and sign the final audit opinions.
“Audit is one of the few services where the customer experience has got worse every year while the bill has gone up,” said Thibault Mallion, co-founder and co-CEO of Benford. “We are not changing what an audit is. We are changing how it is delivered.”
Its proprietary platform, AuditOS, connects to clients’ enterprise resource planning systems, subledgers, invoices, bank records and other operational systems to collect and organize audit evidence. The platform logs inputs, traces them to their sources and supports routine testing, while auditors assess exceptions and make decisions requiring professional judgement.
Benford also provides a shared interface for communication between auditors and client finance teams. The system is designed to reduce the administrative work involved in preparing for audits and carry relevant information forward between annual engagements.
“Every attempt to modernise audit has been aimed at the auditor’s desk. The firm around it was left untouched.” explains Mads Bogen Øye, co-founder and co-CEO of Benford.
The €5 million pre-seed round brings together venture capital firms and entrepreneurs with backgrounds in accounting software, business banking and business services. The investors include firstminute capital, Global Founders Capital and Sondo, alongside individuals associated with HSO, Pennylane, Qonto and Amesto.
“For twenty years, innovation in audit has meant selling tools to auditors, and most audits are still done the old way. Audit is a huge, structurally overlooked market that nobody has tried to rebuild from first principles,” said Michael Stothard, partner at firstminute capital. “The Big Four are pulling back from the mid-market, and the technology to do this properly has only just arrived. Mads, Thibault and Andreas are the rare team that can both build the software and handle the execution of a full end-to-end service in a complex industry. That combination is exactly what it takes to build the next generation of audit.”
Benford plans to use the investment to grow its teams in London and Oslo and expand into Sweden and additional European markets. The company is also recruiting across audit and engineering as it develops its technology and service offering.
Benford currently has a team of 20 employees and is already conducting client audits in Norway. Its expansion comes amid challenges in the European audit market, particularly among small and mid-sized businesses, where audit firms face rising costs, pressure to modernize their technology and difficulties recruiting experienced professionals.
“No process is better suited to automation than audit’s groundwork, and few are less automated” said David Sainteff, Partner at GFC. “It is the clients who pay the price, both in fees and in the internal hours spent facilitating a process that software should be doing.”
The company aims to automate routine audit procedures while keeping qualified auditors responsible for assessments and final opinions.
Read the orginal article: https://arcticstartup.com/benford-raises-e5-m-pre-seed/
