Meet Apiax – A RegTech success story

Could you give us a quick introduction to Apiax?

Apiax is a suite of regulatory technology products that empowers financial institutions to realise business opportunities and minimise risks. Apiax enables business leaders to make critical decisions faster. We deliver answers to the financial industry's most pressing regulatory issues in real-time. It’s the easiest, fastest way for highly regulated entities to put the client at the heart of business operations.

When and why did you decide to take the plunge and launch Apiax?

While working together on previous occasions, mainly in the financial services industry, my founding colleagues Philip Schoch, Ralf Huber, Thomas Suter, and I became aware of the ever-rising number of laws, rules and regulations companies are faced with. We recognized the complexity involved when trying todo business compliantly and understood the potential of a technology-enabled solution for financial institutions that would allow them to run their business efficiently again. This is why we started Apiax in 2017.

Compared to when you started on this journey and imagined the end result of your product - how different is Apiax today?

Since our launch in 2017, the main aim of Apiax has not changed much. We always have and still want our clients to be able to focus on their core business objectives and not worry about keeping up with ever-changing regulations. Therefore, still to this day, Apiax sets out to provide answers to regulatory questions, as well as access to rules in a useful and actionable way—digitally. Our mission remains to turn compliance into a business enabler for financial services companies of all sizes. Firms should be able to concentrate on growing their business and creating great experiences for their own customers. We think that we are able to help them achieve this by simplifying their compliance processes, embedding compliance into their business teams, tools and processes.

What has been your biggest challenge in building Apiax, and how have you overcome it?

Apiax has grown rapidly in the last few years and one of the biggest challenges in that time has been finding the right people to hire and fast. When you’re a young company, finding high-quality talent alone can be a difficult task — especially in the financial market. This resulted in us constantly improving our approaches to attract and retain top talent who could help us scale our business globally.

By setting out to bridge the gap between new technological capabilities and customs of an established industry, we also often found ourselves adapting our growth strategy. Since compliance still tends to be manual, digital solutions are often met with skepticism. That is why we set out to show how by leveraging compliance as a business enabler, financial institutions are able to remain one step ahead of their competition. And by implementing smart regulatory technology solutions, financial institutions can focus on what matters most: creating great experiences for their customers.

In 2020, the year of the pandemic, you have grown your business significantly - how do you explain this success in such a complex environment?

From what we have learned, companies are finding it difficult to continuously provide compliance expertise to business units as compliance teams move to remote work. The pandemic has reinforced the need for companies to shift to more digital solutions, especially companies who were not prioritising this before. This has clearly facilitated some great conversations for us with leading financial institutions.

Something else that has helped us is that, as a company, we didn’t have any difficulty transitioning to a remote work environment. We committed to flexible work from the beginning. This helped us smoothly transition during the pandemic, keeping our productivity high and our team motivated. Adapting our work environment gave us a competitive edge that we were eager to take advantage of.

Apiax before, during and after the incubation program

 The software industry is coined by a fast-paced atmosphere, which necessitates companies to reiterate their products on a constant basis. By listening to feedback from users and other stakeholders — such as the F10 incubation program — we are able to do that. Our journey through F10’s prestigious incubation program has allowed us to polish our offering extensively. One of the most valuable experiences was the exchange we had with other participants who found themselves in a similar position and stage as us.

In the meantime, a lot has happened. You joined the F10Acceleration program in Singapore, raised further funds and expanded to Germany- tell us a bit how this all came about.

The expansion into Singapore and Germany were both business-driven decisions. Singapore boasts of a strong financial services economy and is home to a booming tech scene. This attracts both businesses and great talent. We knew early on that we wanted to establish a foothold inSingapore, and once we found the right people to support us in our mission, we didn't hesitate to start operations.

The move to Germany was driven by the fact that we see a very high and complementary demand for our solutions in the German market. We see interest in our solutions that are not in such high demand elsewhere. This is extremely interesting for us, as it helps us to develop our products further. The second we realized that the Futury Regio Growth Fund was interested in supporting us with capital and expertise, we acted quickly to realise this opportunity.

What is your most audacious hope for the next year?

We do not want to hope for any outcomes, we want to write our own destiny. Therefore, our motto for the next year is: right here, right now. No matter where any of us are, the collective effort is what will make the difference in creating the best business enablement solution for financial institutions out there.

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Apiax was part of the F10 Incubation program in Zurich in 2017 and graduated from the first Acceleration cohort in Singapore in 2021.

Interested in joining the ecosystem?

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