Eindhoven-based Hyarchis, a fintech company that helps financial institutions manage data by ensuring regulatory compliance, announced on Tuesday, January 10, that it has acquired Dutch IT service provider DAPAS.
Adriaan Hoogduijn, founder of Hyarchis, says, “By combining our forces, we offer a new proposition in the Dutch accountancy sector. With Hyarchis, we have been the market leader in document management for ten years, and with the acquisition of DAPAS, we are adding customer onboarding to this.”
“In addition, with our merger, accountants now manage compliance fully automatedly throughout their customers’ entire lifecycle. This extends from a centralised underwriting process for new customers to automated monitoring of existing customers and trimming historical customer data. We call this joint product Hyarchis Comply: a unique solution in the Netherlands in terms of scope, but especially because of the fully automated nature of the applications,” adds Hoogduijn.
Aim of the acquisition
Hyarchis claims that with the deal, it will be able to introduce the first comprehensive compliance solution for the accountancy market. This will enable accountants to maintain compliance over the whole lifetime of their clients automatically.
Hoogduijn, who is also the CEO of Hyarchis, says, “The Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) estimates that the costs of carrying out the supervision of the accountancy sector will increase from €1.5M in 2021 to €5.1M in 2024. This will put pressure on the traditional revenue model of accountants and put automation high on the agenda on the boards of accounting firms. The current approach of decentralised compliance, which is mostly ad hoc, with no control over the execution of the prescribed process, is no longer sustainable.”
In a recently published position paper, the AFM claims that the accounting industry does not properly detect and handle fraud risks. As a result, the regulator has announced stronger regulations and expects the industry to better perform its gatekeeping function.
Helping accountants automate their compliance processes
Founded in 2015 by former KPMG employees, DAPAS is an IT service provider that assists accounting firms and administrative centres in controlling their compliance-related problems.
The company claims to have built the first application for onboarding clients following the requirements of the Wwft. The Wwft provides a comprehensive set of measures to prevent the use of the financial system for money laundering or terrorist financing.
DAPAS covers the entire client lifecycle — from onboarding to monitoring. The company’s application is in use at about 120 firms in the Netherlands.
