Montréal-based startup Trustii has raised a $2.8-million CAD seed round to grow its risk management software, which combines automated background checks with personalized risk scoring.
The all-primary, all-equity $2.8 million CAD seed round closed at the end of September, co-led by Montréal-based AQC Capital and Accelia Capital with backing from Boréal Ventures. Undisclosed investors also supported the round.
The company was founded in 2021 CEO Jean-Simon Gaboury, a former military Psychological operations (PSYOP) officer. Trustii closed $1.8 million in pre-seed and extension funding in 2023, mostly from angel investors. Those funds were geared toward its first product, Verif: an automated background check software for hiring managers and landlords.
Trustii’s new product, Horizon, is an “orchestrator of risk management” for businesses that goes beyond simple background checks of employees, according to COO Simon Verville. The platform works in tandem with Verif to provide alerts about non-compliance and rank customizable risk profiles for each employee.
“We realized that for many companies, the pre-employment background check was the first and the last intervention for people risk management,” Verville said in an exclusive interview with BetaKit.
Trustii positions itself as an enterprise seeking to reduce the incidence of white-collar crime and other misconduct that could seriously harm a business and its clients. Horizon allows organizations to customize how they manage risk by creating tailored alerts and benchmarks tied to specific roles.
“We want to expand Horizon to help the companies fill this gap and make sure that they don’t lose something in the hole, just because they just don’t know how to monitor this,” Verville said. “Or they don’t have time to do manual actions to monitor their employees after hiring,” he added.
“It’s taking the simple background check to ongoing monitoring.”
“We realized that for many companies, the pre-employment background check was the first and the last intervention for people risk management.”
Simon Verville
COO, Trustii
Trustii’s new product, Horizon, allows companies to do security and background checks on employees more quickly and to generate risk scores. A company can set different benchmarks for different roles, like if an employee is promoted and given access to data with higher sensitivity, for instance.
“Your employees with a lot of access to valuable assets of the company, they will have a … higher risk profile and you would like to know if their financial profile is good, if there’s any criminal record, all that kind of stuff,” Verville explained.
For higher-risk situations like these, companies can use Horizon to set individual benchmarks for each employee, related to financial data, criminal records, and even social media presence.
“[Trustii’s] focus on automating background checks and providing intelligent risk management solutions was particularly compelling, given the increasing need for such services in today’s rapidly evolving corporate environment,” Julien Letartre, partner at Accelia Capital, wrote in an email to BetaKit.
Both Letartre and Kalthoum Bouacida, a partner at AQC Capital, are new members of the Trustii board, joining open banking Flinks CEO Julien Cousineau.
“Trustii’s team is also targeting a booming sector, with cybersecurity and background checks becoming increasingly essential due to the rise in data breaches, fraud, and industrial espionage,” Bouacida wrote in an email to BetaKit.
Verville said that Trustii stands apart from competitors, such as Victoria-based startup Certn, because their software takes a continuous approach to risk management instead of just focusing on background checks. They are automating a comprehensive risk assessment process, that can take into account data from criminal records, open banking, license validation, and even social media presence.
Trustii’s monitoring tools are all consent-based, Verville claims. Employees must agree to each individual background check, so it can’t be monitored on an ongoing basis without their consent. Certn was put under investigation by federal and BC watchdogs earlier this year for the company’s use of personal data.
“We’re not monitoring employees or spying on them,” Verville said. “We always ask for consent every time we send a request, just to make sure that the employee clearly understands what we would do with their information…and why we do it, right?”
Verville said that Horizon’s platform could eventually incorporate reports from automated background check companies and integrate them into its risk assessment score.
Horizon also leverages AI to compile data and score risk assessments in general. One risk that a company might want to avoid, Verville said, would be having employees in financial distress in positions conducive to fraud. A manager responsible for risk assessment could use Horizon to set specific rules associated with this risk. Horizon then surveys all collected employee data, flags anything that breaks these rules and generates a risk score.
Company compliance teams could compare these risk scores to make better-informed decisions about where to focus their energy on risk management, Verville said. And as a company’s risk priorities change, then it can modify benchmarks and identify new problem areas.
The most recent seed funding round will support go-to-market efforts, like landing big clients in Canada and expanding into the American market. Trustii’s products have already been adopted by Québec-based clients such as Quebecor, Centris, and Devimco. Verville said he is also looking to double their team of 20 employees next year.
Trustii’s revenue model relies on enterprises purchasing a monthly subscription for the Horizon software—the more employees are added to the program, the better the value. Individual purchases of automated background checks are available through Verif.
Feature image courtesy Trustii.