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Jan 18
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Ascent Acquired by Edgewater Equity Partners

By News & Press

 Strategic acquisition sets the stage for Ascent to accelerate innovation in AI-enabled compliance automation for Financial Services Firms

CHICAGO (January 18, 2024) – Ascent Technologies, an innovator and leading provider of AI-enabled compliance automation solutions for financial services companies, today announced its acquisition by Edgewater Equity Partners, a private equity firm based in Boston. This strategic acquisition positions Ascent to accelerate development of its compliance automation platform and deliver even greater value to its customers.

“We were drawn to Ascent due to its technology leadership position in helping companies solve their most critical compliance challenges,” said Joe Bradley, Managing Partner at Edgewater Equity Partners. “Ascent’s commitment to innovation offers tremendous potential to advance in AI-driven compliance automation”. 

Ascent CEO, Chris Junker, is equally optimistic about the future, adding, “We’re excited to welcome the Edgewater Equity Partners team as our strategic partner. Their track record of growing companies of our size is impressive, and their experience will be invaluable as we continue to expand our footprint in the compliance technology landscape. This acquisition will further solidify Ascent’s position as a leader in solving complex compliance challenges through automation.”   

Solving compliance challenges through automation

Historically, compliance teams have been forced to read endlessly through a deluge of documents from numerous regulators to identify applicable rule changes and analyze their impact – with the constant risk of unknowingly being in non-compliance.

The Ascent platform replaces these slow, costly, manual processes with AI-enabled automation that monitors the financial services regulatory landscape in real time, identifies rule changes and obligations that apply to a company, and notifies stakeholders of applicable rule changes and obligations.  “Regulatory compliance is critical for today’s companies,” said Edgewater Equity Partners Managing Partner, Scott Goebel. “Non-compliance can lead to severe legal consequences, reputational damage, and financial penalties. Ascent’s patented AI technology is already delivering better business outcomes and lower costs, and we see Ascent as the future of regulatory compliance.”

With this acquisition, Ascent is positioned to accelerate the delivery of innovative new compliance automation capabilities focused, not only on driving compliance team productivity and effectiveness, but on delivering real business outcomes – from cost reduction to stronger risk avoidance.   

About Ascent Technologies 

Ascent Technologies is a leading provider of compliance automation solutions, leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline regulatory processes for financial services firms. With a commitment to innovation and excellence, Ascent is dedicated to empowering organizations to more effectively navigate the complex landscape of regulatory compliance to reduce risk, streamline operations and manage costs.

About Edgewater Equity Partners

Edgewater Equity Partners is a private equity firm specializing in strategic investments in regulatory, legal and risk technology companies. With a focus on fostering growth and innovation, Edgewater Equity Partners looks for companies that exhibit exceptional potential and partners with management to provide the resources needed to thrive in today’s evolving business landscape.

 

To learn more, reach out to the Ascent team here!

Jul 07
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Ascent and Diligent partner for a seamless, efficient compliance management experience

By News & Press

 Ascent and Diligent partner for a seamless, efficient compliance management experience

This partnership will transform work for risk and compliance teams through the power of AI.

CHICAGO (June 29, 2023) — Ascent, an AI-powered solution that streamlines and simplifies regulatory compliance, today announced a partnership with Diligent, a GRC SaaS leader that helps organizations connect insights across governance, risk compliance, audit, and ESG. The new partnership will help customers up-level their compliance operations and map compliance requirements to internal controls, policies, and procedures, enabling compliance at every organizational touchpoint.

The partnership will include the integration of Ascent’s AI-driven compliance data into Diligent’s Highbond Platform, providing clients with real-time insights into their compliance status. The software will monitor for regulatory change, interpret the changes, then provide actionable and auditable updates for compliance teams.

By combining Diligent’s regulatory compliance management solution with Ascent’s AI technology, organizations can better organize compliance processes and keep pace with ever-morphing regulations, even in complex multi-jurisdictional operating environments. The combination of Diligent with Ascent will help reduce organizational risk while lowering compliance costs.  

The integration removes the need for manual tracking and analysis of regulatory websites. It will help compliance teams save time and resources as AI-powered tools automatically identify and flag rules and rule changes applicable to specific business units. When regulatory rule changes occur, obligations are automatically updated, alerting the user to assess the impact and take necessary actions.

“At Diligent, we are continuously looking to add value for our customers through new partnerships and integrations,” said Ricardo Moreno, SVP of Worldwide Partnerships at Diligent. “Ascent’s AI-powered software was a natural fit to integrate with our market-leading Regulatory Compliance solutions; our customers will benefit from time savings and actionable insights to help drive their compliance programs forward.”

Through equipping organizations to strategically identify and address the regulatory ramifications of corporate initiatives, Diligent and Ascent will also help teams more confidently support future growth and expansion activities.

“Diligent is a trusted leader in the GRC space, and we are thrilled about this partnership. By leveraging our enriched regulatory data, their customers can maximize the capabilities of their compliance, governance, risk management, and compliance reporting offerings. Together, we are enabling risk and compliance teams to achieve a seamless, efficient compliance management experience that drives success in today’s evolving business environment.” said Chris Junker, CEO of Ascent.

Read the official press release here.

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Submit this form to speak with a solution specialist about how your organization can leverage Ascent + Diligent.

Oct 31
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Press Release | Ascent & Halo Ai Partnership

By News & Press

Ascent partners with Halo Ai to transform enterprise risk & compliance management

CHICAGO (October 27, 2022) — Ascent, the pioneer of AI-enriched regulatory intelligence, today announced it has partnered with Halo Ai, a leading holistic enterprise risk management platform, to transform work for risk and compliance teams through the power of automation.

Through this partnership, Halo Ai users can leverage Ascent’s enriched regulatory data to surface obligations targeted to their organization’s specific needs. Users will gain visibility over their entire regulatory landscape, ensure that they have comprehensive coverage, drive risk-based prioritization of compliance activities, and manage regulatory change.

“Ascent is producing the industry’s most targeted regulatory data available,” said Dina Ghobrial, CEO and co-founder of Halo Ai. “With Ascent’s granular and enriched compliance output, we can harness many of their endpoints to help fuel our workflow-generating AI platform. This creates a comprehensive risk and compliance platform bar none!”

By uniting Ascent’s patented AI and natural language processing technology with Halo’s Ai intelligent workflow automation, risk scoring, and decision-making engine, risk and compliance teams can stay compliant with regulatory obligations even as they change.

“I’m always excited to see our robust, granular information used by a technology partner to create an incredible user experience for their customers,” said Jonathan Leitner, President and CRO of Ascent. “By partnering with Halo Ai, we are participating in an end-to-end compliance process that is holistically powered by AI. The technologies, working together, help ensure our joint customers are empowered with the confidence they need to avoid being out of compliance with their regulators.”

Check out the whole press release here.

Jul 19
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Press Release | Ascent & Onspring Partnership

By News & Press

Ascent and Onspring Partner to Streamline Regulatory Compliance for Financial Services

The strategic integration empowers users with greater visibility into and control of their unique regulatory obligations.

Overland Park, KS (July 19, 2022) – Ascent, the premier provider of Regulatory Knowledge Automation, announced today that they have partnered with Onspring, a leading cloud-based business automation and real-time analytics platform, to streamline the way financial firms comply with evolving regulations. 

This strategic partnership connects the power of Ascent’s RegTech platform with Onspring’s Compliance Management solution, leading to massive time savings and reduced risk through the use of machine learning and natural language processing. 

“Today, RegTech stands at an exciting crossroads. The need for compliance solutions in financial services has been demonstrated all too clearly, and using AI to power the solution is no longer just for early adopters,” said Matt Pugh, EVP, Product at Onspring. “By connecting Ascent’s technology to our platform, more advisors will be able to effectively manage regulatory changes and reduce their risk, in far less time and at a fraction of the cost.”

Together, Onspring and Ascent deliver end-to-end, scalable and repeatable regulatory compliance processes, enabling firms to: 

  • Turn volumes of data into targeted knowledge, minimizing the need for manual regulatory research by surfacing only relevant obligations. 
  • Unlock a clearer view of regulatory risk by mapping granular obligations to policies, procedures, and controls in a centralized view.
  • Manage regulatory change, with built-in algorithms that easily recognize change on a one-to-one basis, surfaced directly within a register of mapped obligations.

“At Ascent, we’ve found a way to pair machine-driven efficiency with human expertise from our in-house team of data scientists and legal experts. Our industry-trusted, world-class algorithms are able to ingest, parse, and analyze millions of lines of regulatory text to pinpoint the obligations that matter most,” said Dominick Campagna, Ascent’s Vice President of Sales. “We could not be more excited to give firms the assurance they need to quickly and effectively assess the impact of regulation within the context of their businesses, with the help of Onspring.” 

To learn more about the partnership between Onspring and Ascent, read more here.

About Onspring

Onspring provides business process automation and real-time data visualization through cloud-based software. Our no-code platform means every user can create, modify and manage automated workflows and reporting dashboards across business units without support from IT resources, providing flexibility for those who want both convenience and customization. Recognized as a leader in business automation technology, Onspring customers consistently offer 5-star reviews for its ability to deliver top solutions for governance, risk and compliance, IT service management and business operations. Learn more at: https://onspring.com/ 

About Ascent

Ascent invented Regulatory Knowledge Automation to fundamentally transform how businesses comply. Using AI, Ascent generates a complete set of regulatory obligations targeted to the customer and keeps them up-to-date automatically, finally creating a way for firms to reduce both risk and costs at the same time. This dynamic regulatory knowledge is available through our cloud-based platform or API. Learn more at www.ascentregtech.com.