Kord raises £6.4 million to combine identity checks and client money in a single platform for law firms

Kord, a London-based fintech, has raised £6.4 million (€7.4 million) in a Series A led by Guinness Ventures, with participation from Beringea and SFC Capital. The company was founded by James Owusu, who spent eight years onboarding banking clients for mortgages and private wealth accounts before building a £2.5 million property portfolio — and decided the process was too broken to leave to chance. Total funding now stands at £9 million.

The £950 million problem in property transactions

Kord's pitch begins with a specific economic failure: failed UK property transactions cost consumers £560 million and the wider economy £950 million every year. Most of that loss traces back to a single structural fault — law firms and estate agents run identity checks, anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, and client money management on separate, disconnected systems.

Kord collapses those three functions into one. Once a client completes Kord's identity and AML checks, they can pay the firm directly through Kord's regulated client money wallet. There is no transfer to a separate account, no second platform, no manual reconciliation between systems.

"We're creating a closed-loop environment where you get onboarded and make a payment on the same system," Owusu says. "Nobody has to worry about money going to the wrong place or a bad actor getting involved."

The company now serves more than 100 paying customers and has processed £5.4 million in transactions in the past year. Revenue grew from £600,000 to nearly £4 million — roughly a sevenfold increase — in twelve months.

Why Guinness Ventures led

Guinness Ventures does not invest in early-stage companies that are still finding their market. Its portfolio includes Wolf & Badger and Doctify — companies with demonstrable revenues and established commercial positions. The decision to lead Kord's Series A is a signal about where the company sits, not just a bet on where it might go.

"Every high-value transaction depends on trust, yet the systems underpinning many regulated industries remain fragmented, manual and increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated fraud," said Malcolm King, chief investment officer at Guinness Ventures. "Kord has built the infrastructure layer that modern businesses need."

Beringea's investment director Kiu Kim added that Kord "has become a critical part of their customers' day-to-day operations" — the language of embedded infrastructure, not a nice-to-have SaaS tool.

The 48-person company (roughly 30 based in London) will direct 60% of the new capital to sales and marketing, 20% to technology, and the remainder to senior hires — a CFO and a CMO — to complete the management team for the next growth phase.

The gap Kord is filling will not remain unfilled for long. Thirdfort, the dominant UK identity verification provider with 1,500+ law firm clients, does not currently offer client money accounts. Owusu expects that to change. The £6.4 million is the company's attempt to set the standard in regulated property transactions before competitors close the product gap.