Benford, a fintech company, has raised €5 million in pre-seed funding. The company is building a modern, technology-driven financial audit firm designed to handle statutory audits from start to finish.
Instead of selling software to traditional audit firms, Benford plans to act as the auditor itself. Its technology will manage the full audit process, from accessing a client’s financial systems to delivering the final signed audit opinion.
The funding round was led by firstminute capital, Global Founders Capital, and Sondo. It also received support from experienced founders and leaders in the accounting software industry, including Peter ter Maaten of HSO, Arthur Waller and Quentin de Metz of Pennylane, Alexandre Prot of Qonto, the Spandow family of Amesto, and other investors.
Benford says the small and mid-sized audit market in Europe is facing several challenges. Large audit firms are reducing their focus on this market, while bigger groups are buying smaller firms faster than they can update their technology. Many local audit firms also lack the resources needed to modernize their systems.
The industry is also facing a shortage of workers, as more audit professionals are retiring than new people are joining the field. Despite these challenges, audit fees continue to increase.
“Audit is one of the few services where the customer experience has got worse every year while the bill has gone up,” said Thibault Mallion, co-founder and co-CEO of Benford. “We are not changing what an audit is. We are changing how it is delivered.”
“Every attempt to modernise audit has been aimed at the auditor’s desk. The firm around it was left untouched.” explains Mads Bogen Øye, co-founder and co-CEO of Benford.
“For twenty years, innovation in audit has meant selling tools to auditors, and most audits are still done the old way. Audit is a huge, structurally overlooked market that nobody has tried to rebuild from first principles,” said Michael Stothard, partner at firstminute capital. “The Big Four are pulling back from the mid-market, and the technology to do this properly has only just arrived. Mads, Thibault and Andreas are the rare team that can both build the software and handle the execution of a full end-to-end service in a complex industry. That combination is exactly what it takes to build the next generation of audit.”
“No process is better suited to automation than audit’s groundwork, and few are less automated” said David Sainteff, Partner at GFC. “It is the clients who pay the price, both in fees and in the internal hours spent facilitating a process that software should be doing.”
Founded by Mads Bogen Øye, Thibault Mallion and Andreas Rystad, Benford is a new technology-focused audit firm that manages statutory audits from start to finish. Instead of selling software to traditional auditors, Benford acts as the auditor itself. The company holds the required licence, develops its own platform, and employs the auditors who sign off on the final audit.
Its technology platform, AuditOS, connects with a company’s financial systems, collects the required information, and carries audit work forward from one year to the next. This allows technology to handle routine tasks while qualified auditors focus on important decisions and exceptions. A professional auditor oversees each audit, reviews key issues, and signs the final opinion. Benford aims to make audits more affordable without compromising quality.
