US IT firm takes over Swiss regtech champion Qumram

The rise of digital banking has led to compliance challenges that fintechs are solving Keystone

Big news in the Swiss regtech universe. Qumram – one of the hottest names in this space – has been taken over by United States digital monitoring and diagnostics firm Dynatrace for an undisclosed amount.

Set up in 2011, Qumram specializes in monitoring digital traffic between financial services companies and their clients. Many banks have set up digital platforms that replace the paper trail of documents detailing the way they transact with their customers.

Qumram technology is able to trace digital interactions, including those conducted through social media channels, such as Whatsapp and Linkedin. This is an important requirement for banks to comply with customer protection regulations. Such rules are set to be enhanced in Switzerland, keeping in step with the European Union’s MIFID II legislation.

Regtech is one of the hottest areas in fintech, addressing the compliance needs of financial institutions in the new digital era. Several start-ups have sprung up in Switzerland combining artificial intelligence and big data capabilities to help banks negotiate customer protection, risk management, anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulatory hurdles.

The Zurich-headquartered Qumram (now owned by the Boston-based Dynatrace) developes most of its IT in Barcelona. In a statement on Friday, Dynatrace said it plans to double that engineering team next year.

“Dynatrace is unique in its ability to not only monitor highly complex digital ecosystems, but see every user transaction. In addition, their AI-powered analytics is amazing,” former Qumram CEO Patrick Barnert said in the statement. 

Speaking to swissinfo.ch Barnert said he would assume a new role as head of a “Global Partner” group run from Switzerland. His Swiss-based team, which until now performed management and customer services functions for Qumram, will now re-focus on servicing and building up global partners within the Dynatrace group.

Dynatrace, which traces its roots to an Austrian firm set up in 2005, has a significant research and development unit in Linz, Austria.