In the wake of doubling both its team and its client count over the last 18 months, Saint John regulatory software startup Four Eyes Financial is hiring another five people and preparing for a Series A funding round in early 2022.

The 31-person company makes regulatory compliance software for financial advisors, which it sells to firms that act as “back offices” to the advisors themselves. The technology helps advisors with compliance reporting to the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, The Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada and provincial securities regulators.

The software also allows clients to communicate with their advisors, sharing information about their finances to receive better-tailored advice.

“We've really spent the last five years focused on building our product -- what we call the most advanced intelligent compliance platform for the wealth industry,” CEO Lori Weir said in an interview.

“If you have an advisor and you are investing money in the market, or an RRSP, or whatever it may be... we help investors feel more confident that they’re invested in products that meet their risk tolerance and their financial goals.”

Co-founded by Weir and CTO Kendall McMenamon in 2015, with its first customer signing on in 2018, Four Eyes now boasts seven-figure annual revenues, according to Weir. She is a former managing partner at two consulting firms, and McMenamon previously co-founded mobile payments company AnyWare Group, which grew to have clients in 13 countries under his leadership.

As well as its Saint John headquarters, the company has offices in Moncton and Toronto. About 35 percent of its staff work in the offices, with the rest working remotely. The in-person workers are mostly recent hires, which Weir said is because it usually takes new staffers about six months to get up to speed -- a process that she finds is accelerated by working in a collaborative environment.

“We have a number of people that work virtually and that's fantastic,” said Weir. “But if we're looking to bring new people in, we do first look to screen for them to be in office.

“And I know that is a little bit strange right now because most people are moving away from an in-office experience.”

In addition to the five people Weir is currently in the process of hiring, she expects to increase her total staff by “substantially more than that in 2022.”

Four Eyes’s software is now used by seven back-office firms in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg, which distribute it to between 30 and 750 advisors apiece.

And for the first time in several years, Weir and McMenamon are working on raising capital -- a Series A round that Weir expects to close by the end of January. She declined to name the size of the deal until after it is completed, but said it is Four Eyes’s second raise; the first was a small seed round early in the company’s history.

“What we’re focusing on for 2022 is beginning our entry into the U.S. market,” she said. “So we’ve spent this year doing research into the U.S. market and we have a specific plan for entry. And we’ll start executing on that plan next year.”