Saint John-based Four Eyes Financial doubled its business in 2020, and its founders see no sign of its growth trajectory flattening this year.

Co-founded in 2018 by Lori Weir and Kendall McMenamon, Four Eyes Financial set out to develop a digital platform to allow efficient communications between financial advisers, the firms they work for, and their clients. The founders had a background in financial services and aimed for a product that met the specific requirements of institutions that handle investments for retail investors.

As the company grew, they realized that one piece that was missing from many competing products was features that assist with regulation and governance. Four Eyes has focused on such regulatory features, so much so that it names “RegTech” as one of its areas of concentration. That focus, along with the pandemic, have helped to generate growth in the past year.

“In 2020, we doubled our workforce and our revenues and are on track for significant growth in 2021,” said Weir in a press release last week. “Though our platform was available in limited release before the COVID-19 Pandemic, now more than ever the global wealth management industry sees the value of being able to connect with clients in a dynamic digital way that is fully compliant.” 

In an interview, Weir said the number “four” in her company’s name refers to the four parties that must be brought together in the personal finance space: financial advisers, financial institutions, personal investors, and regulators.

The platform performs several functions that ensure compliant communications and dealings between adviser and client. For example, it gathers data on the client’s portfolio that helps to assess risk. It also keeps a record of all the interactions between the client and the adviser, which can easily be retrieved in the case of an audit.

“We knew we had to build a platform that made it easy for firms to integrate and advisers to use – to move beyond end-point solutions and standard office productivity tools,” said McMenamon, the company’s CTO. “Cloud-based and built on Amazon Web Services, the platform will continue to evolve as the global investment industry does. The cloud deployment lets us add updates and new modules in real time, ensuring that investment advisors have quick, seamless access to the latest tech.”

Four Eyes Financial now has five enterprise clients, all of them medium-sized Canadian institutions. The sales strategy is to land a client then increase the number of advisers using the platform and features that they use. Its largest client has 250 advisers on the Four Eyes platform.

The company has raised a small angel round but so far financed its growth largely through revenue and non-dilutive funding. In spite of this, it was able to increase staffing from 9 to 19 people last year. Weir said she and McMenamon have discussed raising venture capital or angel funding in the future if it would benefit the company. 

The big move on the horizon for Four Eyes is expansion into the U.S., and right now the team is plotting how this could be achieved. For example, some of its existing clients have American operations, which could offer an entry to the new market.

“We’ve always been talking about it and thinking about it,” said Weir. “We are doing an explicit research and development effort in the first couple of quarters to look at that geographic market.”