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Kord is Smoothening The Onboarding Process for Law and Mortgage Firms

James Owusu, Founder and CEO of Kord, spent eight years onboarding banking clients for mortgages and private wealth accounts while building a $3.3 million (£2.5 million) property portfolio. But he noticed that people handling onboarding often do not understand how stressful the process is for clients.

“It’s not great being the person doing the onboarding, but equally not great being the person going through the onboarding,” Owusu tells Tech Funding News.

The platform aims to make onboarding easier for law firms and estate agents by combining identity checks and payments into a single step. Once a client completes Kord’s identity and anti-money-laundering checks, they can pay the firm directly through the wallet, so there is no need to transfer funds to another account.

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

This is a major issue. Failed property deals in the UK cost consumers $749 million (£560 million) and the wider economy $1 billion (£950 million) every year. A crucial reason is that firms run identity and compliance checks and process payments through separate systems.

That gap led to Kord, the identity and payments platform. The company has experienced significant growth, with revenue increasing nearly sevenfold to almost $5.3 million (£4 million) in one year. The UK-based startup serves over 100 paying customers, including law firms and estate agents, by combining KYC and AML checks with client money management into a single platform to reduce transaction failures.

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What Investors Are Saying About Kord

This rapid growth caught investors’ attention and led to this Series A funding, with Guinness Ventures leading and Beringea, SFC Capital, and other angel investors also joining. The company’s total funding is now $12 million (£9 million).

Guinness Ventures and Beringea back companies that are already generating revenue, not early-stage startups. Guinness Ventures led this round and has also backed UK companies like Wolf & Badger and Doctify.

“Every high-value transaction depends on trust, yet the systems underpinning many regulated industries remain fragmented, manual and increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated fraud. Kord has built the infrastructure layer that modern businesses need: combining identity verification, compliance and payments into a single platform that dramatically improves both security and efficiency,” says Malcolm King, chief investment officer at Guinness Ventures.

Kiu Kim, investment director at Beringea, adds, “Kord is solving a real and growing challenge for businesses operating in regulated industries. The business is delivering clear and tangible value to customers, and its platform has become a critical part of their day-to-day operations.”

Kord’s Unique Selling Point and Next Steps

Owusu says Kord has no direct competitors that offer both identity verification and client money management. Thirdfort is the UK leader in identity verification. It works with over 1,500 law firms and property businesses and recently added deepfake detection tech, pointing to $2.1 billion (£1.6 billion) in annual UK property fraud. 

But Thirdfort does not offer client money accounts the way Kord does. Owusu expects that to change soon. “As soon as we go live and start talking about it, people will see the same gap we see and want to close it,” he adds. The identity verification market is expected to grow from about $15.8 billion in 2026 to $26.8 billion by 2031. A big driver is AI-generated fraud and deepfake attacks. 

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It’s all part of the same surge in investor interest around digital identity security. Right now, Kord works with over 100 customers and has processed $7.2 million (£5.4 million) for them in the past year. The team has 48 people, with about 30 based in London. Of the new funding, 60% will go to sales and marketing, 20% to technology development, and the remainder to senior hires, including a chief financial officer and a chief marketing officer.

It is still early to say if combining onboarding and payments will give Kord a lasting edge or just a head start. That will come down to how fast competitors like Thirdfort move into payments. For now, Kord is trying to set the standard before anyone else catches up.

Main Image: Kord Team. Image Credit: Kord

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