Charles Delingpole hands over CEO reins of ComplyAdvantage to Vatsa Narasimha

Almost nine years after founding ComplyAdvantage,Charles Delingpole is stepping out of the CEO role.

A notable figure in the fintech landscape, Delingpole will move away from the day-to-day running of the company to focus on the strategic vision as executive chairman.

ComplyAdvantage’s current chief operating officer, Vatsa Narasimha will take over as CEO.

Narasimha joined the company in January 2020 – then as a joint COO and CFO – from online foreign exchange trading platform OANDA Global Corporation, where he was president and CEO.

“To have a seasoned executive I think rounds out the amazing bench of talent that we have in the company and allows us to scale even further and beyond,” Delingpole told AltFi.

“So I think it's a great strengthening of our bench talent for the company.”

Over the past year, ComplyAdvantage has brought on a new chief financial officer, Nabeel Vilcassim, a new chief product officer, Oliver Furniss, as well as former WorldRemit chief technology officer Mark Watson.

It has been a busy time for ComplyAdvantage, which has grown to be one of the city’s most successful regtech giants.

Since Narasimha has been with ComplyAdvantage, the company has experienced record growth, with annual recurring revenue growing by nearly 80 per cent last year.

He also helped to expand the company’s funding to more $100m, adding Goldman Sachs and Ontario Teachers Pension Plan to the company’s list of investors.

Delingpole said that it was “obvious from day one” that Narasimha was a fantastic talent, and would be a great asset to the company.

The organic growth he has overseen has come through an expanded portfolio of traditional banking, insurance customers, fintechs and crypto customers, as well as a number of strategic partnerships, according to the company.

Just a few days ago it launched a partnership with Resistant AI to expand its anti-money laundering capabilities, and according to Delingpole, there’s “tons of other exciting news coming out”.

“Even though we've been doing this for nine years, we're still very early on in the growth of the company and there's still tons of game changing things to be released,” Delingpole said.

“And that's what the 500 employees are working on and that's what the 1000 plus clients will benefit from.”

As co-founder of MarketFinance and founder of The Student Room in 2014, in addition to being founder of ComplyAdvantage, Delingpole has a number of successful startups under his belt.

But while he might be stepping away from CEO, he said he's “not going anywhere”, just shifting his focus to a wider context, and the higher level focus of the company.