Regtech — regulatory technology — has quietly become one of the UK’s largest and most commercially mature tech sectors. Despite funding peaking in 2020 at £853.8m, investment has remained consistently strong, with £557.1m raised in 2025 and a further £99.7m in Q1 2026 alone. UK RegTech companies now generate £18.1b in combined turnover and employ more than 93,000 people.
We’ve ranked the top 100 regtech companies by total equity raised (all data sourced from the Beauhurst platform).
What is regtech?
Regtech — short for regulatory technology — refers to companies developing software and services that help organisations manage compliance, risk, and regulatory obligations more efficiently. This spans anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) tools, financial crime and fraud detection, regulatory reporting, ESG and sustainability reporting, crypto compliance, identity verification, and broader enterprise risk and compliance platforms.
The UK has 575 active regtech companies, having grown 212% over the past decade (from 184 in 2015). Uniquely among the sectors we’ve analysed, new company formations are still rising — 62 in 2024 and 46 in 2025, well above the 2018–2022 average — suggesting the sector is continuing to attract new entrants rather than consolidating.
Collectively, UK regtech companies have raised £3.97b in equity funding, with £3.26b — 82% of the total — secured since 2020. These companies employ an estimated 93,238 people and generate a combined turnover of £18.1b, making regtech one of the largest employers and revenue generators of any sector we’ve analysed.
Key findings
- Ideagen, an East Midlands-based risk and compliance software provider, tops the ranking with £162.2m raised. It is closely followed by Behavox (£150.9m), which builds compliance software for financial services, and Featurespace (£115.7m), a machine-learning-driven fraud detection platform. BeZero Carbon (£85.4m), a carbon ratings platform, and ComplyAdvantage (£83.3m), an AML data provider, complete the top five.
- London accounts for 72 of the top 100 companies — the second-highest London concentration of any sector we’ve analysed, behind only adtech. The South East follows with 11 and the North West with five. The top 100 also includes companies in Northern Ireland, East of Scotland, Wales, and the North East, though regional representation is otherwise thin.
- The stage breakdown is notably balanced: 36 Venture, 27 Seed, 23 Growth, and eight Established companies, with six already exited. This distribution — with a heavy middle weighted towards Venture and Growth stages — suggests a maturing sector with both strong scaling businesses and a healthy pipeline of newer entrants.
- The top 100 have collectively raised £1.81b, representing roughly 46% of all regtech equity funding in the UK — a relatively diffuse distribution compared to sectors like Big Data, where the top 100 accounts for 74% of funding. This suggests RegTech funding is spread more broadly across the wider sector of 575 active companies.
