Serving the Real Estate Industry
Iluminai addresses the challenge real estate businesses face in meeting stringent federal Anti-Money Laundering compliance requirements. By analyzing customer and transactional data at a macro level, Iluminai identifies potentially fraudulent transactions and activities indicative of money laundering. Their Automation and Big Data solution simplifies and automates compliance processes and reporting, enhancing the detection, reporting of and prevention of financial crimes, ensuring both compliance and financial efficiency. Iluminai makes Real Estate Brokerages — both big and small — more profitable, efficient and compliant.
The Vancouver startup offers two essential products for real estate businesses: a mobile onboarding application and a back-office tool. The mobile onboarding application streamlines the process for realtors by automating data collection and verification, making it easier to complete federally mandated forms. The back-office tool manages the collected data and automates various compliance obligations for brokerages, including report generation, regulatory filings, monitoring, and customer risk reporting. Together, these products enhance efficiency and accuracy in compliance processes, saving real estate businesses significant time in conveyancing and data entry while enhancing Suspicious Transaction Reporting, reducing the risk of errors.
Selling to the Real Estate Industry
Friedrich Klaus’ journey in the real estate business began right out of university, where he landed his first job selling software to real estate agents at a company called Ubertor, then owned by local tech entrepreneurs Stephen Jagger and Michael Stephenson. Some of his clients today still use the websites he sold them 20 years ago.This experience provided him with valuable insights into the sales process, particularly the advantages of selling to enterprises at scale, compared to the time and cost of selling to individuals. It was an immersive, practical lesson in running a startup and understanding the nuances of what to sell and to whom. This foundational experience set the stage for his future endeavours in the industry.
Today, Friedrich continues to serve the real estate industry, but now as the CEO and Co-Founder of a software company with a far greater scale. One of Iluminai’s most significant achievements was winning a nationally competitive bid against 12 other more established compliance/RegTech firms from Canada and the US at an internationally acclaimed Commercial Real Estate Brokerage. This victory secured them a role as the national compliance and onboarding partner, part of a global transformation program spanning six other countries. Starting in September, their platform will be the gateway for all customer interactions, while their back-office tool will manage compliance and customer risk processes across the brokerage’s 28 Canadian offices.
Honing Skills and Testing Products
Iluminai is actively refining both their business messaging and technology by participating in the 2024 NVBC Competition. This opportunity allows them to benchmark against other tech firms in British Columbia and gain valuable exposure to the investment community. Additionally, the competition serves as a platform to polish their presentation and hone their messaging skills.
Looking ahead, Iluminai’s primary focus is on the thorough testing and validation of new products before fully launching them in the United States. Their pipeline includes groundbreaking solutions poised to revolutionize the transactional reporting environment across real estates’ many verticals. Iluminai believes that they can upend the traditional and incumbent gatekeepers and improve the ability of regulators and governments to identify illicit funds hidden in real estate.
About the Founders
Friedrich Klaus, CEO & Co-Founder
Fun Fact: Friedrich would much rather be skiing.
Jesse Latham, CTO, COO & Co-Founder
Christopher Moreno, CFO & Co-Founder
Company Cheatsheet:
City: Vancouver
Founder: January 27, 2021
Sector: B2B Enterprise SaaS
