October 4, 2024
DENVER, Colorado — Privacy Lock is pleased to announce the closing of its Seed round with investments from strategic fintech VCs and industry partners. Motivate Ventures, FIS, CURQL, Coreteq Ventures, and Bankers Helping Bankers invested to support the company’s efforts to bring critical data privacy management and compliance services to banks and financial institutions.
Alongside CEO David Ritter are experienced co-founders Dr. Ed Kazmierczak and Dr. Steve Melnikoff. The team built Privacy Lock’s proprietary privacy platform to enable banks and financial companies to centralize management of consumer data across disparate data systems and automate compliance with state and federal privacy regulations. Privacy Lock has pioneered a way to map data systems without collecting sensitive consumer data. For the first time, financial companies can unify consumer data management without needing to share or transfer Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Privacy Lock founders have extensive experience bringing innovative software to banks. The team built Penta Global, which sold distributed ledger and blockchain technology to large financial institutions, before a successful exit in 2021. Building on those learnings, the team quickly became passionate about creating a secure platform with privacy-by-design principles so that businesses using this technology would not need to compromise customer data when implementing data privacy programs. As co-founder and CTO, Ed Kazmierczak, puts it, “We believe the future of data processing includes privacy protections. Privacy Lock wants to be the first to market with an approach to data privacy where our customers do not have to share or transfer any of their customer data to us.”
General Partner at Motivate Ventures, Lauren DeLuca, adds, “David and the team are true data, privacy, and technical experts. As consumer privacy laws continue to evolve globally, Privacy Lock can become the go-to data privacy solution for customers who need to maintain compliance with complex, changing laws across multiple jurisdictions.”
This Seed raise underscores the importance of privacy compliance for banks, fintechs, and other financial companies in the face of new state and federal privacy regulations, including new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Section 1033. Regulators and lawsuits have targeted financial companies, often bringing legal actions for privacy violations after a data breach. This highlights the increased risk for financial businesses as privacy regulations are set to phase in states around the country, and as federal frameworks are also moving forward.
Driven by considerable consumer demand, countries have passed expansive data privacy laws that require businesses to protect consumer data and privacy rights. “Privacy regulations are transforming the way businesses collect and manage consumer data. This is a new era in data regulation for businesses,” explains Privacy Lock CEO, David Ritter. With more businesses looking to integrate AI solutions, the need for data privacy protections is likely to increase substantially in the years ahead.
About Privacy Lock:
Privacy Lock helps banks and financial companies automate compliance with data privacy laws. By offering one solution to cover compliance obligations across state, federal, and international jurisdictions, Privacy Lock reduces the risks and costs of implementing expensive compliance processes in multiple markets. Privacy Lock is the only privacy solution that never collects customer data. Find out how Privacy Lock can be your partner in privacy.
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