Published on the 29/04/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Listed New Zealand technology company Wynyard is predicting strong Australian demand for its crime analytics platform as it becomes predictive…
Almost a third of Wynyard’s $NZ21.8 million revenues were generated in Australia last year, and according to the company’s managing director, Craig Richardson, strong growth is tipped this year with Australian and US demand expected to star. It will be a few years however before the company turns a profit as it focuses on growth in the medium term.
Wynyard, which was spun out of the Jade Group and floated on the NZ stock market in 2013, offers risk and threat analysis, a core criminal analysis and investigation tool and case management software. The technology has for example been used in murder inquiries in Australia and the UK to process large collections of data leading to a number of charges being laid.
Already deployed by the Australian Federal Police, New Zealand Police and London’s Metropolitan Police Force, the system has also been rolled out by government regulators, government departments and financial institutions according to Richardson. In 2013 banks and insurance companies accounted for 43 percent of all sales – the largest single user group.
Richardson said this week that the initial focus had been on second tier financial services businesses, although Wynyard was now holding discussions with Australia’s largest financial institutions.
Australian Customs, the Attorney General’s Department and Queensland Rail are also using Wynyard’s technology, which has been designed to search for complex relationships between entities that are seemingly unconnected.
Wynyard is also collaborating with University College of London on a predictive analytics project intended to not only identify potential crime hot spots, but also determine what might happen if more resources were deployed to an identified trouble spot and where crime might disperse.
“You could apply the same logic to sex offenders,” he said.
Richardson said that Australia’s “heavy security focus” and attempts to control drugs, weapons and money laundering made it an important market for the company.
He said that the company believed “it could more than double in Australia.”
At present Wynyard has a team of 25 based in Australia, but plans to grow this to 35 by the end of the year and boost local research and development.
To fuel that growth and underpin the company’s US expansion plans Wynyard has recently completed a $NZ35 million round of fund raising, on top of the $NZ65 million raised by last year’s IPO.
