Summary

• CoComply has secured £1.9m from investors including NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance, Haatch, and private backers.
• The platform identifies external workers within supplier arrangements and supports classification, engagement decisions, and appropriate compliance checks.
• Customers include Aston Martin, RS Group, and Dementia UK, while the company's reported growth figures remain unaudited claims within the investment announcement.

UK compliance technology company CoComply has raised £1.9 million to expand software that identifies external workers hidden within supplier contracts, helping businesses establish who performs work on their behalf and which legal and organisational responsibilities apply.

The financing includes NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance, managed by Mercia Ventures, alongside Haatch and private investors. CoComply will use the money to develop its platform further and expand its sales and delivery operations in Britain and internationally.

CoComply combines automated analysis with specialist classification to examine different forms of external labour, including arrangements involving contractors, agencies, consultancies, and service providers.

Its reported customers include Aston Martin, Take-Two, RS Group, Thredd, Quint Group, Dementia UK, and the Royal Yachting Association, establishing that the technology is already used commercially rather than existing solely as a proposed product.

External workers do not always appear in workforce records

Businesses generally maintain established procedures for recording directly employed staff, but people delivering work through suppliers may be less visible.

A company can contract with a consultancy or facilities provider without having a complete record of the individuals carrying out the work, the arrangements under which they are engaged, or the access they have to business systems.

Responsibility for those relationships may also be divided between procurement, finance, human resources, and legal departments, each of which records different aspects of the arrangement.

Procurement teams may hold supplier contracts, while finance records the payments and project managers understand how the work is actually performed. None of those records necessarily provides a complete view of the external workforce.

CoComply’s software is designed to identify relevant arrangements and bring the resulting information into a process for classification and approval.

Its approach extends beyond maintaining a contractor register because a worker may be supplied through a broader service agreement that does not describe the engagement as conventional temporary labour.

A contract could state that a supplier is responsible for delivering a particular outcome, for example, while the practical working arrangement involves identified individuals operating under the customer’s supervision.

The distinction can influence the legal and commercial responsibilities of the parties involved, although the presence of workers within a supplier relationship does not automatically mean the arrangement has been classified incorrectly.

Classification depends on the actual working arrangement

External workforce compliance involves several legal questions that cannot be reduced to one employment category.

The UK’s off-payroll working rules, commonly referred to as IR35, apply to specified arrangements involving people who provide services through intermediaries. Their operation depends on the circumstances of the engagement and the parties involved.

Right to Work requirements concern eligibility to undertake employment, while modern slavery obligations address different aspects of labour practices and supply chain governance.

CoComply’s platform aims to identify the type of engagement and determine which checks and approvals are relevant rather than applying every requirement to every supplier.

That distinction is important because a genuine outsourced service contract may involve responsibilities different from those arising when an individual is supplied to work under a client’s direction.

Written contracts provide evidence of the intended relationship, but they may not fully describe how the work is carried out. Classification can also depend on the degree of supervision, working practices, and other relevant circumstances.

Automation may help collect information, identify inconsistencies, and ensure that cases follow established procedures. It cannot independently guarantee that every legal classification is correct, particularly where facts are disputed or incomplete.

CoComply describes its approach as combining AI-driven processing with expert classification, recognising that the software must support decisions rather than simply produce an unchecked compliance label.

The company has not disclosed an independently verified accuracy rate for its classifications or a comprehensive assessment of how much time its customers save.

Umbrella company changes increase the need for visibility

Changes to PAYE arrangements for labour supply chains involving umbrella companies took effect on 6 April 2026, increasing the potential tax exposure of specified agencies and end clients.

Under HMRC’s rules, the agency contracting with the end client to supply workers, or the end client where no such agency is involved, can become responsible for PAYE underpayments associated with qualifying umbrella company arrangements.

The umbrella company remains responsible for correctly calculating and paying tax, but HMRC can recover qualifying underpayments from the agency or relevant end client under the new provisions.

These rules are distinct from IR35 and do not automatically apply to every supplier contract containing an external worker.

Determining whether an arrangement falls within the legislation requires information about the contractual chain, employment relationships, and the parties responsible for supplying labour.

That can be difficult when workers are engaged through multiple organisations and the end customer has limited visibility over arrangements further down the supply chain.

Software that collects and reconciles the relevant information could make those relationships easier to examine, although the compliance outcome still depends on the facts of each arrangement and the applicable legal requirements.

For businesses managing large supplier populations, ongoing monitoring may be necessary as workers change assignments, suppliers introduce subcontractors, and contractual terms are revised.

The business has an established customer base

CoComply was founded by entrepreneur Michael Cleavely following his experience of the administrative challenges created by contractor classification.

While running an IT consultancy after changes to IR35 rules in 2021, Cleavely encountered a large enterprise customer that needed to understand its contractor population. The exercise involved manual examination of extensive supplier records.

He had previously established workforce consultancy Triple Seven, which he sold to Experis Manpower in 2013.

CoComply’s current platform is intended to reduce the effort required to conduct similar reviews and maintain the resulting information over time.

Its customer base spans several industries, including automotive manufacturing, technology, financial services, and the charitable sector.

Those organisations are likely to have different workforce arrangements and compliance requirements, creating opportunities to test the software against varied business processes.

However, the announcement does not identify the precise services used by every named customer or provide independently assessed outcomes from their deployments.

CoComply says revenue increased by 240% in 2025 and forecasts further growth of more than 120% in 2026. It also reports a 300% year-on-year expansion in its customer base.

These figures indicate the company’s claimed growth trajectory, but absolute revenue, profitability, and the starting customer count were not disclosed. Percentage growth alone cannot establish the size or financial sustainability of the business.

Investment will support product and commercial expansion

The financing brings experienced technology investors into CoComply’s ownership structure.

Richard Law, formerly chief executive of identity verification company GBG, is becoming chair. Other investors include Seb Timpson, co-founder of With Intelligence, and Stephen Cann, chief executive of Bollin Group.

The company previously received an Innovate UK Smart Grant in 2024, providing additional support for its technology development.

The new money will be used to strengthen its software and expand commercial operations, although no binding timetable for international market entry has been announced.

Expansion could introduce additional complexity because worker classification and employment-related obligations vary between jurisdictions. A process designed around UK legislation cannot necessarily be transferred to another country without changes to the relevant legal and operating rules.

CoComply is seeking to become part of the governance infrastructure used by organisations that depend extensively on outsourced labour.

Its commercial prospects will depend on demonstrating that better visibility produces more reliable classification and reduces the administrative effort required to manage external workers.

The £1.9 million investment supports that expansion, but customer outcomes and the accuracy of the underlying decisions will provide stronger evidence of the platform’s value than the funding announcement alone.