Cheshire-based regtech scale-up CoComply has raised £1.9m to accelerate development of its external workforce compliance platform and drive growth in the UK and internationally.
Alderley Park‘s CoComply helps mid-market and large organisations uncover and manage their external workforce, including workers hidden within supplier contracts. It identifies how people are engaged, determines which compliance checks are needed and combines technology with expert classification to help organisations reduce risk and engage workers with confidence.
The investment round was led by NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II), Haatch, a UK venture capital firm backing founders with capital and hands-on support to accelerate growth, plus management and other investors including Richard Law, former CEO of GBG and an experienced technology investor, whose portfolio includes Vypr, who becomes chair; Seb Timpson, co-founder of financial data and intelligence business With Intelligence, which was acquired by S&P Global for $1.8bn in November 2025, and Stephen Cann, CEO of Bollin Group, whose brands include Mountain Equipment, Sprayway, Ronhill and Bridgedale.
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The world of work has changed beyond recognition in the last decade. Companies are relying on people they do not directly employ more than ever before, yet responsibility for managing this external workforce is often scattered across HR, procurement, finance and legal.
While businesses know their own employees, hidden headcount sits in work being delivered through contractors, agencies and service providers. These workers are buried within supplier agreements, statements of work and service contracts and can leave businesses without a clear picture of who is delivering work, how they are engaged or which compliance obligations apply.
CoComply aims to give organisations the confidence to be certain who is working for them. Its AI-native platform combines automation with specialist expertise and “sits at the point where work first enters a business.”
This helps organisations to establish what work is needed, identify the appropriate engagement route, classify workers correctly and determine necessary checks and approvals. The approach focuses on prevention, not cure, helping businesses identify and manage risks including worker classification and IR35, Right to Work and modern slavery before they become liabilities.
CoComply founder and CEO Michael Cleavely said: “Despite growing reliance on external workers in every industry, many businesses still struggle to answer a very basic question: How many people actually work for us, what are they doing and how are they engaged?
“That becomes a serious governance and compliance problem when responsibility is spread across business functions. Our mission is to provide the decision and governance layer across these teams, helping them choose the right engagement model and classify work correctly from the outset.”
CoComply’s revenues grew by 240% in 2025 and are forecast to grow by a further 120%+ in 2026, while customer expansion has grown 300% year-on-year. The platform is already used by organisations ranging from mid-market businesses to FTSE 100 companies, including Aston Martin, Take-Two, RS Group, Thredd, Quint Group, Dementia UK, and the Royal Yachting Association. CoComply was also awarded an Innovate UK Smart Grant in 2024.
The funding will be used to accelerate product development and build out the business’s sales, marketing and delivery capability as it pursues its vision to “categorise and classify the world’s workforce, ensuring compliance everywhere.”
Cleavely added: “We’ve brought together investors with first-hand experience of building substantial businesses who can help us make better decisions, challenge our thinking and introduce us to the right people as we grow. That experience matters enormously at this stage.”
Cleavely founded CoComply after experiencing the workforce classification problem first-hand. While running an IT consultancy following the 2021 IR35 reforms, a large enterprise client asked for help understanding its contractor population. The resulting exercise involved manually analysing thousands of lines of supplier data to establish who was actually working for the organisation and whether they were compliant.
That experience exposed a wider blind spot facing large organisations and ultimately led to the creation of CoComply. Cleavely had previously founded workforce consultancy Triple Seven, which he grew and sold to Experis Manpower in 2013.
