Karavel

Karavel is an AI-powered compliance and regulatory intelligence platform built for highly regulated industries including financial services, fintech, insurance, healthcare, and consumer credit. The platform was founded in response to the fragmented, manual compliance workflows that continue to burden legal, compliance, and marketing teams across regulated sectors.

The core problem Karavel addresses is one of compounding complexity: regulatory frameworks are expanding, enforcement is intensifying, and the cost of non-compliance — in fines, reputational damage, and operational disruption — continues to rise. Yet most organisations still rely on spreadsheets, email chains, and bi-weekly manual briefings to track regulatory change, review advertising materials, and coordinate approvals. This approach is slow, error-prone, and increasingly inadequate given the pace at which rules are evolving.

Karavel's platform brings together automated advertising and financial promotion reviews, real-time regulatory horizon scanning, compliance gap analysis, and cross-team approval workflows within a single AI-driven interface. Its AdCheck tool enables financial promotions to be reviewed three times faster, with a 91% first-pass approval rate. Its horizon scanning capability delivers daily automated regulatory alerts, replacing bi-weekly manual reports and delivering efficiency gains of up to fourteen times — with early customers reporting reductions in external legal spend of as much as 73% within the first year of use.

Founded by Pedro Sousa and Nav Garcha, Karavel raised £1.25 million in pre-seed funding in January 2026, led by Fuel Ventures. Early customers include ClearScore, Credit Karma, and Shawbrook, with commercial expansion across the UK and Europe as the primary next stage of growth.