- Funding from NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance, Haatch, and prominent technology and business investors to accelerate UK and international growth
- AI-native platform helps organisations uncover ‘hidden headcount’ and make informed, compliant decisions about how external work is engaged and governed
- CoComply revenues grew 240% in 2025 and are forecast to grow by a further 120%+ in 2026, with customers ranging from mid-market businesses to FTSE 100 companies
Alderley Park, Macclesfield, UK – 19 October 2026: 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.
Unlike traditional compliance tools, 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 ambitious founders with capital and hands-on support to accelerate growth, and management and other investors.
These include 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.
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’s ambition is 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.”
Maurice Disasi of Mercia Ventures said: “Organisations increasingly rely on outsourcing, yet many lack a clear understanding of who is delivering the work. What stood out to us was the scale of the problem and how poorly it is currently addressed. CoComply's ability to identify and classify hidden workers differentiates it from other solutions and positions the business well as regulation and governance requirements continue to increase.”
Marwa Ebrahim, Associate at Haatch, said: “CoComply is tackling a significant and often overlooked challenge for businesses, with a platform that gives organisations much-needed visibility and control over their external workforce. We’ve been impressed by the team’s first-hand understanding of the problem, the traction they’ve built and the opportunity to establish a new standard for workforce compliance. We’re delighted to be backing Michael and the team as they scale the business in the UK and internationally.”
Michael 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.
Tim Dempsey, Managing Partner of Epiphany Capital, provided fundraising advice on the investment round.
The £660m Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II) covers the entire North of England and provides loans from £25k to £2m and equity investment up to £5m to help a range of small and medium sized businesses to start up, scale up or stay ahead.
The purpose of NPIF II is to drive sustainable economic growth by supporting innovation and creating local opportunity for new and growing businesses across the North of England. The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II will increase the supply and diversity of early-stage finance for the North’s smaller businesses, providing funds to firms that might otherwise not receive investment and help to break down barriers in access to finance.
NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance, which is part of NPIF II, can provide equity investments throughout the North but has a primary focus on the Yorkshire and Humber regions of City of Kingston upon Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire.
Want to know who’s really working for your organisation? See how CoComply works or book a demo with our team.
Media enquiries
For media enquiries please contact Dan Sheridan or Cara Churchman at Duo Consulting:
- [email protected] / 07795 170845
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About Mercia Ventures Mercia Ventures is a proactive venture capital investor focused on being the first-choice partner for growth. Mercia Ventures makes equity investments of up to £10million across all sectors, with specialisms in Software, Consumer, Healthcare and Deep Tech.
Mercia Ventures is part of Mercia Asset Management PLC and sits alongside its wider private equity, debt and proprietary balance sheet capital operations. The Group has 11 offices in the UK and Mercia Ventures’ national footprint and 48 strong investment team draws on their experiences as founders, PhD scientists, software engineers, corporate financiers and management consultants to help its partner companies successfully achieve their ambitions.
To find out more, visit mercia.co.uk
About Haatch Haatch is an operator-led venture capital firm backing the UK's most ambitious B2B SaaS and AI founders at pre-seed and seed.
Founded in 2013 by entrepreneurs who have built and exited their own companies, Haatch gives founders hands-on support where it matters most: building early-stage sales and go-to-market engines that scale.
Haatch invests through its SEIS and EIS funds and the Haatch Angel network, opening up early-stage investment to a wider range of investors.
The firm is backed by £62m of British Business Bank capital: £30m committed alongside its pre-seed and seed funds, and £32m into an angel syndicate platform that Haatch manages for the Bank.
Haatch is also the first fund to bring its entire tax-efficient custody in-house, through its partnership with Saafehouse, and was named among the Top 50 investors in the Sifted 100: UK & Ireland 2026.
To find out more, visit haatch.com
