FST Network, a Taiwan-based data governance startup, has raised $2.9 million in Seed funding led by H&Q Asia Pacific.

The funding which was completed by May, also saw participation from National Development Fund Taiwan, Red Building Capital, and AVA (Angel to Venture Accelerator).

FST Network said in a statement, the firm aims to deliver a comprehensive set of tools for data governance, management and lineage, and this investment will be used to accelerate the company’s rapid growth, enhance product development and expand sales and marketing efforts.

According to FST Network, since the firm launched its beta in late 2019, it has attracted clients ranging from small- to large-sized enterprises, across three countries- the United Kingdom, Japan, and Taiwan.

Founded in 2018, FST Network is a company that offers a low code platform to help enterprises within the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) sector to generate and oversee their data policies.

It said legacy systems have slowed down operations and rack-up costs have long been pain points for financial institutions, especially in this data-driven era, and there is a widening gap between the needs of data-driven processes and the lack of efficiency in data management.

Its Chief Executive Officer and Founder Jack Chu developed the company after a stint as a consultant in the financial industry. His vision was to create a tool optimized for the continuity of a data network. Existing solutions have tended to treat each of those business lines separately. That, Chu believes, has led to stagnation of operations, in turn limiting the ability of companies to scale and subjecting them to higher costs and legal risk.

According to FST Network, its approach is to establish a self-service data network for omni-data preparation provided with Logic Mesh, Lineage, and Function as a Service among all existing systems without the need of replacing or interrupting any of the current systems.

On top of the traditional data governance tool, FST Network also offers another perspective from the metadata and attributes to realize the data integrity. The governance works in much higher precision and comprehension.

As the BFSI industry goes digital, FST Network was also a first mover to reinvent the way how financial institutions manage the exponential growth of data, by enabling BFSIs to automate their data governance process.

“FST Network is an essential innovation needed to equip BFSI industry to scale effectively in a data-driven era. While the BFSI industry is going through incredible growth, the increasing complexity of the various data pipeline demands modernization of back-office operations. FST Network’s technology is the platform we need now to connect people, data, and processes within Financial Institution,” said Chu, who has experienced the challenges within the BFSI Industry.

“We exist to eliminate data duplication, silos, and legacies. We value the opportunity to help our clients thrive in the rapidly evolving BFSI industry,” he added.

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