Our Story (Jamey’s version, JA’s below)

Red Oak Compliance was founded in 2010 by Stephen Pope, Cathy Vasilev, and Rick Grashel, with a clear vision: to create smarter, more efficient solutions for the financial services and insurance compliance industries. Drawing on their extensive experience as compliance practitioners, Stephen and Cathy saw the shortcomings of existing advertising review tools. They recognized the need for better solutions—and with Rick’s expertise in software development, they set out to build them.

Red Oak quickly earned a reputation for being the best, most configurable advertising review software available. But that was just the beginning. The platform is now powered by AI, and new modules such as Disclosure Management, Registration Management, and Complaints Management have been added to help our clients continuously improve both risk management and operational efficiency.

To facilitate scale, in late 2023 Red Oak partnered with Mainsail Partners, a private equity firm created to help founder-led companies amplify growth. This investment has provided the resources needed to accelerate innovation, enhance our platform, and expand our offerings, ensuring Red Oak continues to lead the compliance technology space while meeting the evolving needs of our clients.

In early 2024, Red Oak took another step forward by acquiring SiteQuest, which added best-in-class supervision tools like Website Monitoring and Internet Supervision to our suite of offerings. These tools allow firms to easily track registered representatives’ undisclosed activities and archive website changes over time.

Today, we serve more than 1,800 firms worldwide, including over half of the top 20 global asset managers, and our AI-powered advertising review solution has become the preferred choice for firms seeking to streamline compliance processes and mitigate risk. And the industry has taken note, awarding Red Oak positions on the INC 5000’s Fast Growing Companies, Financial Times Fastest Growing Private Firms, RegTech’s list of Top 100 Global Regulatory Compliance Innovators and the AI FinTech 100 list – all for consecutive years.

Going forward, Red Oak will capitalize on our core values of Transparency, Relationships-first, Unwavering Client Commitment, Nimbleness and Knowing It—our TRUNK. And we will build upon the things that make us unique in the industry: