OMERS leading funding round for cloud communications company

The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System’s private equity arm is leading a $100 million round of Series E funding for Dialpad Inc.

Dialpad provides businesses with a mobile communications platform that covers phone systems, conferencing and call centre needs. Its technology allows it to provide real-time transcription services, automated note-taking and live sentiment and voice analytics.

The latest round of capital, which includes several other investors, will be used to continue to accelerate innovation and expand domestically and internationally, according to a press release.

“We believe cloud-based software and artificial intelligence are in the early stages of widespread adoption and Dialpad is playing a leading role in this change,” said Mark Shulgan, managing director and head of growth equity at the OMERS, in a press release. “We are proud to join Dialpad’s impressive roster of existing investors and look forward to taking this journey with the company.”

In other news, the OMERS is appointing Leeanne Barnes as its new vice-president of enterprise operational risk.

Barnes joins the OMERS from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, where she was the organization’s director of strategy and risk for enterprise and operational risk management.

“In this role, Leanne will be responsible for establishing the enterprise operational risk strategy and framework, partnering with teams across the organization to help manage and mitigate risk related to people, processes, systems and infrastructure,” said Rodney Hill, chief risk officer at OMERS, in an internal memo.

Prior to joining the Ontario Teachers’, Barnes was director of operational risk, fraud and anti-money laundering at Tangerine Bank and was an enterprise risk services consultant at Deloitte. “Leeanne brings over 20 years’ risk management experience, with deep expertise in leading diverse teams, delivering business capabilities and developing risk management programs that are agile, allow for transparency and enable data-driven decisions,” Hill added.