ComVerus was founded by Kayleigh Laverick of Mamma Social Co, Jon Darby from Touchstone Partners, Jamie Rayner of Shoppercentric and Catriona Oldershaw from The Insights Distillery.

The company will partner with offline communities for research projects, with members having to be verified with photo ID before joining the panel and participants being rewarded for their time. ComVerus argued this would help boost the quality of data provided by the panel.

Areas covered by ComVerus include quantitative and qualitative research, community insight, product testing and bespoke research programmes.

ComVerus said that Mamma Social Co, a social network for new mothers, is its first partner organisation.

Rayner said: “When you stand in front of a client or internal business teams sharing insight, you must have confidence in the primary data. You have to trust it and your stakeholders must be able to act on it. It had better be right, for everyone’s sake.” 

Laverick added: “Being able to say ‘this came from a verified person with real lived experience’ has a completely different value. If the original data isn’t trustworthy, AI just helps you analyse bad data, faster.”