Inpay’s expansion has earned it recognition as one of Denmark’s fastest-growing companies and one of Europe’s most rapidly advancing FinTechs. However, this growth brought challenges that meant the company needed to re-evaluate its approach to compliance. 

The limits of building in-house

Inpay started out with an in-house compliance solution built when the company was founded. This solution was based on simplistic transaction thresholds. As the company gained more customers and processed more transactions, the limitations of this approach became clear. 

Continually altering payment screening and transaction monitoring parameters to cope with increasingly complex transactions created a huge strain on Inpay’s IT capabilities. A lack of flexibility in the existing system threatened to restrict further growth, with resources constantly diverted to make the necessary adjustments. 

“We came from an in-house solution that essentially took ten years to build. The moment we started having a larger inflow of transactions and more complex scenarios, we were limited in what we could design.”

Lukas Andersen, MLRO and Head of Financial Crime Risk, Inpay

Inpay decided to look for external vendors so they could remain a growing company and turn compliance from a drain on resources into a competitive advantage. 

ComplyAdvantage offers streamlined implementation 

Important criteria in Inpay’s search for a RegTech vendor were: 

• Accuracy and flexibility when screening and monitoring customers and transactions. 
• Comprehensive, customized data dashboards. 
• An intuitive user interface. 
• Maximum uptime during the implementation process. 
• Secure data handling. 
• Cost per transaction. 

As Inpay conducted its selection process, our platform came out on top in each of these categories, with the ability to adapt its service to Inpay’s needs being a crucial differentiator. 

Inpay needed its compliance solution to integrate with a complex proprietary payments system and approached the partnership with a list of requirements, scenarios, and intended outcomes. The company’s compliance team worked closely with us to tailor a solution that satisfied these, with our team providing additional scenarios to enhance Inpay’s coverage without compromising its control over its tech stack. 

Since implementation in 2017, our teams have continued to work together to optimize Inpay’s regulatory compliance, with regular check-ins and feedback allowing any changes to be made quickly. 

“What really set ComplyAdvantage apart from the competition was the ease of implementation and the service level. Even in the introductory meetings, it was clear that we would be listened to and that we could set the direction of what we wanted, but with really great feedback from the ComplyAdvantage implementation team.” 

Lukas Andersen, MLRO and Head of Financial Crime Risk, Inpay 

Enhanced flexibility makes the difference

Thanks to fully customizable screening and monitoring parameters, Inpay has been able to tailor financial crime controls to its evolving risk profile and appetite. As the company targets new industries and markets, Inpay can adapt to changing risks by creating nuanced rules for different customer segments and customizing search profiles for ongoing monitoring purposes. 

This ability to make changes with minimal disruption is informed by in-depth dashboards allowing Inpay’s compliance team to analyze its performance, with our team on hand to create additional reporting capabilities if any gaps emerge. 

Comprehensive data has also been instrumental in helping Inpay build strong relationships with regulators. Enhanced data points have strengthened its suspicious activity report (SAR) filings, while real-time customer data updates ensure compliance with evolving sanctions lists and regulatory requirements for instant payments and verification-of-payee capabilities.

Demonstrating the value of compliance 

Since partnering with us, Inpay has seen improvements across all areas of transaction screening and monitoring, from effective risk management to enhanced operational efficiency. Inpay’s most recent regulatory audit identified zero areas of non-compliance, testifying to the effectiveness of our solutions. 

“ComplyAdvantage has not only been able to reduce the number of false positives we see, but also the time we spend on each alert.”

Lukas Andersen, MLRO and Head of Financial Crime Risk, Inpay 

In addition to mitigating risks and avoiding regulatory action, our partnership has enabled Inpay to streamline its compliance workflows. With a data-driven understanding of how long certain scenarios take to resolve, Inpay has optimized its resource allocation and staff training to the point where it can handle thousands of alerts with a relatively small team of analysts. 

This means Inpay has been able both to achieve specific compliance outcomes and refine its wider strategy. Equipped with data on the time and money saved on alerts, the company’s compliance team can clearly demonstrate efficiency and value in discussions with key internal stakeholders, showing how investing in compliance can drive growth.

“If you’re evaluating whether you want to build or you want to buy, what’s easy to forget is the return on investment. Any business that needs a reliable but innovative solution that can adapt to the dynamic landscape of cross-border payments should consider ComplyAdvantage.”  

Lukas Andersen, MLRO and Head of Financial Crime Risk, Inpay 

The post Inpay uses advanced payment screening and transaction monitoring to drive rapid growth appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

Based in Singapore, Tazapay accepts payments from 173 countries across a diverse array of payment rails and channels. These span local payment networks such as PayNow, FedWire, and SEPA Instant Credit Transfers, as well as international channels like Visa, Mastercard, and Swift. Additionally, the company supports on- and off-ramp cryptocurrency transactions, allowing customers to exchange fiat currency for stablecoins or vice versa. 

With its extensive range of payment options, global customer base, and cross-border payment capabilities, Tazapay faces inherent risks associated with money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctions violations. In light of these risks and the inefficiencies of its previous solution, Tazapay sought a more advanced transaction monitoring system that could streamline compliance, reduce its reliance on manual processes, and improve visibility into customer risk.

Manual solutions hold back compliance

As a rapidly growing innovator in cross-border payments, Tazapay operates in a complex regulatory environment where expectations vary significantly across jurisdictions. Streamlining compliance across diverging anti-money laundering (AML) regimes, therefore, is a front-and-center concern for Tazapay, as well as finding cost-effective solutions to help it meet its obligations effectively.

Initially, Tazapay relied on a blend of manual processes and limited in-house automation for transaction monitoring. While this approach allowed for basic compliance coverage, it became increasingly unsustainable as transaction volumes grew. 

The limitations of this manual-first approach became evident as Tazapay expanded into new markets and supported a broader range of payment channels. Key challenges facing the company included: 

• Analyzing alerts: The distribution of data across multiple locations hindered compliance analysts’ ability to evaluate alerts and customer risk profiles. 
• Alert overload: Identifying false positives relies on high-quality data – up-to-date, accurate, complete, and not duplicated. An overreliance on manual systems that could not automatically refresh data or tailor searches meant the company saw a spike in its false positive rate and a limited ability to address true positives.  
• Delayed alert escalation: Alert prioritization proved difficult with manual systems, reducing the speed of alert triage and escalation.  
• Limited customization: Tazapay could not automatically apply rules as part of its transaction monitoring, which meant compliance procedures were not tailored to its risks and suspicious transactions could be missed. 

The cumulative effect of these issues was a compliance process that could not scale alongside Tazapay’s growing business.

ComplyAdvantage meets evolving needs 

Recognizing the need for a more advanced transaction monitoring solution, Tazapay based its search on a defined list of criteria: 

• Advanced automation capabilities to reduce the risk of human error. 
• Improved efficiency via a holistic view of all customer risks on a single platform. 
• Minimize risk exposure by screening counterparties in real-time and against the most recent data. 

The company’s search for a more advanced solution led it to ComplyAdvantage’s Transaction Monitoring software, which delivers on all of these counts. Tazapay can now access ComplyAdvantage’s proprietary data, which is updated in real-time by automated systems to ensure red flags can be detected. To improve efficiency, integrated datasets allow Tazapay to view complete customer profiles on a single screen, removing the need to switch between different systems and datasets to understand customer risks in depth. 

Whereas a manual approach led to inefficient workflows, ComplyAdvantage has helped Tazapay adopt a precise, risk-based approach to compliance. Automated alert prioritization allows the company to tackle higher-risk cases first, and ComplyAdvantage’s comprehensive rules library – complemented by its self-serve rules builder – has enabled Tazapay to reduce false positives through customized transaction monitoring. 

Other decisive factors for Tazapay stakeholders were a pricing structure that delivered a strong return on investment, ComplyAdvantage’s strong reputation with regulators across different global markets, and a straightforward integration process.

The power of effective integration

With ComplyAdvantage, Tazapay now monitors transactions between its global merchants and the merchants’ customers, vendors, and suppliers. The company’s need to continue serving an international client base and growing its business made a streamlined onboarding process essential. ComplyAdvantage’s flexible, API-first integration with modular architecture allowed Tazapay to connect its new monitoring software to its existing tech stack and workflows. 

Setup took around two months from start to finish – faster than Tazapay anticipated – thanks to effective collaboration between ComplyAdvantage and Tazapay’s engineering team, with comprehensive API documentation ensuring business continuity. Since then, ComplyAdvantage’s combination of high-quality proprietary data and in-depth support with implementation has been key in upgrading Tazapay’s transaction monitoring. 

“The ComplyAdvantage team has been exceptionally responsive and proactive in addressing our questions and requests for assistance. Their willingness to go the extra mile made the entire process much smoother and I was consistently impressed by their depth of knowledge and expertise. Their insights and knowledge were invaluable and truly stood out.” 

Toh Hwee Min, MLRO, Tazapay 

Streamlined compliance and enhanced insights 

Since partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Tazapay has benefitted from real-time updates to sanctions lists and politically exposed person (PEP) data. Rather than manually double-checking the accuracy of the data themselves, Tazapay’s compliance staff receive periodic notifications from ComplyAdvantage alerting them to the latest updates. 

The new system provides enhanced visibility into transactional patterns, enabling Tazapay to track trends at both the individual customer level and across its entire customer base. This insight helps the company take proactive steps to manage risk, ensuring better case escalation and faster compliance decision-making.

For Tazapay’s compliance team, success is defined by a period-on-period improvement in the quality of their work, leading to a simplified customer onboarding experience, accurate risk identification and scoring, and effective implementation of measures to mitigate those risks. 

ComplyAdvantage’s platform flexibility has also empowered Tazapay to create customized rules that address the specific risks it faces, enabling the detection of suspicious activity with greater accuracy. Key stakeholders also appreciated the ability to easily integrate monitoring with payment screening, allowing Tazapay to immediately deal with its exposure to customer risks, particularly around sanctions, without having to move across siloed datasets and systems. 

“ComplyAdvantage’s transaction monitoring solution is exactly what we were looking for. The results have been accurate monitoring and the ability to stop specific transactions in real time. We are now confident that all transactions are screened and monitored, and we are aware of many more transactions that require further investigation.”  

Toh Hwee Min, MLRO, Tazapay 

The expanding reach and complexity of the payments industry, bolstered by new and innovative payment rails, continues to offer both challenges and opportunities to Tazapay – making smart transaction monitoring crucial in unlocking revenue opportunities while achieving regulatory compliance. 

The post Tazapay implements advanced transaction monitoring in just two months appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

Overcoming regulatory and operational challenges

For global FX firms, one of the primary challenges is keeping up with ever-changing regulatory requirements across different jurisdictions. Ensuring the client experience isn’t negatively impacted in the process adds a further layer of complexity.

Before partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Monex’s payment screening process was not efficient. The company had an over-reliance on manual efforts and used generic rule sets that failed to address the specific needs of its diverse client base. This lack of customization and automation resulted in operational inefficiencies, leading to delayed transactions and an increased risk of overlooking potential matches that could indicate fraudulent or suspicious activities. 

We were using monitoring rules that were not tailored to our client base. This meant the process felt like a tick box exercise, rarely producing ‘real’ alerts that indicated suspicious behavior.

Dean Smith, Financial Crime Manager & DMLRO at Monex Europe

As the company expanded into new territories and diversified its product offerings, Monex needed a solution that could scale and continuously update without additional development work. 

Enabling a transition to automation

Monex decided to partner with ComplyAdvantage for customer screening and transaction monitoring due to the seamless initial integration that ComplyAdvantage offered. Having a single provider for both services meant the company benefited from a unified point of contact at ComplyAdvantage, accelerating the process of iterating and updating operational processes in line with the evolution of Monex’s products and offerings.

As our company has expanded into new countries and regulatory requirements have changed, ComplyAdvantage has scaled its support to meet our growing needs.

Rheann Randall, Projects Manager, Compliance at Monex Europe

Since implementation, Monex has transformed its transaction monitoring and customer screening approach. Where the process once involved extensive manual effort, stretching over undefined periods, ComplyAdvantage enabled a transition to automation that allowed Monex to get up and running with its new solutions within two weeks. The ability to quickly adapt and implement necessary transaction monitoring rules means Monex can now manage its compliance obligations and mitigate financial crime risk more effectively than ever. 

Enhanced operational workflows

Monex’s integration of ComplyAdvantage’s customer screening and transaction monitoring solutions has transformed its approach to compliance, thanks to the flexibility to tailor rules and thresholds. This customization has led to a noteworthy decline in the rate of false positives encountered by the compliance team – a pivotal improvement highlighted by Projects Manager, Compliance Rheann Randall. 

Monex attributes this success to several key factors, including the precise customization of screening lists to better meet jurisdictional regulatory expectations and the capability to refine adverse media screenings, focusing on particular categories of relevance. The solutions also demonstrate an “enhanced proficiency in recognizing Chinese names,” a feature that helps increase screening accuracy. 

Randall also highlighted the system’s efficiency in streamlining alert management. She emphasized the platform’s comprehensive design, consolidating pertinent data for payment and client activities to facilitate a faster response to alerts.

The transaction monitoring platform contains all the necessary information related to the payment and client activity needed for an analyst to manage an alert. This has helped reduce the time taken to resolve alerts.

Rheann Randall, Projects Manager, Compliance at Monex Europe

Monex’s Financial Crime Manager & DMLRO, Dean Smith, also noted that the partnership had significantly improved their handling of alert escalations. Where responses to critical issues might have previously followed a less structured path, ComplyAdvantage’s solutions provided a framework that streamlined these processes, “ensuring urgent issues were addressed and resolved with increased efficiency and effectiveness.” 

A strategic partnership

Monex’s extended partnership with ComplyAdvantage has been vital to its growth and success. The tailored support from ComplyAdvantage’s technical and customer success teams and the platform’s ability to segregate data and workflows for different jurisdictions have played a crucial role in Monex’s expansion into new markets and compliance with diverse regulations. 

ComplyAdvantage has played a significant role in supporting Monex’s expansion into countries such as Canada, Luxembourg, Spain, and Singapore. Each jurisdiction has different screening and monitoring needs and requirements, which we have been able to quickly meet thanks to the customizability of ComplyAdvantage.

Dean Smith, Financial Crime Manager & DMLRO at Monex Europe

When asked why Monex has chosen to stay partnered with ComplyAdvantage since 2018, Smith pointed to the platform’s reliability and the opportunity for continuous development. With “virtually zero downtime,” the platform has supported Monex’s operations seamlessly, allowing it to expand confidently into new markets, including ventures such as securing an e-money license in the UK. This expansion required a sophisticated transaction monitoring system capable of adapting to new types of payments and managing higher volumes without the need for increased staffing, “something our previous vendors wouldn’t have been able to do.” 

The post Monex achieves global growth with enhanced customer screening and transaction monitoring appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

Efficient and accurate data analysis is crucial for effective anti-money laundering (AML) programs. However, AML teams using outdated transaction monitoring programs often face backlogged systems, with their analysts frequently experiencing burnout due to processing high volumes of alerts with too many false positives. Without a way to triage incoming alerts, highly qualified investigators can spend most of their working days on repetitive tasks like clearing overloaded systems and low-risk alerts.

This causes frustration and wastes company time, financial and energy resources, overloads personnel, and increases the likelihood of teams missing illicit activity. It can also result in unwanted organizational costs, as burnout leads to high turnover rates and costs to recruit and train replacements. Furthermore, if a company is deemed to have insufficient risk management processes, it may face regulatory fines, legal action, and reputational damage. Combined with online payment fraud losses estimated to exceed $362 billion by 2028, the stakes for financial institutions (FIs) are high. 

Enter artificial intelligence (AI).

It might feel like every conference, webinar, and white paper in the compliance industry is talking about AI and its transformative potential for financial crime risk management. But what does this potential actually look like in relation to enhancing firms’ know your transaction (KYT) protocols? 

This article explores the use of AI and machine learning (ML) for transaction monitoring, highlighting five key benefits that are helping firms increase the effectiveness of their financial crime-fighting efforts. 

Five benefits of AI-driven transaction monitoring systems

1. Adapt to changing behaviors in real-time

Unlike static rule-based systems, AI-driven transaction monitoring systems can learn and adjust in real-time, staying ahead of emerging risks. Machine learning algorithms within these solutions analyze historical transaction data to identify trends associated with legitimate and suspicious activities. As criminals evolve their tactics, the AI model dynamically updates its understanding of these behaviors. It adapts by recognizing new patterns and adjusting risk parameters, ensuring it stays ahead of emerging threats. This dynamic adaptation allows the system to effectively respond to shifts in the financial landscape, promptly identifying anomalies and potential risks.

The benefits for financial institutions (FIs) are profound. First, real-time adaptation significantly reduces false positives as the system becomes more discerning in distinguishing between normal and suspicious activities. Second, it enhances the system’s agility, swiftly recognizing and responding to emerging fraud patterns. This proactive approach mitigates the risk of overlooking sophisticated fraudulent schemes, safeguarding the FI’s assets and reputation.

2. Identify hidden relationships to uncover patterns and connections

In addition to tracking changes in behavior, pattern recognition in AI-driven solutions can expose connections within the intricate network of financial transactions. Using graph-based representation, AI algorithms can analyze transaction nodes and entity links to identify clusters and unusual connections. 

With this information, companies can better detect new or emerging fraud typologies and establish rules to mitigate them. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, global payments firm Lumon noticed a sudden rise in COVID-related investment fraud. With ComplyAdvantage’s Transaction Monitoring solution, Lumon was able to develop and implement new rule sets within 48 hours to combat the threat and prevent more customers from falling prey to fraudulent activities.

3. Efficiently triage alerts to minimize false positives

When an alert is triggered, AI models can evaluate the risk level based on various factors, including transaction amounts, frequency, and deviations from established patterns. It then assigns a risk score to the alert. Instead of relying on static rules that may generate false positives due to rigid parameters, the AI model dynamically adjusts its understanding of what constitutes suspicious behavior. Continuous learning is a key mechanism in this process. Feedback from analysts, investigations, and outcomes of previous alerts are fed back into the model, allowing it to refine its algorithms and improve accuracy over time.

As a result of efficient triaging, the identification of high-risk activities is accelerated, enabling a more rapid response to potential threats. Additionally, false positives can be reduced, preventing unnecessary investigations and directing the focus towards genuine risks. This streamlined process enhances the effectiveness of transaction monitoring and improves the overall operational efficiency of the FI.

4. Produce deeper insights to meet regulatory expectations

To further boost the confidence of compliance teams when making decisions, AI-driven systems can provide a deeper understanding of the reasons behind alert generation. This level of transparency becomes especially important during audits since the concept of explainability has become a growing area of concern and legislative focus. Regulators increasingly require those who use or provide AI models to provide transparent and traceable decision-making processes, as well as clear and understandable information on the AI model’s capabilities and limitations.

Interestingly, our State of Financial Crime 2025 survey showed how firms are thinking about AI – and the results were, at times, contradictory. While most firms believed they were on track to meet regulatory expectations around AI, 91 percent said they were comfortable trading off explainability to improve efficiency. 

5. Precisely tune rules for more targeted monitoring

Contrary to common misconceptions, machine learning doesn’t replace rules; it complements them. Rules provide the foundational knowledge of customer behavior that machine learning thrives on, forming a symbiotic relationship. Many firms initiate their system with baseline rules, gradually integrating a more sophisticated, data-centric machine learning model. This phased approach allows time for thorough testing, tweaking, and understanding the model’s nuances.

By tailoring transaction monitoring rules and thresholds to specific behaviors and profiles relevant to a firm, AI outpaces manual tuning, reducing the chances of missed risks. This becomes especially crucial for firms navigating new and dynamic spaces, where precise and scalable tools empower smaller teams to implement a robust risk-based approach (RBA), even with limited resources. 

What does this mean for my firm?

Firms looking to deploy an AI-driven transaction monitoring solution should familiarize themselves with the obligations and guidance issued in the regions in which they operate, as these requirements specifically apply to the use of automated systems, bias, and data privacy. They should also ensure they have adequate documentation detailing risk assessments and risk management processes for AI, model governance, model testing and validation, and how the algorithm makes decisions to account for explainability. 

When training AI models, firms should use data from multiple sources, covering all demographics and from across geographies, to avoid bias. Finally, compliance teams should ensure that they have senior management support, carry out due diligence on vendors, and ongoing monitoring and assurance. 

The post Transforming KYT: The use of AI and machine learning in transaction monitoring appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

An effective and dynamic partner

Given Australia’s stringent regulatory and audit requirements, Beem required a solution to help it stay compliant while screening high volumes of customers daily.

Previously, the company had struggled with several screening issues that were slowing down customer onboarding times, reducing customer satisfaction. Manual processes, for example, had led to a backlog of alerts, consuming too much analyst time.

To combat this, Beem needed a dynamic solution that offered effective customer screening services suitable for its business and jurisdiction. After searching the market, the firm met with ComplyAdvantage in 2019 and began a long-term partnership. 

“During the vendor qualification process, we were particularly impressed with the search levers, search profiles, and the easy application programming interface (API) integration that ComplyAdvantage offered.”
Jason Backhouse, General Manager Open Payments 

Reducing alert remediation times to increase efficiency 

ComplyAdvantage’s implementation specialists collaborated with Beem from the outset to understand its business model and unique challenges. Once they finished their deep dive, they presented the firm with a bespoke suite of solutions based on their findings.  

Before partnering with ComplyAdvantage, Beem was experiencing high match rates of eight percent. However, after adopting a risk-based approach using ComplyAdvantage’s customer screening and transaction monitoring solutions, Beem reduced its match hit rate to 1.2 percent by December 2023, contributing to a 10 percent increase in its AML program’s efficiency.

Automated workflows via ComplyAdvantage’s RESTful API were also introduced to improve the firm’s overall operational efficiency by freeing analysts’ time. This enabled them to resolve legitimate sanctions hits within one working day, resulting in faster onboarding and improved customer satisfaction.

Beem & ComplyAdvantage: Key benefits in numbers

• Lowered the time taken to clear new customers to within one business day.
• Lowered match hit rate to under 1.2 percent.
• Minimized time to clear new cases.
• Increased overall efficiency by 10 percent. 

Taking new risks

While both parties are pleased with the ongoing success of the partnership, new risks are always emerging. With this in mind, ComplyAdvantage’s customer success and Beem’s compliance teams continuously review their operational efficiency and hold enablement sessions to equip Beem with the latest product and feature releases – creating a positive and sustainable experience for its customers.

“Through our years of partnership, ComplyAdvantage has enabled Beem to perform at the top of our compliance game. Their commitment to excellence and our business allows us to focus on providing a better experience for our customers while maximizing security and trust in our platform and meeting the requirements of our regulators.”
Jason Backhouse, General Manager Open Payments

A collaborative approach, combined with ComplyAdvantage’s dedicated account management and support, has led to a thriving long-term partnership that has helped Beem save time, stay compliant, and continue to scale and grow as a business.

The post Beem boosts analyst efficiency and customer satisfaction with automated workflows appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

• A transaction monitoring solution that’s scalable, efficient, and powerful.
• A quick comparison of the top available solutions.
• A clear list of features. 

This article summarizes six top transaction monitoring software vendors, listing their key strengths and explaining the types of firms they serve.

4 things to consider when selecting transaction monitoring software

When selecting the right transaction monitoring software vendor, here are four key points firms should consider:

1. Scalability and adaptability: Seek a solution that can grow and adapt to the complexity of transaction volumes and new financial crime risks, ensuring a long-term return on investment.
2. Customization and rule flexibility: Look for a transaction monitoring solution that offers customization and rule flexibility, allowing rulesets to be built and optimized based on various parameters. A user-friendly interface for rule-building and expert industry support can enhance the adaptability and effectiveness of the solution. 
3. Customer support: Proactive customer support can improve the ongoing success of the solution once implemented, increasing performance over time by applying industry expertise to suggest improvements aligned with the firm’s changing risks.
4. Alert prioritization and machine learning features: Some solutions utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to prioritize alerts based on risk levels, optimizing senior analysts’ time by identifying and investigating the highest-risk activities. Additionally, look for machine learning features that enhance the ability to identify new risks beyond traditional rule-based detection.

The best transaction monitoring software companies

1. ComplyAdvantage

Transaction Monitoring from ComplyAdvantage is an AI-driven solution that helps firms detect financial crime with advanced insights on hidden risk and custom thresholds. Our machine-learning models have won hackathons organized by ACAMS and PwC.

The G2 GridⓇ for Anti-Money Laundering is a helpful way of measuring financial crime risk management vendors based on customer opinion. The G2 GridⓇ lists ComplyAdvantage as a leader in anti-money laundering.

Top ComplyAdvantage features

• Industry-validated out-of-the-box rulesets – Choose from our library of red flags and suspicious activity scenarios based on AML/CFT industry typologies.
• No-code self-serve rules building – Even though we offer ongoing specialist support, it won’t hold you back when you need to make quick changes to rules.
• Specialist-supported implementation & ongoing calibration – Our team of experts helps you set up a tailored, risk-based solution – and continue fine-tuning it more effectively.
• AI-driven alert prioritization – Allows you to prioritize and focus on the greatest risks to your business.
• Scalability from startup to billions of transactions – Keep the same solution – and effectiveness – as you grow.
• New risk detection using advanced machine learning – Where rules cannot detect specific activity, our AI capabilities fill the gaps.
• AI-driven relationship detection – Identity clustering uses machine learning to identify data patterns that may indicate hidden links between accounts.
• Adjustable rule thresholds – Set thresholds based on your risk exposure.
• Integrate risk data, processes, and insights in one platform via API – Synthesize your native risk insights with our proprietary ones, integrate with other key compliance features such as payment screening, and more.
• Dashboard with rule performance and team stats – Helps manage the team and empowers you to make informed decisions regarding changes to rule thresholds.
• Integrated risk scoring – Implement your customer risk scoring seamlessly with API integrations.
• Integrated case management – Provide a holistic view of transaction alerts linked to a profile in a single place.
• Adverse media insights – Natural language processing (NLP) algorithms read through media information, identify relevant individuals and organizations, classify adverse media categories, and consolidate this data into comprehensive profiles.
• Segmentation – Apply your risk-based approach with a powerful segmentation engine.

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2. Youverify

According to Crunchbase, Youverify “helps financial institutions to comply with AML regulations and fight fraud with ease.” Youverify was founded in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2017.

3. NICE Actimize

According to Crunchbase NICE Actimize “provides real-time fraud prevention, anti-money laundering, enterprise investigations, and risk management solutions.” Founded in 1999, the company has offices in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 

4. SAS

According to TechTarget, SAS Institute Inc. “is a software vendor that specializes in advanced and predictive analytics software applications, as well as business intelligence and data visualization offerings.” Originally known as Statistical Analysis System, the company was founded in 1976.

5. Oracle

According to Crunchbase, Oracle is “an integrated cloud application and platform services that sells a range of enterprise information technology solutions.” Oracle started trading in 1977, and its headquarters are in the United States.

6. Verafin

According to Crunchbase, Verafin “offers a fraud and AML detection platform that helps detect, investigate, and report money laundering and financial fraud.” Verafin was founded in 2003 and is based in St. Johns, Canada.

3 top tips for speaking to vendors

When negotiating and discussing with vendors, here are three top tips for firms to consider:

• Ask how fast implementation will be: Customer experience and satisfaction are paramount for any organization and can be hampered by a slow implementation process. A personalized approach and ongoing support can be highly beneficial, as issues can be ironed out as they arise. When rolling out a transaction risk management solution, leading B2B infrastructures-as-a-service company, TransferMate described the collaborative process with ComplyAdvantage as a “one team, two organizations” approach, which reduced their alert remediation times by up to 50 percent.
• Explore how AI is used: Many vendors will talk about AI-driven solutions. Ask for specifics on how AI is being used and proof points on the benefits other customers are seeing. Improved efficiency and more effective risk prioritization are good use cases to start with. For example, when digital bank Holvi deployed AI-based alert prioritization from ComplyAdvantage, it saw that forty percent of its high-priority alerts were true positives, compared to less than one percent of low-priority alerts.
• Find out about plug-and-play capabilities, such as pre-built libraries of rules and typologies, which can help streamline the set-up process. Some also include libraries to help teams learn the software faster and offer sandboxes, API guides, and dummy data for testing.

All information from publicly available websites has been sourced and is correct as of March 2024. If you’d like to request a correction, please e-mail content@complyadvantage.com, and we’d be happy to review this with you.

The post The best transaction monitoring software and companies in 2025 appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

Before working with ComplyAdvantage, BigPay had a manual, ad hoc screening process. It needed to implement a more efficient one – fast – to meet its regulatory obligations. The reliance on manual processes also meant the firm faced the challenge of cumbersome batch processing during its annual customer rescreening, something that became increasingly difficult as the firm – and its customer base – grew.

BigPay also needed a solution that could be tailored in line with its risk-based approach:

“We had issues with customizability, as most platforms offer a standardized list of searches. We planned to have full control over the range of lists we used depending on the use case, transaction type, and country.”

Ashwin Nazareth, FinCrime Operations & Disputes Principal, BigPay

Integrated, customized screening and monitoring

The firm needed a flexible, unified platform that could scale across multiple markets and handle volume spikes during periods of peak demand. But with its previous solutions, streamlining these complex processes wasn’t possible – it involved too many touchpoints and manual processes. What’s more, BigPay needed a solution to automate workflow processes for name screening and adverse media searches, freeing up analyst time for more in-depth investigations.

That’s where ComplyAdvantage’s customer screening and transaction monitoring came in. BigPay was able to custom-build a single proprietary interface connecting multiple tools, trackers, and databases via a single API. The financial services firm also set up unique screening profiles for its individual markets, providing proportional controls for different products and transaction types – such as remittance and e-money. Accessible search profile configuration and fuzziness fine-tuning streamlined the process of aligning with new regulations.

“We now have the benefit of researching sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media all at the same time from a large number of sources rather than using multiple tools and databases. The time saved comes from only having to research the alerts, rather than wasting time looking for them.”

Ashwin Nazareth, FinCrime Operations & Disputes Principal, BigPay

Collaborative risk management

Throughout the process, BigPay has been able to partner with its customer success manager at ComplyAdvantage, who applies industry-wide best practices to ensure the solution is performing well and saving time in key areas.

“Customer support has been fantastic, especially with a dedicated account manager who resolves our issues promptly and keeps us up to date on our account performance,” said Nazareth. This included advice on “where we should be focusing our innovation and technological enhancements. In fact, two of our major time-saving innovations came directly from recommendations during the account review cycles.”

In the next few years, BigPay wants to sharpen its focus on key typologies affecting virtual financial services, such as fictitious identities, mule accounts, and scams. Nazareth also noted the increasing importance of collaborative data in financial crime risk management, both within the financial services industry and between financial firms, law enforcement, and regulators. Trends like these will only increase the need for the kind of high-quality, holistic data ComplyAdvantage provides.

“There’s no other solution currently on the market quite like ComplyAdvantage,” commented Nazareth. “And what it can do, it does exceptionally well.”

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To help firms benchmark solutions they’re exploring, we recommend asking seven key questions.

1. Can the solution scale with my business?

Smaller-scale operations may be able to manage financial crime risk with a greater number of manual processes initially. But as firms scale, the data and risks they face become increasingly complex. At the same time, financial crime – and regulations designed to curb it – are also increasing in complexity. 

Our 2023 tech and talent survey indicated that this growth in complexity is driving firms to invest more. 91 percent said they planned to spend more on compliance technology in the coming 12 months. As regulatory enforcement actions repeatedly show, transaction monitoring can be a significant part of an effective AML/CFT process.

So where does that leave firms? When investing in transaction monitoring technology, seek a tool that can adapt as transaction volume and complexity increase. This will deliver a better long-term return on investment (ROI) than repeatedly engaging in expensive, cumbersome overhauls. 

2. Can I tailor the monitoring rulesets to my bespoke risks?

In 2020, the Central Bank of Ireland’s Anti-Money Laundering Division observed several problematic themes affecting firms’ AML/CFT program effectiveness. Among these was the use of generic monitoring thresholds that failed to detect nuanced patterns.

Traditional rulesets may be a good baseline, but they are often inflexible and do not adapt well to a firm’s unique risks. Those that can be changed may require coding skills or third-party intervention, complicating the process.

What firms need is the flexibility to tailor transaction monitoring rules to their unique and changing risks. This requires both expert accuracy and user-friendly accessibility. 

Firms don’t have to choose between these benefits. Consider solutions that offer support from industry experts alongside accessible self-serve rule building. Combining these two features allows firms to make granular changes quickly while also benefiting from specialist calibration in the long term. It’s also key to keeping pace with evolving financial crime typologies and ensuring continued support for new products as a firm continues to grow. 

In one instance, TransferMate was able to work with ComplyAdvantage to tailor-make a rule that would detect key behavioral indicators for child sexual exploitation. After receiving key updates from law enforcement in the field, they were able to immediately refine the rule and account for behaviors indicating abuse of younger victims. With other solutions, making the change could have taken six months or more.

3. What kind of ongoing support do I get?

Creating a tailored, risk-based rule set can be a complex process, requiring expert input to develop the right strategy, and refine it over time. A step beyond mere outsourcing, a truly proactive customer success manager (CSM) will act as a firm’s partner, collaborating rather than just working behind the scenes. 

So when selecting a transaction monitoring provider, look for customer success experts that work with other firms in the same industry, and can aply their expertise to develop creative solutions. The support team should be tuned in, proactively reaching out about possible improvements in light of a firm’s changing risks.

“[ComplyAdvantage] supports a constant cycle of learning and evolving, able to adapt in line with the changing behavior of both customers and criminals. It didn’t matter who worked for HTB and who worked for ComplyAdvantage. We had a single team, driving forward the delivery with a focus on achieving the outcome.”

Robin Jeffery, Head of Transformation at Hampshire Trust Bank

4. Can I use AI to prioritize alerts? 

Even a well-calibrated transaction monitoring solution will trigger alerts with a variety of risk levels. Without a way to sort alerts, qualified investigators can spend most of the day analyzing low-risk activity. This wastes company time and makes teams more likely to miss illicit transactions. 91 percent of respondents in our 2025 State of Financial Crime report said they either use or are planning to use AI to add value in this way. 

Look for transaction monitoring tools that can use AI to assess the highest-risk alerts and bring them to the fore. This will maximize senior analyst potential, allowing them to swiftly investigate the highest-risk activities first. Lower-risk alerts can be used to train more junior analysts. When alerts are sorted by risk, it also becomes easier to assess whether monitoring rules need to be tweaked.

“Many firms are already seeing success with AI, so it’s important to be agile, and avoid falling behind competitors who may soon be able to work in a much more sophisticated way without comparable increases in costs.”

Iain Armstrong, Regulatory Affairs Practice Lead at ComplyAdvantage

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5. Can I identify new risks with machine learning?

While the debate around the most effective transaction monitoring technologies tends to revolve around a binary comparison between traditional rules and AI, the two can work effectively together.  Tailored rules can detect known scenarios via established indicators, while machine learning (ML) fills in the gaps with intelligent analysis.

Firms can evaluate transaction monitoring tools by asking whether they enhance rule-based detection with ML-driven features like identity clustering, natural language processing (NLP), and behavioral analytics. These features can detect new risks traditional rules would miss.

For example, identity clustering analyzes personal and behavioral data points across multiple accounts for shared characteristics that can reveal a hidden common identity behind them. Similarly, NLP can analyze transactions and non-financial data to take factors such as location and time into account when evaluating a transaction’s risk.

“To better identify suspicious activity and understand the complete flow of illicit funds, we required a solution that would allow us to view and assess previously unseen connections between different accounts. We also wanted the ability to instantly ‘blacklist’ specific counterparties and their external bank accounts to prevent them from being used in future transactions by the same and other clients.” 

Adam Mackulin, Head of Compliance & MLRO at Payset

6. Does it seamlessly integrate with existing resources?

When a powerful transaction monitoring tool can’t integrate well with a firm’s existing data and technology, its potential is stunted. Without the ability to work seamlessly with the whole risk management function, even the most cutting-edge technology risks ineffectiveness. 

In considering a transaction monitoring solution, evaluate whether it plays well with the wider process. For example, which data points can teams integrate into the rules builder? Will the tool process a firm’s native risk insights alongside its own? Does its APIs allow integration with other functions, such as payment screening, for a more holistic risk approach?

7. How fast and efficient is implementation?

A slow implementation process can hurt customer experience and delay the development of new products and services. Inadequate support can become a chronic problem that burdens compliance teams, compromising the ability to add new rules and features.

So when evaluating a new transaction monitoring solution, consider the vendor’s approach to implementation. How do they support clients during the process? Look for features that jumpstart the process, such as a pre-built rules library.

This doesn’t rule out customized risk detection – just streamlines getting started. Vendors should also offer in-house technical and personal expertise to support custom features. Sandboxes can help streamline the customization process, allowing firms to test new features in a safe environment and adjust them quickly while reducing fallout from errors.

For example, Atlanticus, an inclusive payment services technology company, partnered with ComplyAdvantage for transaction monitoring in January 2023. Thanks to strong, efficient collaboration throughout the initial implementation, they were able to go live in mid-April of the same year.

Stepping into the future with transaction monitoring

Firms looking into a new transaction monitoring solution can benefit from a platform that adapts to their changing risks, using AI risk detection to enhance bespoke rule sets. It’s also important that the tool integrates well with the wider compliance process and can process the data most relevant to the firm. 

Implementing a new transaction monitoring solution requires sensitivity, careful planning, and consideration of key issues such as data quality and effective organizational change. Any large scale deployment of new transaction monitoring technology needs to be properly integrated with existing teams, processes, data and platforms to ensure firms get the best outcomes. That’s why it can be crucial to choose a solution provider that will accompany a firm in the transition, partnering with key stakeholders to ensure the best possible outcome.

With the right transaction monitoring technology, firms can be confident they meet – even exceed – regulator expectations while managing risks effectively.

The post 7 questions to ask when choosing a transaction monitoring solution appeared first on ComplyAdvantage.

In this webinar, ComplyAdvantage Technical Lead Oscar Hazelaar discussed how the right approach to risk in transaction monitoring could also reduce costs. Based on his thoughts, this article explores how firms can find the “Goldilocks Zone” – where cost-effective monitoring is also risk-based. 

Transaction monitoring objectives

When done properly, transaction monitoring ensures regulatory compliance by addressing the risks a firm needs to cover based on its enterprise-wide risk assessment (EWRA). It helps firms detect behavior indicating that financial crime might be occurring. A risk-based approach means implementing rules that capture well-known financial crime red flags as well as a firm’s industry-specific risks. A transaction monitoring system should also be calibrated to protect a firm’s client base – not only detecting high-risk individuals, but also potential victims of financial crime. 

Defining success in transaction monitoring

What does success look like in transaction monitoring? Three key factors stand out: 

1. Its rules align with regulatory requirements and industry best practices. A risk-based approach builds rules around a firm’s regulatory requirements, as well as scenarios that address risks unique to its products or industry. For example, an exchange in the crypto space should be confident that it can detect when someone is moving fiat currency to and from its system without changing it into cryptocurrency. This might indicate money laundering. 
2. Its rules are driven by a firm’s risk data. Rules are important, but they cannot detect risk alone. It’s also crucial to factor in customer risk. This allows a firm to apply additional due diligence to riskier customers – while ensuring lower-risk customers are not unnecessarily impacted and can do business smoothly with the firm. 
3. It can access and take advantage of comprehensive data. Many firms sit on a wealth of customer insights and data that they can use to drive their solutions. One use case centered around ATMs, where a firm wanted to detect if a specific customer (of retirement age or above) was withdrawing repeated high-value transactions. This was a potential sign of elder abuse. The firm factored in their customers’ date of birth and age, using this knowledge to expand their transaction monitoring coverage beyond a standardized scenario.
4. Its rules are operationally effective. As a firm deals with transactions and scales its products, its solution should allow it to process alerts effectively without overwhelming backlogs. An overzealous transaction monitoring solution can create a difficult workload to manage and becomes hard to justify from a cost perspective. A robust solution is designed to respond to historical data and reduce future false positives. 

The consequences of ineffective transaction monitoring

An ineffective transaction monitoring approach can fail to detect financial crime and may even enable it. What might cause a firm not to miss potential criminial activity despite having a transaction monitoring solution? 

1. Inadequate transaction-monitoring rules. First, it might be that the behavior a firm failed to detect was not actually covered by its rules. Perhaps a crucial approach or angle was not considered when the transaction monitoring solution was set up. Alternatively, a rule might have been set up to detect a particular behavior but failed to capture it. 
2. Scenarios and rules that generate a lot of alerts. This occurs when a firm’s coverage is overly broad, which can create false positives. Repeated false positives from specific rules could encourage outright dismissal of future alerts – even if it sometimes captures true behavior that requires investigation and reporting.

What are the costs of ineffective transaction monitoring?

Operational strain

An imprecise transaction monitoring solution can create the need for a larger team to avoid alert backlogs. But increased headcount is not always manageable – especially in newer firms that don’t have the necessary resources. Nor does headcount alone guarantee a risk-based process: teams need the right tools to detect risk. The resulting inefficiencies can impact team morale. Large backlogs can create overwhelm, especially when reviews constantly reveal false positives. The extra strain can create a string of negative impacts in the long term, from burnout and analyst turnover to missed risks and even regulatory fines. 

Reputational damage

A poorly-implemented transaction monitoring solution can also result in reputational damage. On the one hand, this can occur if a firm operates too stringently relative to its risks – which is common soon after a new product launches. If a firm’s rules are too broad from the start, this could impact customer experience and first impressions. Although it’s essential to have a solid transaction-monitoring solution in place from the beginning, broad rules do not necessarily detect more risk. Instead, effective systems should capture a firm’s tailored risks. 

On the other hand, controls that are too lax can also result in missed suspicious activity.  For example, failure to detect a compromised customer account could negatively impact a firm’s reputation and any product involved. Not basing transaction monitoring on risks can result in a failed audit, particularly if a lack of controls is found to have facilitated financial crime. It can also result in regulatory penalties and bad press. Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of attention on organizations implementing poor compliance practices. Transaction monitoring is very much a part of this.

The Goldilocks zone: Balancing costs and coverage

How can firms work on a more effective transaction monitoring solution while managing costs? IA successful solution balances the need for comprehensive coverage with an organization’s operational requirements. Traditionally speaking, transaction monitoring solutions lean toward broader and more costly coverage out of an abundance of caution. And indeed, in a constantly-changing regulatory landscape, capturing and reporting as much potentially suspicious behavior as possible could be seen as a way to avoid regulatory fines and other risks. 

But again, broader coverage is not necessarily risk-based. A more effective approach – which can also be more cost-effective — is to assess a firm’s unique risk with a regularly-updated enterprise-wide risk assessment (EWRA). This allows firms to conserve resources in areas that are not significant risks for them, while targeting strategic investment in their riskiest areas.

ComplyAdvantage works with firms to increase a risk-based level of accuracy, working to target relevant behavior. This can help reduce overhead costs while keeping the primary focus on risk-based and effective transaction monitoring. 

So how can a firm achieve the right balance? Here are the steps we generally follow with clients.

• Start with a base set of rules. This can be determined based on rules a firm may have implemented previously – or that other members of their industry recommend. 
• Compare those rules with known operational and industry risks. This can be broken down into three steps:
  • At the base level is a firm’s customer risk data, gathered at onboarding, establishing that the individual onboarded is who they say they are. This information includes where the customer is located and typical behavior and activity – such as products that they’ve purchased and used regularly. This data can then be used to create a risk rating to drive transaction monitoring rules. 
  • The next part is to identify subgroups within a firm’s customer base. A straightforward example would be the difference between individual and corporate customers: as their behavior will be very different, they must be monitored differently. If firms monitor both with the same rule set, they’ll fail to cover at least one of those groups effectively, and alerts will not be risk-based. 
  • Lastly, a firm can use any additional information gathered at customer onboarding within its transaction monitoring product. For example, say a firm’s customer announced ahead of time how much they planned to use its service. The firm can use that information as part of its transaction monitoring rules to continuously verify that the customer is sticking to what they initially said. 
• Introduce rule-refining mechanisms based on this information. For example, a threshold-based rule may need to differentiate between a firm’s corporate customers and its individual clients. Similarly, a firm may want to compare customers in a specific industry to others previously onboarded in the same industry. If a new customer’s average transaction volume exceeds the norm for the industry’s customer base, there may be a red flag to investigate. 
• Keep optimizing after deploying the first solution and establishing the first rule set: 
  • Verify any assumptions (such as customer risk level) made while planning for accuracy and effectiveness against the data going through the system. 
  • The setup should change with the product as the firm grows and adds additional products or services. The transaction-monitoring solution must be flexible enough to accommodate new types of transactions, volumes, or patterns without inflicting excess work. 
  • The solution should keep up with continuously-changing regulations – and, ideally, should be designed around continuous regulatory change.

How ComplyAdvantage helps clients maintain continuous improvement

At ComplyAdvantage, we take several steps to help customers continue improving their transaction monitoring solution: 

• Assess: How is the System Performing?

This involves more than just looking at how many rules are triggering for certain types of transactions. We drill down, investigating where those hits are coming from. What type of customer is generating these alerts? How are these rules triggering, and what was the outcome of our customers’ reviews? If we see that specific types of alerts are repeatedly flagged as a false positive – or no action was taken – we then ask: is this as expected? Is this repetitive alert part of planned checks and balances, or do adjustments need to be made? 

• Share Insights & Observations

We then discuss the insights and patterns our analysis has revealed with our customers. This opens the way to talk about changing the existing rules to better accommodate real-life transaction volumes. This is an ongoing discussion because we continually find new insights and transaction monitoring approaches.

• Determine Which New Scenarios to Address

Based on the information and insights discussed, we work with clients to determine the best way to address new scenarios. When implementing transaction monitoring rules, it’s natural to think in terms of capturing certain behaviors. But it’s important not to stop here, as other elements may also contribute to false positives or negatives. For example, moving beyond hard-coded transaction thresholds, what’s the average transaction volume for specific customer groups? 

• Design for Continuous Improvement

Taking the time upfront to design an agile system will pay off in the long run. The more time firms can invest upfront to design a solution that effectively facilitates change, the easier it will be to maintain and improve over time.  In contrast, if a solution is only designed to monitor one type of transaction, firms can encounter problems when incorporating inevitable new scenarios, leading to overly complex money flow representations. Well-planned solutions will allow firms to self-manage many rule changes and additions, reducing the need to submit third-party requests for routine adjustments and improving efficiency.

Key takeaways

Firms looking to optimize their transaction monitoring solutions should focus on three key areas. If they partner with an existing provider, they may want to consider whether the vendor will walk alongside them to address these three areas. If not, they may want to consider a provider that will focus on these areas with them.

1. Find the “goldilocks zone” where risk-based coverage and cost efficiency overlap. Instead of seeing cost-effectiveness as competing with risk-based coverage, consider them as two sides of a coin. While effective transaction monitoring requires real investment, a risk-based approach is not always the most expensive. Rather, indiscriminately broad or lax coverage can negatively impact cost as well as risk. A solution that instead targets a firm’s unique risks will not only catch more but also reduce wasted spending on excessive measures, repeated work, damaged reputation, staff turnover, and regulatory penalties. Risk-based approaches are generally more cost-effective.
2. Tailor transaction monitoring around firm-specific needs and risks. This should be driven by internal information, including a recently-updated EWRA. No one client has the same data available – or works in the same way. Firms might share general scenarios, but their approach to each should be tailored around the specific risk that comes from where they’re located, what regulations are in place, and the types of clients they have. There’s no such thing as a run-of-the-mill solution. Each solution should work for the individual firm and its product. 
3. Design an agile solution that changes with the firm. An ineffective transaction monitoring solution falls behind a firm’s product constantly. Ideally, firms should think ahead and proactively anticipate upcoming risks and obligations. Each firm’s product should be designed ahead of time to allow it to implement those changes quickly. 

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