AI is rewriting the rules. Learn how to stay ahead.
I document how generative and agentic AI are reshaping financial-crime compliance — where they're breaking KYC/AML controls, where they're rebuilding them, and what that means for how this work gets done next.
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Agentic AI in Compliance: Who's Accountable When the Analyst Is a System
Agentic AI can already run adverse media research, draft EDD narratives, and triage alerts with no human touching the middle steps. The technology changes fast. The accountability question doesn't move at all — and most teams haven't worked out where it actually sits.
AI & Compliance
The EU AI Act Quietly Split Fraud Detection and AML Into Two Different Risk Categories
Two AI systems can look almost identical — score a transaction, flag it, route it for review — and sit in completely different regulatory categories under the EU AI Act, for a reason that has nothing to do with how they work and everything to do with what they're labelled for.
AI & Compliance
The FCA Isn't Writing AI Rules. Here's What It's Doing Instead
No AI-specific rulebook, no bespoke licensing regime — the FCA has said twice now that it isn't planning one. That's not regulatory neglect. It's a deliberate bet, and it puts more weight on judgment a compliance team already has to have, not less.
Regulatory Update
How Disasters Like Sri Lanka's 2025 Floods Expose Weaknesses in AML Risk Management Systems
Cyclone Ditwah displaced over two million people and triggered a multi-billion-dollar relief effort. Large-scale disasters don't just test emergency response — they test every assumption a KYC/AML program makes about identity, cash, and oversight.
Fraud Detection
A Step-by-Step Playbook for Investigating Suspected AI-Generated Fraud in Onboarding
Deepfake selfies, GAN-forged IDs, and synthetic identities are already inside the funnel. Here's a repeatable method for catching them before they clear KYC — and building a defensible case file when they don't.
Fraud Detection
Synthetic Identity Fraud: The Typology Most Training Programs Still Get Wrong
It's not stolen identity and it's not fully fake identity — it's both, blended, and aged like a real customer. Here's why that combination breaks conventional fraud detection.
Fundamentals
KYC, CDD, and EDD Are Not the Same Thing — Here's the Actual Difference
The three terms get used interchangeably in job postings and casually in conversation. In practice they're a hierarchy, and knowing where one ends and the next begins is what separates a checklist analyst from a risk-based one.
Regulatory Update
What Makes a SAR Narrative Defensible (Not Just Filed)
A suspicious activity report that reads as a summary of a gut feeling doesn't hold up to regulatory review. One that reads as a chain of specific, dated observations does. The difference is almost entirely structural.
Regulatory Update
Shell Companies and Beneficial Ownership: Mapping the Layers That Are Built to Confuse You
Placement, layering, and integration is the model everyone memorizes for the exam. Shell company structures are where 'layering' stops being an abstraction and becomes a genuinely hard research problem.