What's Finally Changing to Help Catch More Financial Crime With Andrew Davies of ComplyAdvantage

Andrew Davies has spent more than three decades fighting financial crime, starting with sanctions screening tools for central banks in the mid-1990s and arriving at ComplyAdvantage after nearly 16 years at Fiserv. He sits at the center of one of the most consequential questions in financial services: can we finally move the needle on financial crime detection after decades of catching less than 2% of what's laundered globally? ComplyAdvantage serves more than 3,000 enterprises across 75 countries with its AI-native Mesh platform. If you want to learn more about the founding story and their early days, check out my podcast with founder Charlie Delingpole from 2019.What We CoveredWhy the industry has historically caught less than 2% of money laundered globallyHow the money laundering economy ranks as the world's third largest at an estimated $5.6 trillionThe evolution from sanctions screening to FRAML to multi-dimensional financial crime riskThe Mesh platform and what a unified financial crime system means for compliance teamsCassie, the agentic AI analyst automating customer screening investigationsHow 90% of compliance work was historically spent chasing false positivesReal-time payments compliance and the risk-based approach to payment screeningThe SEPA Instant Payments challenge and batch screening against the EU journalStablecoins, unhosted wallets, and the compliance infrastructure gapFATF's finding that stablecoins represent 84% of illicit crypto transaction volumeData sharing consortiums as the next inflection point in fighting financial crimeThe network problem at the heart of money laundering and terrorist financingKey TakeawaysThe money laundering economy is estimated at $5.6 trillion, making it the third largest in the world, above Germany, yet we detect less than 2%. Agentic AI tools like Cassie are designed to eliminate false positives so human analysts only work cases that genuinely warrant their expertise. Data sharing consortiums, where organizations contribute to shared detection models, represent the most promising path to materially improving financial crime outcomes. Stablecoins create real compliance risk at the unhosted wallet layer, the Bank of England has floated a ban, while the US is unlikely to go that route, leaving a gap.About Andrew DaviesAndrew Davies is the Global Head of Financial Crime Compliance Strategy at ComplyAdvantage. He began his career in the mid-1990s building sanctions screening tools for central banks and large financial institutions, and spent nearly 16 years at Fiserv in their financial crime division before joining ComplyAdvantage.Connect with Fintech One-on-One:Tweet me @PeterRentonConnect with me on LinkedInFind previous Fintech One-on-One episodes