Business
How to tackle the hidden financial compliance risks of supply chains

Source: Finance Derivative
Gabriel Hopkins, Chief Product Officer at Ripjar
Supply chains are the backbones of modern business. The recent delays demonstrate the importance of efficient end-to-end chains in enabling the flow of goods and services across borders and ensuring that firms and markets around the world continue to function smoothly. While they deliver crucial resources and connections that organisations require, they also expose them to an increased degree of third-party criminal risk.
Whilst a bank or financial organisation may be confident that it understands the immediate compliance risks that it faces from its customers and the industry, it’s less likely that it is familiar with the risks that suppliers and other third parties along the supply chain face.
However, it’s important that firms familiarise themselves with the risks, as many anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing of terrorism (CFT) regulations. These require firms to ensure that third parties involved in their supply chains are not involved in criminal activity. If they fail to do this, they may face both criminal and reputational penalties.
To detect and address the AML/CFT risks associated with third parties, businesses can start with six key considerations for enhancing supply chain compliance performance.
Mapping supply chain risk exposure
To manage supply chain risk, firms must understand not only who their suppliers are, but who those suppliers work with. This requires greater visibility into all components of your supply chain, including the transport routes, manufacturing plants, storage facilities, and managerial personnel that it involves.
Assessing each of these elements in detail will enable firms to determine the AML/CFT risk they present, and then track them on an ongoing basis to capture any changes in that risk profile.
Relevant supply chain risk factors to monitor include:
Operational risk: The industry in which a third-party operates will affect the level of AML/CFT risk that it presents. Examples of high-risk industries include payment services, art, shipping and logistics. These are industries which may offer criminals opportunities to commit crimes such as money laundering.
Geographical risk: Supply chains that cross borders may encounter high-risk AML/CFT jurisdictions.
Sanctions risk: Cross-border supply chains also carry an increased risk of international sanctions compliance concerns. Firms should screen those involved in their supply chain against relevant sanctions lists on an ongoing basis.
Corruption risk: Foreign supply chains are often vulnerable to corruption, stemming from transactions involving politically exposed persons (PEP). With that in mind, firms should be aware of the political risks that their supply chain entails, and whether changes to the political landscape have impacted this.
Understanding Criminal Methodologies
Criminals are always developing increasingly sophisticated methods to evade AML/CFT controls and exploit regulatory blind-spots. When implementing an effective risk management solution, it’s important that you understand the criminal methodologies used to target supply chains. These include:
• Misrepresenting goods on official documentation or letters of credit
• Misrepresenting the value or quality of goods being transported
• Transporting illegal goods
• Unauthorised unloading of goods
Building risk management solutions
Once organisations have gained a perspective of their supply chain risk liabilities, they should develop and implement a risk management framework so they can effectively respond to potential AML/CFT alerts. The framework should align with a firm’s risk appetite, allow it to gauge the impact of the potential risks, predict the likelihood of those risks becoming a reality, and set out the compliance measures that can deal with them.
Economic conditions, new technologies, or political upheaval are all factors which mean third party business relationships change constantly, in turn altering a supply chain’s risk exposure. To stay on top of emergent risks, firms need to implement a persistent monitoring solution for every relevant aspect of the supply chain so that changes can be detected when they happen, and adjustments made to risk management solutions in a timely manner.
Conducting supply chain due diligence
Supply chain due diligence should be an important part of risk management solutions. In addition to understanding who is involved in the chain from end-to-end, that information must be verified to properly assess compliance risk exposure. Effective supply chain due diligence means gathering the following information on third parties:
• Identifying information such as supplier names, addresses, company incorporation documents, and beneficial ownership details
• Financial information such as cashflow, expense details, growth projections, and debts and liabilities
• Historical financial performance
• Regulatory environment and AML/CFT compliance performance
Recognising red flags
Once the supply chain risk management solution is implemented, it’s important that compliance employees understand how to spot the relevant indicators of AML/CFT threats in practice. Key red flag characteristics of supply chain risk include:
Corporate structures: Suppliers that have needlessly complex corporate structures present a higher risk of money laundering. Red flags include the use of shell companies or incorporation in a high-risk country.
Online activity: Suppliers without a website or have an unusual online presence that does not match their business operations.
Trading behaviour: Suppliers that trade in goods that do not match their business profile or engage in needlessly complex trade deals.
Trade routes: Suppliers that organise their shipments in needlessly complex routes between their ports of origin and destination.
Documentation: Suppliers that submit insufficient documentation for their shipments or that submit documents with inconsistencies or deficiencies.
Transactional activity: Suppliers that make frequent or last-minute changes to their financial arrangements or engage in unusually high or low volumes of transactions.
Screen for adverse media
Given the global nature of supply chain relationships, firms should seek to stay informed about AML/CFT risks by screening for adverse media involving third-party business relationships. Negative media is a particularly good indicator of AML/CFT risk because its information flows are not restricted by borders, jurisdictions, or government protocol, and stories may be broken before their confirmation by official sources.
Adverse media screening solutions should be set up to capture information about suppliers from foreign language news sources and integrate multi-language name matching tools to account for variations in name spelling or the use of non-Latinate characters. With that in mind, it is often useful for firms to integrate smart AML software tools that enhance their adverse media solution with automated speed, accuracy, and the capability to monitor breaking stories in real time.
Understanding before action
Whilst they aren’t the most obvious place to start when examining money laundering risks, it’s clear that firms would be remiss to neglect supply chains as a source of potential non-compliance.
In order to implement the most effective risk management solutions, banks and financial organisations must ensure they have a comprehensive understanding of the supply chain landscape when it comes to AML and CFT.
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Business
Beyond compliance: why the shift to ISO 20022 is more than a messaging upgrade

Maria-Christine Diaz, Senior Business Strategy Manager at Eastnets, explores why ISO 20022 is more than a mandate – it’s a catalyst laying the groundwork for future-proof payment services
The SWIFT-mandated migration by November 2025 is set to end MT message processing for interbank cross-border payment instructions and cash management reporting (CBPR+). Yet, according to SWIFT as of December 2024, only 33% of organisations had adopted ISO 20022 for CBPR+. It highlights a deeper issue: many organisations still see it as a technical obligation when really, the migration implications stretch far beyond protocol upgrades and format translations.
ISO 20022 is not a one-off project. It is a multi-year, cross-functional transformation program touching every part of the business. It’s a strategic opportunity and a chance to rethink how financial institutions manage payments infrastructure, compliance and customer value propositions in a rapidly evolving digital economy.
However, it demands a coordinated, business-wide response.
Why tactical fixes won’t solve strategic shifts
At its core, ISO 20022 replaces the flat, ambiguous MT messaging format with structured, contextualised data that applies across all payment types, domestic and cross-border. It allows institutions to capture and exchange richer details – from payment purpose code and country of origin to beneficiary information – with far greater quality, accuracy and completeness.
That quality creates tangible value. It promises to strengthen Straight-Through Processing (STP) efficiency and dramatically improve the effectiveness of fraud detection and anti-money laundering (AML) processes. How? By reducing the number of investigation cases and false positives that have long strained operations teams. ISO 20022 also supports regulatory focus on real-time transaction monitoring and incident transparency, something central to frameworks like the EU’s Payment Services Directive 3, the AML Directives and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).
But ISO 20022 doesn’t just support regulatory alignment, it fundamentally alters the operational risk landscape. Most institutions still rely on compliance processes and infrastructures built for MT messages, which are poorly suited to handle the granularity and structure of ISO 20022 data. And when this richer data is simply “bolted on” to legacy systems, problems quickly arise.
Many banks are pursuing a tactical fix for what is a strategic shift – it’s like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. Systems and processes were built around the limited MT format which are flat, fixed and often ambiguous. Existing rule sets designed for flat MT messages begin to break down, triggering too many false positives and overwhelming compliance teams with noise instead of insights.
To realise the full value of ISO 20022, institutions need to map how payment data flows across their organisation. This helps identify legacy workarounds, uncover operational risks and pinpoint where ISO 20022 adds complexity or unlocks new opportunity. Therefore, a comprehensive business-wide impact assessment is essential to strengthen AML, sanctions screening and fraud detection processes.
With that foundation, banks can sharpen customer insights, strengthen fraud and risk controls, and develop new value-added services. As sanctions lists and fraud rules update in near real-time, combined with financial crime compliance costs surpassing $1 trillion in 2024, the ability to act on cleaner, more contextual data has become business-critical.
Therefore, making ISO 20022 work for the business means moving beyond retrofitting and honing in on three areas that drive real transformation.
More impact than meets the eye
The real opportunity begins when ISO 20022 data is integrated into core systems, not just translated at the edges. Payments data now impacts every business line – from retail and corporate banking to capital markets and trade finance – influencing every process from front to back office.
Again, migration is not a one-off project but something that touches every part of the business, from reconciliation processes to customer-facing services. The key challenge of this transformation is knowing where the payment is, its status, without ambiguity, at any moment. Think of it like tracking an Amazon parcel delivery. To manage this, institutions need lightweight analytics tools to monitor and track payment messages in real-time across systems, to reduce reconciliation errors, manual workarounds and operational risk.
The true value lies not in seeing the information, but in using it to streamline operations, resolve issues faster and deliver better outcomes.
The path to optimised financial crime detection
As ISO 20022 fundamentally offers richer information, one of the most immediate benefits lies in financial crime prevention.
To take advantage, institutions must recalibrate financial crime systems to work with clearer, structured and contextual ISO 20022 data. This isn’t just about better information, it’s about better precision. Finetuning these systems through precise finetuning techniques to improve detection precision and strengthen risk mitigation, all while reducing and operational costs.
Take Sohar International, a bank operating in the Middle East, as an example. It reduced its false positives by 67%, helping to distinguish between legitimate and suspicious transactions, simply by optimising screening strategies and using structured ISO 20022 data. That kind of result creates space for smarter, faster decisions across the organisation, all while strengthening its AML compliance framework.
An opportunity for leaner payment processes
Additionally, ISO 20022 presents the perfect opportunity to modernise payment infrastructures with a modular orchestration layer – a flexible, business-agnostic workflow engine that seamlessly translates and routes messages across systems. This shields core business applications from changes in formats, protocols and standards, reducing maintenance overhead and operational risk and accelerating ISO 20022 adoption without disrupting core operations.
Moreover, it enables real-time monitoring, detection and investigation of issues such as duplicate payments or delayed messages, providing transaction integrity across the entire lifecycle. Having infrastructure agility translates directly into business performance, which can lead to increased cross-jurisdiction visibility in real-time and optimised STP rates, making sure payments move securely, efficiently and in line with market expectations. .
By building this agility, financial institutions lay the groundwork to rapidly adapt to future market changes, new services and customer demands without overhauling core systems. It also provides real-time visibility and transaction integrity, making sure payments move securely, efficiently and in line with market expectations.
Unlocking the true value of ISO 20022
Treating compliance as the end goal is a strategic misstep. So, without a coordinated business-wide transformation strategy, supported by optimised financial crime tools, a lean orchestration layer and real-time monitoring, institutions risk operational disruptions and regulatory scrutiny impacting their bottom line.
What’s ultimately at stake is more than a messaging upgrade. It’s the opportunity to reshape financial infrastructure for an era defined by sustainable growth and operational resilience.
The real value of ISO 20022 lies not in translating messages, but in transforming the business. Those who embrace the shift – not just to adopt, but to adapt – will be best positioned to unlock smarter, data-driven growth in the years ahead.
Business
The Quiet Strength of Being Clear – Why Assertiveness Matters More Than Ever for Founders

By Rebecca Sutherland, CEO and Founder of HarbarSix
There’s a word that often makes people shift a little in their seats. Assertiveness. It can sound sharp, maybe even a bit harsh, like something that belongs in boardrooms filled with ego or in negotiation books gathering dust on someone’s shelf. But in truth, assertiveness, when you really understand it, is one of the most compassionate tools we have as leaders.
Because at its core, assertiveness isn’t about being pushy. It’s about being clear.
And when you’re building something, a business, a team, a dream that lives outside the ordinary, that kind of clarity becomes essential. Without it, you end up drifting, making decisions that don’t feel quite right, saying yes when you mean no, and slowly watching the thing you once felt lit up by become a source of tension or exhaustion.
I’ve seen it happen more than once. A brilliant, creative founder full of drive and vision, slowly ground down by too many compromises, too much people-pleasing, too little space to breathe. They don’t lack skill or ambition. What they’re missing is that anchor, the ability to be assertive without feeling like they have to apologise for it.
So, let’s unpack that, because I think we need to talk about how to lead from a place that’s both strong and soft. Firm but open and rooted in who you are.
Assertiveness starts with self-trust
Before you can speak clearly to others, you must be clear with yourself. What do you stand for? What kind of culture are you trying to build? What do you value, not just on a branding level, but deep in your bones?
Because if you don’t know that, you’ll find yourself pulled in all directions. You’ll agree to partnerships that don’t serve you, hire people based on panic rather than alignment, and find it hard to hold boundaries when the stakes feel high.
But when you do know—when you’ve taken the time to understand what really matters to you—it becomes easier to communicate it, calmly and confidently, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Saying what you mean isn’t unkind—it’s respectful
There’s a misconception, especially among founders who want to be “good” leaders, that being direct is somehow abrasive. That if you’re too clear, you might upset people. But in my experience, the opposite is true.
When you wrap your truth in too many layers of softening or delay saying the hard thing because you’re worried about how it will land, you actually create more confusion, not less. People want to know where they stand. Your team, your investors, your clients—they respect leaders who can speak with warmth and certainty.
You don’t need to bark orders or dominate a room. But you do need to be able to say, “This isn’t working for me,” or “This direction doesn’t feel right,” or even, “I’ve changed my mind.” That kind of honesty is a form of care. It protects your energy, and it gives everyone around you a clearer playing field.
Boundaries aren’t barriers—they’re invitations to trust
One of the most powerful forms of assertiveness is knowing when to say no. Or not yet. Or not like this.
As founders, we’re often wired to keep giving—to clients, to our team, to the business itself. But that constant giving, without boundaries, leads to burnout. And more than that, it models a kind of unsustainable leadership where overextending becomes the norm.
Boundaries, when set with intention, are not walls. They’re signals. They say, “This is how I work best,” or “This is what I need to stay at my best,” or “Here’s the line where my role ends and yours begins.” And far from pushing people away, they create the safety and trust needed for real collaboration.
Not everyone will like it—and that’s okay
Here’s the part that might sting a little: not everyone will like your assertiveness. Some people will bristle when you stop bending over backwards. Others may be used to you saying yes to everything, and might struggle when you start to reclaim your space.
Let them. Your job isn’t to be liked by everyone. Your job is to build something honest, sustainable, and true. And the people who are meant to walk alongside you? They’ll stay, in fact, they’ll probably thank you for the clarity.
Practice before you need it
Like any skill, assertiveness gets easier with practice. Start small. Have that conversation you’ve been avoiding. Say no to the next thing that doesn’t feel aligned. Express a need clearly without over-explaining. And then do it again. Not perfectly, just consistently.
If you’re not used to it, it might feel clunky at first. That’s okay. Clarity is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.
The most powerful leaders are not the loudest
They’re not the ones who dominate meetings or chase visibility for its own sake. They’re the ones who know who they are. Who can sit in discomfort without losing their footing. Who can say the hard thing with softness and stay true to their vision when the noise gets loud.
Assertiveness isn’t about power over others—it’s about being in your own power. And when you lead from that place, it changes everything.
For your business. For your team. And most importantly, for you.
Business
Innovation in banking must go hand in hand with security, and here’s why

Dean Clark, Group Chief Technology Officer for GFT
The banking sector is transforming more and more, with banks under pressure to meet customers’ evolving expectations. This means that even the most traditional institutions have to move away from legacy systems and adopt modern technologies such as cloud computing and AI. The aim of this shift is not just to keep pace with digital-native competitors, but also to improve operational efficiency and deliver better customer experiences.
However, innovation brings new challenges. Transitioning from centralised mainframes to cloud-based platforms is a complex process that can’t happen overnight. Amid this transformation, banks must ensure that security remains a top priority. Striking the right balance between modernisation and robust security is essential to building and maintaining consumer trust in the digital age.
Balancing agility with security
Multicloud is a key component of digital transformation strategies in the financial sector. Many banks are relying on hybrid multicloud to modernise and keep up with the evolving tech landscape. In the meantime, new digital banks are launching entirely on cloud-native platforms, which helps support agility and scalability from day one.
Cloud technologies offer many advantages, including improved performance, flexibility and faster innovation. However, despite these benefits, they do come with security challenges. Cloud infrastructure, often built and managed using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), can include some vulnerabilities and give an entry point into a bank’s system to malicious actors. As such, ensuring that IaC adheres to best practices is essential to avoid misconfigurations or exploitable vulnerabilities as early as possible.
The protection of consumer data must also be central to any digital transformation strategy. Security must be deeply embedded not only in backend infrastructure but also in the user-facing layers such as web portals and mobile applications. This is critical to maintain consumer trust and improve retention.
Why a unified security platform is essential
When undergoing digital transformation, financial institutions need a unified security solution to help streamline the security management process by having all the necessary tools in one place. In fact, a unified security solution is built on three interconnected pillars. First, security must be embedded directly into development pipelines. This integration helps identify and mitigate risks and misconfigurations early, before they can impact production. Second, through continuous monitoring and management of cloud assets, banks can gain more visibility and control over their security posture. Third, runtime protection safeguards cloud workloads, web applications and APIs through tools like cloud threat detection, host security, container security, serverless security, and web application & API protection. Together, these pillars help to establish a robust security framework. This way, digital banks can minimise risks, streamline operations and ensure compliance with regulatory demands.
The benefits of ‘zero trust’
Modern cloud-native banks rely on ‘zero trust’ security models more and more. ‘Zero trust’ refers to the principle according to which every request to access an organisation’s system should be carefully reviewed. This means that no user or system is trusted by default. They’re all subject to identification and authentication checks. This helps set clear boundaries between the applications the users are accessing and the resources available in the cloud. And even after access has been granted, all activity is monitored on an ongoing basis to identify potential malicious behaviour that could compromise digital banking systems. This continuous verification enhances visibility into potential threats and facilitates compliance with regulatory standards.
To further reinforce security, mutual transport layer security (TLS) can be implemented as a core design principle, enabling secure authentication with third-party entities over the internet. By adopting such measures, digital banks can build a resilient security foundation that safeguards against evolving threats whilst preserving customer trust and operational integrity.
The example of Salt Bank
Salt Bank is a next-generation digital bank launched in Romania. It serves as a good example of a financial institution that embedded security into its digital banking platform from the start. Salt Bank was built and launched in under 12 months, showcasing the power of an approach to innovation that heavily relies on security.
Salt Bank implemented a range of advanced security measures, including zero trust architecture, threat modelling, cloud security posture management, and automated security operations, guided by this security-by-design philosophy. These tools helped the bank implement a strong defence against cyber threats whilst still focusing on improving customer experience.
Central to Salt Bank’s strategy was Engine by Starling, a SaaS platform designed specifically for digital banking, paired with Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Cloud. Prisma Cloud played a key role in securing the bank’s cloud infrastructure, offering capabilities such as misconfiguration monitoring, risk detection, remediation and compliance management. Together, these technologies provide a unified and efficient approach to managing security in a complex cloud environment.
The future of modern banking is all about security
As digital transformation accelerates across the financial sector, companies must keep security at the top of their agenda. Whilst innovating is key to keeping up with evolving trends and changing customer expectations, it can’t be done without prioritising security. If security isn’t embedded in every layer of an organisation’s digital infrastructure, vulnerabilities may be introduced within the system and easily exploited by malicious actors. And once cyber attackers are in the system, everyone knows it can lead to chaos.
But security isn’t just for defensive purposes, it’s also a strategic advantage. In a climate of growing digital distrust, the most secure bank doesn’t just win compliance, it also wins customers. By choosing to turn advanced security into a visible product feature, not just an internal practice, banks can build marketable trust and differentiate from fintech challengers who may cut corners in pursuit of speed.

Beyond compliance: why the shift to ISO 20022 is more than a messaging upgrade

The Quiet Strength of Being Clear – Why Assertiveness Matters More Than Ever for Founders

Innovation in banking must go hand in hand with security, and here’s why

How 5G and AI are shaping the future of eHealth

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