Rethinking compliance at scale: What happens after the alert?
- Ani Petrova
- Oct 15
- 4 min read
Hosted by ComplyStream and Vouchsafe | October 2025
By the time an alert lands on a compliance analyst’s screen, the clock is already ticking. But what if the real problem in financial crime operations isn’t the alert itself, but everything that happens after?
That was the central theme of ComplyStream and Vouchsafe’s recent joint webinar, where founders Kartik Dabbiru (ComplyStream) and Chloe Coleman (Vouchsafe) joined moderator Lucy Heavens (RegTech and FinCrime marketing consultant and CMO) to unpack the operational bottlenecks strangling compliance efficiency across fintech and financial services.
The verdict: detection has improved. But post-alert processes remain stuck in the past.
The compliance problem no one talks about: Post-alert paralysis
Despite the surge in tools for screening and transaction monitoring, most compliance functions are still running alert resolution through email chains, Slack threads, and spreadsheet trackers. That operational sprawl was flagged as a key reason behind major regulatory fines, like the £21M penalty against Monzo and the £42M against Barclays.
What do these enforcement actions have in common? Weak onboarding, poor customer risk assessment, and fragmented case handling, not faulty detection.
“Everyone’s so focused on the analyst, but they’re not looking at the environment the analyst is operating in,” said Kartik.“Poor risk perception and fragmented tools are setting teams up to fail.”
From detection to decision: Why the real bottleneck is human workflow
Kartik, who spent years inside payments and crypto businesses, spoke from firsthand experience:
“We had a major client on the verge of exiting due to compliance delays. And the analyst? Buried in disconnected systems and lacking a single view of risk.”
Chloe, coming from a background in government and digital identity, described a similar dynamic: staff relying on judgment calls without adequate evidence or tooling.
“Good people making bad decisions - not because they’re bad at their job, but because the tools failed them.”
Where time gets lost: The analyst’s inbox
Both panellists agreed: the inbox is where compliance hours go to die.
Analysts waste time chasing customer documentation, clarifying open questions, and navigating back-and-forth email threads. Meanwhile, the pressure mounts, from sales teams, from customers, from regulators.
“Most alerts are false positives,” said Kartik.“But you can’t confidently discount them without the full picture. So you wait. And while you wait, more alerts pile up.”
More headcount ≠ more efficiency
Adding more analysts might seem like the obvious solution. But the panel pushed back on that idea hard.
“Why are you adding more lanes to the motorway,” asked Chloe, “when you should be redesigning the road?”
Instead, the answer lies in rethinking the design of manual processes. Tools are only as good as the workflows they support.
Low-budget, high-impact fixes
So what can compliance teams do now, without blowing the budget?
Both Chloe and Kartik shared the same starting point: document what your team is already doing, then design around that.
Start with a checklist. Even a shared spreadsheet, if well-structured, is better than letting tribal knowledge stay in people’s heads.
Capture internal questions. “What does your analyst ask themselves when making a decision?” Chloe urged. “Write that down.”
This “low-tech scaffolding” not only sets the stage for automation later but also improves consistency, speeds up onboarding, and reduces rework today.
The role of AI: Assist, don’t replace
While the session didn’t delve deeply into artificial intelligence, both speakers noted that AI should support (not override) analyst judgment.
The vision is a high-context, low-effort environment, where human decisions are accelerated by data-rich guidance and intelligently structured workflows.
“We’re not removing the analyst,” said Kartik.
“We’re helping them make better, faster decisions.”
Final word
Financial crime operations are still judged by alerts, but are won or lost in the resolution. As this conversation made clear, the real opportunity for transformation lies not in detection, but in orchestration.
As Chloe and Kartik emphasised, the biggest wins will come from:
Embedding intelligence upstream
Streamlining communication
Redesigning processes with humans in mind
Forget adding headcount. Focus on fixing the process.
Watch the complete event recording below.
FAQ: Post-alert compliance, explained
What does “post-alert compliance” mean?
It refers to all the investigative work and decision-making that happens after a financial crime alert is generated, often the most complex and time-consuming part of compliance.
Why is post-alert the bottleneck?
Because resolution processes are still heavily manual, fragmented across inboxes, spreadsheets, and internal tools, leading to inefficiencies, delays, and inconsistent decisions.
What kinds of alerts are we talking about?
Sanctions hits, transaction monitoring flags, KYC mismatches, fraud indicators: any event that requires further investigation before action can be taken.
How can compliance teams improve alert resolution today?
Start by mapping out internal workflows, using structured checklists, and documenting decision-making criteria. Then layer in automation where it creates leverage.
What is ComplyStream’s role in post-alert fincrime ops?
ComplyStream is an AI-native orchestration platform that unifies compliance data and streamlines post-alert workflows, helping analysts reduce time to accurate decisions.
About ComplyStream
ComplyStream is an AI-native RegTech startup transforming financial crime operations. Built for a post-alert world, our platform eliminates operational friction, automates investigations, and unifies fragmented systems, enabling compliance teams to scale smarter, faster, and with confidence.
About Vouchsafe
Vouchsafe delivers secure, scalable identity verification and risk screening solutions that help businesses onboard customers confidently and monitor them continuously. Its technology helps regulated firms meet KYC, AML, and sanctions compliance requirements with efficiency and accuracy.
