The 2026 compliance agenda: 5 imperatives for AML leaders

As illicit actors weaponize artificial intelligence to scale their operations, a new sense of urgency is defining the global compliance landscape. The critical question is no longer if defenses need to evolve, but how quickly they can be deployed.

To explore this challenge, we gathered a select group of industry leaders at London’s iconic Gherkin for AML Unplugged, an exclusive fireside chat hosted by ComplyAdvantage. The event marked the official launch of our sixth annual State of Financial Crime 2026 report and provided a forum to debate its most critical findings in a candid, closed-door setting.

The discussion quickly moved from the stagnation in alert processing to the dual threat and opportunity posed by agentic AI. Here are my five key takeaways from that conversation for every leader shaping their compliance strategy for 2026.

1. Why is real-time monitoring a priority for compliance teams?

The explosion of 24/7 payment rails hasn’t just changed customer expectations; it has created a new, hyper-fast category of financial crime risk. Our 2026 report reveals the industry’s direct response to this threat: 61% of firms are now prioritizing real-time monitoring capabilities specifically to combat the risks of instantaneous transactions. This isn’t merely a technological upgrade; it’s a fundamental strategic shift, recognizing that a defense operating in hours is useless against an attack that takes seconds.

The discussion at our event highlighted three core drivers behind this urgency:

• Consumer expectations vs. boardroom reality: Instant payment schemes and authorized push payment (APP) fraud rules have forced a change in perspective. If a customer can send money in seconds, the compliance check cannot take hours.
• A survival trait: Real-time onboarding is no longer a luxury. In the FinTech ecosystem, the ability to verify a user instantly is a survival trait. Firms that cling to rigid, batch-processed know-your-customer (KYC) models risk losing their market share to more agile competitors.
• Signals over “box-ticking”: By moving from static checklists to rich transaction data and signal-based monitoring, firms can adopt a more creative, effective form of compliance; Monzo is a standout example.

2. Why is there a stagnation in alert processing?

One of the most sobering truths discussed was the paradox of alert processing. Despite massive investments in technology, 67% of teams still take approximately 15 minutes to clear a single alert.

Many firms are stuck in a false positive trap, with teams drowning in low-value noise, making it difficult to find the high-value investigations that actually stop crime.

The group identified three actionable ways to escape the trap:

• Set new success metrics: It should become a lower priority to use “average time to clear” as a success metric. Focus should shift to quality and outcomes. Teams need objectives that reward finding actual risk rather than just “clearing the queue”.
• Realign team objectives: The problem of low-value noise is also a human problem. The question should be: “How do we set objectives as a team?” If KPIs are built around clearing the queue rather than investigating quality, the stagnation in alert processing is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Invest in agentic: Utilize agentic AI as a strategic push to automate the preparatory work that often burdens human investigators.

3. How can agentic AI improve workflows?

It is becoming clearer that agentic AI should not be viewed as a faster human processor. Instead, it represents a different type of worker. Firms often experience a temporary drop in efficiency during the initial AI calibration phase, but leadership should not give up. The long-term gains in operational and workflow efficiency far outweigh the initial learning curve. A key benefit when applying agentic AI is its resequencing of human workflows. Rather than automating existing steps, AI can identify friction points and re-sequence workflows entirely.

Still, there can be an enforcement gap when implementing these changes in practice. To adequately overcome this, transparency and robust model governance are recommended best practices. 

It’s easy to think an AI agent is basically like a human processor, but they’re not. They’re different. They work differently, they think differently, and they are doing a different job.

Rebecca Robinson, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, Tenora

4. How can I empower my compliance teams?

The era of the compliance team as a self-contained unit is obsolete. As the fight against financial crime becomes a battleground of data and technology, a recurring theme at our AML Unplugged event was the need for a new leadership alliance. To address the primary concerns highlighted in the 2026 report, the AML Officer’s closest allies must now be the Chief Data Officer (CDO) and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

Working together and keeping clear lines of communication open between compliance and technology teams is fundamental to understanding not just how data is captured, but how it can be transformed into actionable intelligence that stops financial crime in its tracks.

One of the smartest things I’ve learned is the importance of getting close to your CTO and your CDO.

Iain Armstrong, Executive Director of FCC Strategy, ComplyAdvantage

5. What makes a great unified interface?

In a moment of total alignment, our State of Financial Crime report found 100% consensus: every respondent wants a single, unified interface for financial crime operations. The industry is growing exhausted by the cognitive drain of jumping between disparate systems to piece together a single story.

For a unified architecture to work, it needs “good blood” (high-quality, integrated data) running through it. If the data isn’t understood or correctly ingested, the system will fail. Without that internal alignment, organizations may be unifying a view of bad data.

Your 2026 compliance blueprint

Ultimately, the conversations at AML Unplugged all pointed toward a single conclusion: the future of compliance will not be defined by how well we react to individual threats, but by how intelligently we build our systems to anticipate them.

As leaders plan for 2026, the most critical challenge will be bridging the gap between data and decision-making. The goal is to create an environment where technology empowers human expertise, turning the noise of alerts into the clarity of actionable intelligence.