By PAUL O’DONOGHUE, Senior Correspondent
STRISE, a firm which builds anti-financial crime tech, has taken a novel approach to illustrating the strain faced by compliance teams – through a short film.
Yes, Chef! depicts a financial crime department as a busy professional kitchen. It shows how staff must manually map beneficial ownership structures, manage mounting workloads and face an unannounced inspection from the regulator.
“The film sets out Strise’s argument that AML teams in European financial institutions are consumed by manual routine at exactly the moment new EU regulation is about to demand more from them,” Strise said.
“The film is played entirely straight — there are no winks, no comedy beats. The recognition is the point.”
You can watch the short film [HERE].
Strise argues for compliance automation
Its release comes ahead of major changes to Europe’s AML framework. The EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) takes effect on 10 July 2027. It aims to standardise national AML rules across the bloc.
AMLA, the EU’s new AML Authority, will also begin directly supervising around 40 financial institutions from January 2028.
“Data from Strise’s Anti-Money Laundering Megaminds report — a sentiment analysis of 84 European AML experts drawn from interviews with financial crime leaders across the region — shows that 70% of the compliance professionals surveyed believe current AML processes are inefficient,” Strise said.
Marit Rødevand, CEO and co-founder of Strise, said there is a “structural mismatch” between the expertise of analysts bring and the work they must do. “AMLR increases the pressure on that operating model,” she said.
Strise said that the routine work inside compliance processes should run on automated systems. These include onboarding, ownership mapping, screening, monitoring, and case preparation. Doing this would free analysts to focus on “judgment-based investigations and decisions,” the firm said.
“The issue is no longer whether financial institutions are investing heavily in compliance,” says Ms Rødevand said. “The issue is whether the current operating model can scale under the expectations regulators are now introducing.”
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