Lessons for Banks and RegTechs from ACAMS Las Vegas

The ACAMS Assembly in Las Vegas gave a clear view of where financial crime compliance is heading. Over two days of discussions with regulators, compliance leaders and technology specialists, the message was consistent: risk management needs to be more dynamic, transaction monitoring must become smarter, and suspicious activity reporting has to improve in quality.

For Fenergo, the Assembly was less about showcasing what we do today, and more about reflecting on where we can sharpen our solutions, deepen our partnerships, and rethink the way our Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) and Transaction Monitoring ecosystems respond to a fast-changing regulatory and technological environment. At what is arguably the premier second line-of-defence conference in the world, it was an important reminder that presence is not only about a booth or a logo, but about meaningful conversations that keep Fenergo’s finger on the pulse and strengthen our relationships with the industry’s most influential compliance leaders.

Making Risk Reviews Continuous

Regulators at the conference made it clear that static, once-a-year risk assessments no longer meet expectations. Client risk must be recalibrated whenever new information emerges, whether through beneficial ownership changes, adverse media, or unusual transactions.

For Fenergo, the lesson is that our risk modeling needs to become even more event-driven and continuous. We already support periodic reviews and automated refresh, but the direction of travel is toward real-time recalibration and even stronger integration between media feeds, monitoring alerts, and client profiles to ensure risk scores remain accurate throughout the lifecycle.

AI is Shaping the Future of Compliance

One of the strongest themes at the Assembly was the role of artificial intelligence. AI was described as both a challenge and as an opportunity: dangerous if applied without oversight, but hugely powerful if explainable, transparent, and regulator-ready.

In CLM, AI can speed up onboarding and ongoing due diligence by scanning huge datasets and highlighting only the most relevant risk signals. In monitoring, it promises to reduce false positives and focus analysts on genuinely unusual behavior. And in Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), natural language tools could help investigators produce more coherent narratives that connect risk factors, behavior, and suspicious activity.
 
For Fenergo, the message is clear: AI won’t replace compliance professionals, but it will reshape how they work. Our focus must continue to be on embedding AI responsibly, ensuring transparency, controls and governance, so our banking clients can meet regulator expectations with confidence.

Smarter Monitoring

Transaction monitoring was presented not simply as detection, but as prevention. Supervisors criticized the “noise” created by traditional rule-based engines, and urged firms to link alerts back to client profiles and risk rationale.
 
It’s clear that any transaction monitoring system worth its salt should emphasize contextual intelligence. A flagged transaction should update the client’s profile, adjust risk scores, and trigger next steps automatically. Achieving this may mean rethinking how workflows share data between CLM and transaction monitoring systems, and how investigators capture intelligence in a consistent way.

Improving Suspicious Activity Reports

Much discussion focused on the quality of SARs. Regulators want coherent reports that connect client risk, anomalies, and supporting context. Weak or delayed SARs remain a common cause of enforcement actions being issued to banks.
 
For Fenergo, this highlights the need to simplify the path from case to SAR. We already capture much of the relevant data at onboarding and monitoring, but we are continually working to make it easier for banks to generate strong narratives in their SARs. 

As AI develops in the future, natural language generation could pre-populate SARs with structured context, leaving investigators to refine rather than start from scratch. Stronger audit trails would also help banks evidence the timeliness of their reporting processes.

Client Due Diligence (CDD) as a Growth Enabler

While compliance costs continue to rise (AML/CFT operations cost financial institutions an average of $72.9m per year), many speakers emphasized that well-designed CLM frameworks can accelerate growth by reducing friction for low-risk clients and focusing resources where they matter most.
 
The challenge is for banks to find a partner that will work with them to improve not only their technology stack, but also partner with them on the regulatory side. This is critical for banks to prove they can sustainably operate and grow while demonstrating strict, future proofed regulatory compliance. 

ACAMS showed where compliance is going.

Fenergo is already on the way - reach out to us to find out how.