FMO Taps Fenergo to Modernise KYC and Onboarding Across Emerging-Market Portfolios

Dutch development bank FMO has selected Fenergo to modernise its client onboarding and know-your-customer operations, as it looks to streamline compliance across a diverse portfolio of investments in emerging markets.

The bank is deploying Fenergo’s client lifecycle management (CLM) platform alongside its Document Agent capability, with the objective of accelerating onboarding timelines, improving transparency, and supporting consistent regulatory oversight across jurisdictions with varying data quality and regulatory maturity.

For development banks such as FMO, KYC is structurally more complex than in many commercial banking environments. Portfolios often span project finance, blended finance, equity investments and long-dated development initiatives, frequently involving counterparties in higher-risk or less digitised markets. That complexity places pressure on onboarding teams to balance robust due diligence with the need to maintain momentum in capital deployment.

Against that backdrop, FMO’s selection of Fenergo reflects a broader shift among regulated institutions towards more industrialised, workflow-driven KYC frameworks that reduce manual effort while preserving auditability. By standardising how documentation is collected, assessed and governed, the bank expects to reduce friction in onboarding while maintaining alignment with supervisory expectations.

According to Friso Schellekens, Director of KYC at FMO, the decision was driven by the need for a platform that could operate effectively across demanding regulatory environments. “Fenergo stood out for its proven ability to handle comprehensive customer due diligence in emerging markets, amid demanding regulatory requirements,” he said. Schellekens added that alignment with FMO’s governance framework was a critical factor, particularly as the bank continues to expand and diversify its portfolio.

From an operational perspective, the implementation is intended to shorten onboarding cycles and free compliance teams from repetitive, document-heavy tasks. Automating elements of document ingestion and lifecycle management allows KYC specialists to focus on higher-risk cases and judgement-based reviews, while generating more consistent data and reporting outputs for internal oversight.

The deployment also signals growing interest among development finance institutions in technology platforms traditionally associated with tier-one commercial banks. While CLM adoption has been well established in large financial institutions, its extension into development banking reflects increasing regulatory scrutiny and rising expectations around transparency, data lineage and audit readiness.

For Fenergo, the engagement marks its first development banking client, extending the platform’s footprint into a segment with distinct regulatory and operational characteristics. Ruth Ormsby, Managing Director for EMEA at Fenergo, described the partnership as aligned with the firm’s longer-term product direction, noting a focus on moving beyond static workflow tools towards more adaptive, intelligence-led compliance systems.

More broadly, the deal underscores a common theme emerging across KYC and client onboarding programmes: the transition from fragmented, manual processes towards end-to-end platforms that can scale across products, geographies and regulatory regimes. As development banks continue to play a central role in financing growth and sustainability initiatives in emerging markets, the ability to combine speed, transparency and regulatory control is becoming a strategic requirement rather than a back-office concern.

Encompass Establishes Executive Advisory Board to Support CDI and KYC Strategy

Encompass has formed an Executive Advisory Board (EAB) as it looks to strengthen the strategic direction of its Corporate Digital Identity (CDI) platform and its application across KYC and compliance workflows. The board is intended to provide senior-level insight as Encompass expands internationally and responds to growing regulatory, data, and technology pressures facing financial institutions.

Rather than a governance body in the formal sense, the EAB is positioned as a source of external challenge and expertise. Its remit spans innovation, customer-centric growth, governance and risk practices, and the practical use of AI in KYC operations, with CDI positioned as the underlying data layer supporting those objectives.

The board is chaired by Doris Honold, who has more than 25 years’ experience in senior leadership roles across global financial institutions, with a focus on transformation, governance, operational resilience, and organisational leadership. Honold has been part of Encompass’s Executive Board since 2021, giving continuity between advisory input and day-to-day strategy.

Alongside Honold, the EAB includes senior industry figures such as David Hudson and Colin Bell, both of whom have held leadership roles at institutions including JP Morgan, HSBC, and Standard Chartered Bank. Collectively, the group brings experience across governance, risk management, compliance, and digital transformation—areas where banks continue to face rising expectations from regulators and supervisors.

From Encompass’s perspective, the board is intended to help the firm anticipate how compliance models are evolving, particularly as institutions look to modernise KYC processes and introduce more automation and AI-driven decisioning. The emphasis is less on product promotion and more on aligning CDI capabilities with how banks actually implement change across operations, data, and control frameworks.

Commenting on the launch, Encompass CEO Wayne Johnson said:

“The launch of the EAB marks a pivotal moment for Encompass and the industry. As financial institutions face unprecedented regulatory and operational challenges, the EAB will ensure we remain at the forefront of innovation.

Leveraging the expertise of global leaders, we can accelerate the adoption of CDI as the essential data foundation for innovation, including AI. By, building trust, improving transparency, and enabling institutions to meet complex KYC requirements with confidence, CDI unlocks the full potential of emerging technologies. This initiative reinforces our mission to deliver transformative solutions that strengthen resilience across the financial ecosystem.”

In practical terms, the EAB will feed into Encompass’s strategic planning by providing market-level insight on where KYC and identity verification are heading, including how regulatory expectations around data quality, explainability, and resilience are likely to develop. This reflects a broader industry shift away from static compliance tooling toward data-driven foundations that can support multiple regulatory and operational use cases.

For Encompass, the creation of the EAB signals an effort to formalise that dialogue with senior practitioners and to ensure its CDI approach remains aligned with real-world implementation challenges faced by global financial institutions.

ID-Pal Acquires KYB Specialist NorthRow

Dublin based ID-Pal recently acquired Know Your Business (KYB) specialist NorthRow , extending its identity verification platform to cover both individual and corporate risk within a single compliance framework. The move brings native KYB checks into ID-Pal’s existing KYC and AML offering, responding to growing regulatory pressure for firms to maintain an ongoing view of customer and counterparty risk rather than relying on point-in-time checks.

Founded in 2016, ID-Pal has built its business around AI-enabled identity verification and screening across multiple jurisdictions. The addition of NorthRow’s business verification capabilities allows firms using the platform to verify companies, track changes in ownership or directorship, and monitor corporate status alongside individual identity checks. In practical terms, this creates a consolidated risk view across people and entities, addressing a long-standing gap between KYC and KYB processes.

The deal also reflects broader shifts in compliance operations. Regulatory regimes in the UK, EU and US are placing increasing emphasis on continuous monitoring, particularly in response to reforms such as the US Corporate Transparency Act and tighter UK requirements. At the same time, firms face rising exposure to sanctions risk and increasingly sophisticated forms of document fraud, making fragmented onboarding and monitoring models harder to sustain.

ID-Pal founder and CEO Colum Lyons framed the acquisition in that context, pointing to both regulatory change and evolving threat vectors.

“Alongside co-founders James O’Toole and Robert O’Farrell, ID-Pal was created to support businesses with accurate identity verification built on privacy preservation. As the financial services space becomes more regulated, and with AI-driven document fraud becoming the biggest threat our industry has faced, it is essential that businesses have a unified view of the risks ahead and how to manage them. Our acquisition of NorthRow allows ID-Pal to unify this process within one comprehensive platform that defends businesses against fraud at every entry point and avoids noncompliance fines.”

From a customer perspective, the transaction brings together complementary strengths already used in production environments. Payments provider Caxton, a long-standing NorthRow client, highlighted the operational value of tighter integration between individual and business checks.

“Using NorthRow’s technologies, Caxton has seen first-hand the value they bring to compliance processes. This acquisition is a great step forward by combining their expertise with ID-Pal’s award-winning technology to create a powerful platform for the future. We’re excited to start working with ID-Pal and to benefit from the innovation in KYC and KYB risk intelligence that this partnership will deliver.”

The combined client base spans financial services, government and enterprise organisations, and the acquisition expands ID-Pal’s reach across regulated sectors that increasingly require joined-up identity, business verification and AML controls. NorthRow’s services will continue to operate without interruption, with platform integration planned over time as part of a longer-term product roadmap aimed at improving consistency and user experience across compliance workflows.

Trillium Surveyor Extended for Prediction Markets

Trillium Surveyor has gone live with trade surveillance for prediction markets, positioning the firm’s controls toolkit for a segment that has moved quickly from niche curiosity to a retail-facing, high-velocity “event contract” market.

The backdrop is a fast-evolving regulatory perimeter. US event contracts that are listed as derivatives on registered venues sit within the CFTC’s DCM regime, but the expansion into sports-style contracts has sharpened the fault line with state gaming authorities. A series of state cease-and-desist actions against sports-style event contracts (including in Nevada and New Jersey) has triggered litigation over pre-emption and jurisdiction, with at least one recent federal ruling in Nevada siding with state gaming authorities rather than the platform’s federal-only argument.

At the federal level, the CFTC has signalled heightened scrutiny of “gaming” style contracts through proposed rulemaking updates to its event contracts rule (CFTC Rule 40.11), designed to clarify when an event contract involves enumerated activities and when it may be deemed contrary to the public interest. In parallel, the regulator has shown it can intervene tactically: Reuters reported that Robinhood rolled back Super Bowl-related event contracts following a CFTC request in February 2025.

Enforcement history has also shaped market structure. In January 2022, the CFTC ordered Blockratize, Inc. (doing business as Polymarket) to pay a $1.4 million penalty for offering off-exchange event-based binary options and failing to register appropriately, underscoring that “event contracts” are not a regulatory free pass. More recently, the CFTC issued an Amended Order of Designation for QCX LLC d/b/a Polymarket US (a designated contract market), supporting an intermediated, regulated market-access model.

It is into this environment that Trillium is extending Surveyor. The firm says prediction markets trade differently from traditional markets because outcomes are binary and event-anchored (sports, elections, economic releases), with trading intensity and risk concentrating as events near resolution. Trillium says Surveyor’s new coverage supports market abuse monitoring and market integrity and follows prior platform expansions into digital assets and extended trading hours.

Melissa Watras, Director of Product at Trillium Surveyor, said: “We invest ahead of market shifts so oversight is in place before new markets scale.”

Chartis Ranks Kyckr a Category Leader for 2025, Highlighting Strength in Corporate Structure and UBO Data

Kyckr has again been recognised by Chartis as one of the leading providers of Know Your Customer (KYC) data, reinforcing the company’s role in a market increasingly shaped by real-time, authoritative entity information. The latest Chartis RiskTech Quadrant for KYC Data and Solutions places Kyckr in the Category Leader tier for the second year running, reflecting growing industry demand for accurate company-registry intelligence as Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB) and anti-money laundering (AML) obligations expand.

Chartis’ analysis examines 12 providers that supply KYC data to financial services firms, with evaluation criteria centred on data coverage, structure and delivery. Kyckr received top scores for “corporate structure” and “entity relationships” – areas that highlight the strength of its core proposition: live registry data aggregated from more than 300 official sources worldwide. Access to verified corporate data at this level of depth and jurisdictional breadth increasingly underpins due-diligence workflows, where firms are seeking to reduce manual effort and improve confidence in Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) verification.

Providing additional context on the ranking, Phil Mackenzie, Senior Research Principal at Chartis, noted: “Kyckr continues to demonstrate strength in an increasingly data-driven compliance ecosystem. Strong domain expertise and integration capabilities, as well as a focus on delivering real-time entity data at scale, all contributed to its category leader placement in the KYC Data RiskTech Quadrant.”

The recognition follows a year of expansion for Kyckr, including the onboarding of 28 new obliged entities, enhancements to data sourcing across key regions, and deeper integrations with RegTech platforms including Strise and Spektr.

Reflecting on the challenges firms face, CEO Steve Lamb said: “Companies needing to carry out customer due diligence are faced with tightening regulations and a fast-shifting registry landscape. This presents significant challenges in accessing reliable, authoritative data. Being named a category leader by Chartis Research is significant validation of Kyckr’s solution and reflects our continued investment in data quality, jurisdiction expansion and advanced entity-resolution technologies to support clients’ rapidly evolving compliance needs.”

Behavox Secures ISO/IEC 42001 Certification as AI Governance Expectations Rise

Behavox has earned certification to ISO/IEC 42001:2023, the first international standard for Artificial Intelligence Management Systems (AIMS). The certification, independently validated by Prescient Security, reflects the company’s efforts to formalise responsible, transparent and risk-based AI practices across its product ecosystem.

The standard is designed to help organisations structure and oversee the entire AI lifecycle—from design and engineering through deployment, monitoring and assurance. For Behavox, this spans the work of its Data Science organisation, including AI Engineering, AI Research, Data QA, ML Operations and AI Compliance teams, and covers its role as an AI Provider, Producer and System Integrator.

Behavox positions the certification as part of its long-term approach to trustworthy AI rather than a standalone compliance milestone. “This certification validates our deep commitment to ethical AI, risk-based governance, and operational excellence,” said Tigran Petrosyan, Head of Security and AI Governance Lead at Behavox. “By aligning our AI practices with ISO/IEC 42001, we not only meet global standards but go beyond them to set the benchmark for responsible AI in compliance and risk management.”

The certified scope includes Behavox Quantum, its AI-powered communication supervision solution used by global financial institutions and regulated firms. The company’s AIMS incorporates structured risk assessments, accountability and human oversight, model fairness and bias testing, and alignment with international regimes such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, Colorado AI Act, EU Market Abuse Regulation, GDPR, CCPA, DORA, and supervisory expectations from ESMA, FINRA, NFA, MAS, JSDA and IIROC.

According to Behavox, the certification will also support customers’ own governance obligations by providing assurance that core AI technologies are developed and managed under a recognised global framework. “As regulators, customers, and society demand more accountability in AI, this certification shows we’re not just using AI – we’re governing it responsibly,” added Nabeel Ebrahim, Chief Revenue Officer at Behavox.

CDM Momentum Builds as TradeHeader Reaches 1,000 Course Milestone

TradeHeader’s introductory training on the Common Domain Model (CDM) has now passed 1,000 learners, reflecting the growing appetite across financial institutions for practical, accessible pathways into data standardisation. The course – developed by TradeHeader and delivered via the Linux Foundation’s training platform in collaboration with the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) – offers a concise grounding in how the CDM works and why it matters for reporting, interoperability and operational efficiency.

The milestone comes at a time when financial institutions are increasingly looking to embed open-source standards into day-to-day compliance workflows. With regulatory reporting regimes expanding and firms managing multiple templates, interpretations and local mappings, many teams are seeking a clearer, more consistent approach to expressing the logic behind their reporting data. The CDM’s promise of standardising lifecycle events and enabling machine-readable rules has therefore become more strategically relevant, particularly for institutions grappling with resource constraints – see FpML to DRR: TradeHeader’s Journey to the Heart of Regulatory Data Standards

TradeHeader’s long involvement in shaping industry standards – spanning FINOS CDM, ISDA’s Digital Regulatory Reporting (DRR), FpML and FIX – adds important context to this uptake. The firm participates in and chairs several working groups, and this proximity to the standard-setting process helps ensure the curriculum reflects both current practice and emerging regulatory expectations. The training aims to equip compliance officers, engineers and developers with enough foundational understanding to support CDM and DRR implementation internally or to manage vendor engagement more effectively.

Marc Gratacos, Founder and Managing Partner at TradeHeader, notes the shift in how institutions view regulatory change: “Regulatory compliance is no longer a one-off project that companies can complete and move on from – we at TradeHeader understand that it is an ongoing fact of life for organisations in the financial space. Many firms do not have the resources, time, or in-house expertise to implement the Common Domain Model and Digital Regulatory Reporting frameworks themselves. TradeHeader is committed to helping companies to meet these challenges using our proven blend of technology and industry expertise.”

This perspective aligns with broader industry dynamics. As firms adopt more digital regulatory frameworks, understanding how to codify rules as CDM functional expressions is becoming a baseline capability rather than a specialist task. The course addresses this directly, giving learners a structured introduction to the techniques used to translate regulatory text into shared, machine-executable logic.

The strong engagement also signals a rising expectation that market participants maintain fluency in data standards – not simply at the architect level, but across compliance, reporting and technology teams. Better familiarity with the CDM can reduce integration and interpretation risk and support more accurate, timely reporting across complex derivatives and securities workflows.

The training is openly accessible via the Linux Foundation:

Greenshoe Secures Funding to Advance AI-Native SEC Disclosure Capabilities

Chicago based RegTech company Greenshoe has raised $3 million in seed funding to scale its AI-driven platform for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosures—an area long burdened by fragmented workflows, manual drafting, and costly review cycles. The investment round, led by AIX Ventures with participation from Hearst Level Up Ventures, Blueprint FTC, Service Provider Capital and others, supports Greenshoe’s broader ambition to modernise how public companies prepare regulated filings.

Preparing core disclosures such as 10-Qs and 10-Ks remains one of the most labour-intensive processes in corporate finance. By some estimates it can take “about 180 hours just to prepare a 10-Q,” with overall costs ranging “from roughly $50,000 for smaller companies to well over $1 million for large-cap enterprises.” Greenshoe positions its platform as an AI-native alternative, drawing on regulatory precedent, market norms, and live company data to improve speed, accuracy, and consistency.

Payton McCoy, Greenshoe’s CEO and co-founder, highlights the inertia that continues to shape corporate reporting workflows. “SEC filings are the foundation of market transparency, but the workflows powering them are stuck in a pre-AI world,” he noted. His experience as a practising lawyer underscores the need for change. “As a lawyer, I spent hundreds of hours manually preparing SEC disclosures, including 10-Ks, 8-Ks, and IPO filings. That said, Greenshoe is about more than just saving time. It’s about improving disclosure quality and making this work easier to do. We’re laying the rails for a smarter, faster capital markets ecosystem.”

Rather than acting as a simple drafting assistant, the platform is designed to manage the specialised tasks that make SEC reporting so resource-intensive. These include:

• Real-time compliance checks and validations
• Draft generation informed by regulatory precedent and market comparables
• Analysis of SEC comment letters and support for response drafting
• Peer-based benchmarking and research

CTO and co-founder Dr. Yi Zhang described the system’s adaptive architecture: “We’re building the infrastructure layer for AI-native disclosure intelligence. Our deep-research agent fuses reasoning, evaluation, reflection, and human feedback into a continuous improvement loop. Every interaction sharpens the system, compounding domain expertise into an advantage that makes the platform more intelligent.”

This continuous-learning approach underpins Greenshoe’s focus on complex document processing. Its architecture combines agentic retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), structured reasoning around SEC requirements, and benchmarking against peer disclosures. The result is a system that not only drafts content but interprets disclosure trends, assesses context, and aligns filings with evolving regulatory expectations.

Investors say this blend of regulatory expertise and technical depth sets the company apart. As AIX Ventures partner Jason McBride put it: “SEC disclosures are among the most important and complex documents in corporate finance, and Greenshoe is the first team we’ve seen that truly understands both the regulatory nuance and the AI infrastructure required to modernize them. We invested because Greenshoe isn’t just building a tool. They’re defining an entirely new layer in the regulatory tech stack.”

Greenshoe is targeting the approximately 4,700 U.S. public companies that must repeatedly navigate SEC disclosure cycles, internal approvals, and market comparables. Early adopters include legal teams and capital markets practitioners, with reported time savings of up to 90% on some tasks.

CUBE Expands AI Capability with Acquisition of Kodex AI

Automated regulatory intelligence innovator CUBE has acquired Berlin-based Kodex AI, a technology start-up recognised for applying agentic AI to compliance and risk management in financial services. The move strengthens CUBE’s position in automated regulatory intelligence (ARI) and regulatory change management (RCM), while advancing its goal of building the “third pillar” of its AI platform.

Kodex AI’s agentic architecture introduces “co-worker” functionality, enabling AI to act as a digital colleague within compliance workflows. Its technology blends fine-tuned AI models with regulatory data and knowledge graphs, designed to enhance automation and accuracy in monitoring evolving rules. The integration will extend the capabilities of CUBE’s RegPlatform, providing customers with deeper, AI-driven insight and control over regulatory change.

The acquisition also brings new technical talent to CUBE, with Kodex AI’s Berlin-based team joining the business. Having developed a large-language model for financial document analysis through Deutsche Bank’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Programme, Kodex can demonstrate the precision and domain expertise behind its technology.

CUBE founder and CEO Ben Richmond said: “Thomas and Claus have built an exceptional and disruptive European technology business, pioneering the use of agentic AI through an agent-based architecture to solve regulatory complexities. Kodex AI is a natural next step in CUBE’s strategy, allowing us to instantly deliver enhanced, AI-based compliance and risk capabilities to our global customers.”

Kodex AI co-founder Thomas Kaiser described the integration as a rare opportunity to reshape the industry: “Combining Kodex AI’s technology leadership with CUBE’s market-leading regulatory and risk data is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redefine the compliance and risk space. This is the perfect use case for advanced AI, and together we’ll push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

CUBE serves around 1,000 customers globally and employs more than 800 people across 20 countries. Backed by private-equity firm Hg since March 2024, the company has pursued a strategy of expanding its unified RegPlatform™ through targeted acquisitions, including Thomson Reuters Global Regulatory Intelligence, Oden, Reg-Room and Acin.

Hg director Thomas Martin said: “This acquisition once again highlights CUBE’s ambition and drive to change the status quo for the RegTech industry. Since inception, Ben has been driving the business to embrace the latest technology and the addition of Kodex AI will significantly boost the team’s agentic AI capabilities.”

ISITC Europe and Genbounty Partner to Offer Independent Audits Aligned with EU AI Act

In a move to support regulated firms across Europe, ISITC Europe CIC has forged a partnership with AI compliance platform Genbounty to deliver third-party AI audits and accreditation. The objective: help organizations build credible AI governance programs and ensure alignment with evolving regulatory standards.

Tackling the AI Governance Gap

As AI deployments proliferate in financial services and capital markets, many firms struggle to translate high-level rules into operational controls. While the EU AI Act defines a compliance baseline, supervisory expectations vary across jurisdictions. In the UK, the FCA’s stated approach is technology agnostic and outcomes-focused, applying existing regulatory frameworks to firms’ use of AI rather than creating AI-specific rules. This stance is reflected across its AI Update, press material and speeches—and operationalised via initiatives like AI Live Testing.

Gary Wright, Director of Industry Affairs and one of ISITC Europe’s founders, underscores the challenge. He argues that firms need clarity on how their AI components affect risk, controls, and accountability. Under this partnership, “ISITC Europe as a not-for profit community interest company will act as an independent resource for members to help manage their AI components and ensure compliance.” The offering will include audits, access to verified AI testers, workshops, benchmark reports, and post-market monitoring.

From Genbounty’s side, co-founder Rob Morel positioned the platform’s role as providing ongoing regulatory insight. He explained that the system will keep users apprised of changes and help them understand “AI components utilised across enterprises.” Through the MOU, Genbounty’s tools and vetted testers will be made available to ISITC Europe’s membership.

What This Enables — and What Still Must Be Built

This collaboration is not simply a new service launch, but a signal of maturation in the AI compliance space. By offering independent assessments, it helps fill a gap between regulation and implementation, particularly for institutions lacking internal AI expertise.

Still, several challenges lie ahead:

• Operationalizing audits. Translating compliance results into practical remediation plans will require domain experience in AI, model risk management, and financial workflows.
• Maintaining independence. As audits are performed by a provider with commercial ties, perceptions of impartiality must be managed.
• Evolving rules. The EU AI Act itself is dynamic; firms will need to continually adapt their controls as standards are refined.

Nonetheless, for firms seeking credible third-party validation of AI governance, this new path offers a clearer route than doing so in isolation.