Smarsh Expands Solutions for AI, Cyber, and Third-Party Risk

Smarsh has announced expanded communications supervision, web archiving, cyber compliance and vendor risk management capabilities for small and mid-sized financial services firms. The changes include planned capture of Claude Cowork interactions within Professional Archive, alongside tools for reviewing communications, monitoring device security and documenting third-party oversight.

Smarsh already captures Claude Enterprise communications through the Claude Compliance API. Planned Cowork support will extend coverage to additional Claude-enabled workflows, bringing those interactions into Professional Archive alongside other regulated communications. Firms will be able to apply retention, supervision, investigation and legal-hold processes to the captured records. The announcement does not specify a release date for Cowork support.

Within Professional Archive, Smarsh Intelligent Supervision combines three artificial intelligence tools. Noise Reduction Agent reduces predictable, low-value alerts; Misconduct Detection Agent identifies behavioural and contextual risk signals beyond keywords and lexicons, including across multilingual communications; and AI Assistant helps reviewers summarise, translate and investigate messages. Smarsh says human reviewers retain responsibility for final supervision decisions.

Further planned enhancements include natural-language search, expanded AI policy coverage and additional queue and search controls. The search capability will translate users’ requests into search criteria they can review and confirm. Smarsh describes these changes as intended to make supervision and investigations more targeted.

Web Archive is expanding support for dynamic and browser-generated content, with a new user interface. The changes aim to help firms preserve searchable records of changing web content. Cyber Compliance assesses high-level security attributes of personal and other unmanaged devices that access sensitive business applications. Smarsh says it evaluates those attributes rather than private content, limiting collection of personal information.

Vendor Risk Management centralises vendor inventories, assessments, risk scores, remediation and reassessment histories. Its Vendor Breach Monitoring capability helps firms identify relevant breaches between scheduled reviews and begin a documented response, supplementing periodic due diligence.

“Small and mid-sized financial services firms need a practical way to understand what is changing across their communications, devices, and third parties without adding unnecessary complexity,” said Kamesh Tumsi, Chief Product Officer at Smarsh.

The announcement combines existing functionality, expanding coverage and planned enhancements. Alongside Cowork capture, natural-language search, expanded AI policy coverage and enhanced queue and search controls remain described as planned capabilities.

Plenitude Joins Skills Compact to Address AI Oversight in Economic Crime

Plenitude has joined the Financial Services Skills Compact as a Supporter, linking workforce development to the skills needed to oversee artificial intelligence (AI) in economic crime controls. The specialist economic crime firm argues that staff must retain the judgement to challenge automated decisions and remain accountable for control effectiveness as technology takes on more work.

The Compact, led by the Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC), brings government and industry together to address skills gaps across financial services. Supported by HM Treasury, Skills England, TheCityUK and the City of London Corporation, the initiative launched in July 2026. It asks regulated signatories to appoint a senior executive accountable for closing skills gaps and publish progress annually.

For economic crime teams, Plenitude identifies a need to interpret and challenge outputs from AI, machine learning, graph analytics, behavioural analytics and automation. As these technologies take on more detection, triage and analysis, staff must recognise when systems are not working as intended. The firm views skills development and AI adoption as a control issue as well as a workforce issue.

Alan Paterson, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Plenitude, questioned whether access to AI provides a useful measure of workforce capability: “Most firms can tell you how many of their people have access to AI. Very few can tell you whether those people are getting better at the work they remain accountable for.”

Paterson also raised the challenge of developing expertise when AI performs work through which staff have traditionally learnt. He identified critical thinking, judgement, problem solving and creativity as skills built through practice, and said Plenitude was examining how to develop its next generation of talent as that work changes.

Louise Brett, Plenitude’s CEO, connected skills development to accountability for technology: “Technology will only be as effective as the people who deploy it, challenge it and remain accountable for it.”

The FSSC’s first phase of research for HM Treasury, A Workforce Transformed, examined potential task automation across financial services and pressure on the future supply of highly skilled workers. A second phase considers how the sector should respond, with recommendations due in early 2027.

Kyckr Appoints Jack Rawden to Lead Expansion in Risk Intelligence and Perpetual KYB

Kyckr has appointed Jack Rawden as Head of Product to lead expansion across risk signals, registry intelligence and perpetual know your business (KYB). His remit includes developing products to address data quality, verification friction and fragmented access to company registers, which the provider identifies as challenges for regulated firms onboarding business customers.

Rawden brings more than 15 years’ experience building product teams in regulated environments. He was previously Chief Product Officer at Detected, where he led development of its KYB platform, and Head of Product at Fraudfinder. At Kyckr, he will oversee a programme intended to expand the company’s product offering across the three areas.

The appointment follows Kyckr’s State of Onboarding 2026 research, which the company says identified data quality, verification friction and fragmented registry access as regulated firms’ biggest onboarding challenges. Kyckr links its expansion plans to demand for live, verified sources of business information and pressure on firms to move beyond static, third-party data.

Kyckr connects regulated firms to live company and beneficial ownership data from more than 300 official company and beneficial ownership registers worldwide. The planned product expansion builds on that registry coverage. The announcement identifies risk signals, registry intelligence and perpetual KYB as priorities but does not provide individual product specifications or a release timetable.

Steve Lamb, CEO of Kyckr, said: “For our customers, this means greater expertise and experience being brought to our product development, and an expansion of the risk intelligence and KYB solutions that directly address the pain points of friction and fragmented data access.”

Rawden’s appointment continues changes to Kyckr’s senior team following Lamb’s appointment as CEO in August 2025 and Ian Jones’s appointment as Chief Technology Officer in early 2026. The company says it has significantly increased investment in Product and Engineering over the past twelve months, with further hires planned.

Rawden said: “With the mounting pressure on businesses to overhaul onboarding processes, there’s real scope to add value and simplicity for our customers, and I can’t wait to get started.”

FIX Trading Community Publishes Standardised Margin Reporting Framework

The FIX Trading Community has published new guidance establishing a standardised messaging framework for margin requirement reporting between asset managers and clearing brokers or swap providers.

Developed by FIX’s Post-Trade Committee, the specification aims to simplify how buy-side firms request and receive margin information from counterparties, reducing reliance on manual processes and bespoke reporting arrangements.

The framework supports machine-readable margin reports covering individual accounts, portfolios, instruments and overall margin excesses or deficits. It accommodates both one-off requests and ongoing reporting, enabling firms to exchange margin information through a consistent format.

The guidance is intended to improve collateral management, exposure monitoring, reconciliation and funding decisions, while reducing operational complexity and the potential for disputes.

By extending standardised FIX messaging into margin reporting, the initiative provides a foundation for greater automation of post-trade collateral and funding workflows across buy-side and sell-side institutions.

Bank of England Expects Firm Action After Sector-Wide Cloud Outage Exercise

The Bank of England expects firms to strengthen their resilience and crisis response following a sector-wide simulation of a global cloud services disruption. The exercise involved 38 of the largest and most systemically important banks and market infrastructure operators, working alongside financial authorities.

The Cross-Market Operational Resilience Group (CMORG) completed the exercise, SIMEX26, on 8 October. The group runs the simulation every two years and is chaired by the Bank and UK Finance, with participation from HM Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the wider financial sector.

Hosted by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and opened by Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby, the exercise focused on how firms and authorities would respond to global disruption affecting cloud-based services. The scenario was developed with industry experts and did not reflect any specific threat information.

SIMEX26 included a live meeting of the Bank-chaired Cross Market Business Continuity Group, which provides strategic direction for the sector’s collective response to systemic incidents. The Bank said it now expects firms to act on the exercise to strengthen their ability to respond to severe operational and cyber scenarios.

The simulation exercised the Sector Response Framework, through which CMORG oversees the sector-wide response to systemic incidents. The framework supports a coordinated response to severe disruption across UK financial services.

Katharine Braddick, Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation at the Bank and chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority, said: “The level of collaboration reflects the priority firms place on maintaining critical services in the face of disruption. That preparedness is essential to safeguarding financial stability.”

The SIMEX programme rehearses responses to challenging disruption scenarios. Previous exercises in 2022 and 2024 considered cyber-attacks against a major bank and disruption to critical infrastructure outside the financial sector.

CMORG’s wider programme identifies systemic risks, develops sector-wide mitigation strategies and shares capabilities and knowledge across financial services, supported by specialist industry groups.

Recent work by the Bank, financial authorities and industry through CMORG has included strengthening third-party engagement and resilience, enabling secure innovation in response to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, and enhancing cyber preparedness, response and recovery for the most severe disruption scenarios.

Behavox Acquires Apiax to Add Cross-Border and Content Compliance

Behavox has acquired Zurich-based Apiax, adding software that converts financial regulation into machine-readable rules for use within firms’ own systems. The deal extends Behavox’s controls platform into cross-border and content compliance, connecting regulatory interpretation with its regulatory change management, surveillance and archiving products.

Apiax’s embedded compliance software applies regulatory rules at the point of business. Its capabilities complement Pathfinder, Behavox’s regulatory change management product, which identifies changes in regulation. Behavox serves banks, asset managers, hedge funds and commodity firms.

According to Behavox, the combined platform links the identification of regulatory changes, their conversion into operational rules, and the monitoring and recording of resulting decisions. The company says this provides a shared evidence trail across processes that firms have typically managed through separate regulatory intelligence, interpretation and surveillance providers.

“This acquisition extends our platform from regulatory intelligence through to monitoring and evidence. Apiax adds the interpretation layer that turns regulation into action at the point of business,” said Kiryl Trembovolski, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Behavox.

Behavox says the combination reduces manual effort and the cost of maintaining multiple compliance systems.

“Apiax was built to embed compliance where the work happens. Joining Behavox gives our technology the platform, engineering resources, and distribution to reach far more institutions,” said Philip Schoch, Co-Founder and CEO of Apiax.

The acquisition adds engineering and regulatory expertise in Switzerland, Germany, Portugal and the UK. It follows Behavox’s opening of a Milan office in August 2026. The company reported 213% growth in European annual recurring revenue over the preceding two years and received a $175 million preferred equity investment in June 2026 from HPS Investment Partners, part of BlackRock.

Behavox said Apiax customers will continue to receive their existing product and support, backed by its research and development investment and global customer success organisation. The transaction has closed; financial terms were not disclosed.

Feedzai Adds Farol Agent for Fraud Rules, Investigations and SAR Drafting

Feedzai has launched Farol, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent embedded in its RiskOps Studio to analyse fraud-detection rules, retrieve case data, summarise alerts and draft suspicious activity reports (SARs).

Embedding the agent within the risk platform gives it access to transaction data and existing investigation workflows. Feedzai positions this approach as an alternative to connecting a separate AI model that lacks the institution’s operational context. Farol runs within each financial institution’s environment, with its data and outputs remaining inside the customer’s technology estate.

Farol launches with four sets of functions:

• Risk Strategy – Interrogates and analyses rule sets to surface actionable insights, including identifying rules that are generating noise without catching fraud, and recommending sharper thresholds to enhance performance. Management of rule hygiene becomes a task that takes minutes and not days.
• Investigations – Retrieves and summarizes alert data in moments, giving analysts the context they need to work cases faster and with greater conviction, proven to reduce alert handling times by 20%.
• Knowledge – An always-on product expert built into the workflow. Users can ask Farol how to do anything on the platform and get the answer instantly, without ever leaving the user interface to find it.
• SAR Drafting – Drafts Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) up to 12x faster by cutting the manual effort of compiling and summarizing information.

Feedzai claims that Farol has reduced alert-handling times by 20% and can produce draft SARs up to 12 times faster than a manual process.

Justinas Rekus, fraud prevention business owner at SEB, said: “Having a single, intelligent interface to handle data retrieval, insight generation, and production-ready rule suggestions fundamentally transforms how we refine our fraud strategies.”

The product also provides audit trails and what Feedzai describes as autonomous execution capabilities. Feedzai said its research found that 68% of financial institutions were testing agentic AI. It argues that many projects have yet to generate operational efficiencies because third-party models remain separated from real-time transaction data.

Just 4.7% of Financial Institutions Continuously Update Their Compliance Monitoring and Controls – SymphonyAI Research

Only 4.7% of financial institutions update compliance monitoring and controls continuously as risk changes, according to research from SymphonyAI and AML Intelligence. A further 56.8% have yet to adopt continuous monitoring, are exploring it or remain at the pilot stage.

The FinCrime Frontier 2026–27 Report draws on responses from more than 200 financial crime and compliance leaders. It examines how institutions are responding to changes in criminal methods, regulation and transaction volumes.

The findings indicate that periodic review cycles remain common despite the speed at which financial crime risks can change. Seven in ten respondents, or 70.8%, said no more than 5% of the alerts they investigate result in an escalation or a suspicious activity report or suspicious transaction report.

That figure points to the investigative workload created by low-conversion alert volumes, although it does not show whether the remaining alerts were unnecessary or correctly resolved. Firms may need to examine how alert quality, investigative capacity and risk coverage interact rather than treating filing rates as a standalone measure of effectiveness.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and model governance, alongside the adequacy of technology and systems, ranked as the leading regulatory concerns. Each was selected by 40.8% of respondents. Cross-border regulatory complexity had topped the previous year’s survey.

Investment has yet to produce the same degree of operational change. AI and automation ranked as the leading compliance investment priority, cited by 61.9% of respondents. However, 76.3% said their institutions still review alerts manually or with partial automation. The share relying on fully manual review fell from 21.3% to 16.5% year on year.

John Edison, president of Financial Services at SymphonyAI, said: “The next phase will be defined by how effectively institutions use AI to connect risk intelligence with institutional judgment, transforming detection, investigation and governance so that controls respond dynamically as risk changes, while maintaining appropriate human oversight and accountability.”

The report covers regulatory change, compliance economics, operational performance, AI maturity, data readiness and governance. More than half of respondents described some form of forward-looking response to regulatory change, including modernisation or operating-model reform. Reactive workload, however, remained the most common response.

MCO Secures More Than $100 Million to Expand Compliance Platform and AI

MCO, the provider of MyComplianceOffice, has secured more than $100 million in growth financing from Accel-KKR Credit Partners to fund product development, artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and market expansion.

The company plans to expand its technology team and invest further in its integrated compliance platform. MyComplianceOffice brings together controls for employee activity, communications, financial transactions and third-party relationships, allowing compliance teams to manage related data and evidence within one system.

MCO has expanded the platform over the past year to address digital assets and prediction-market personal trading. It has also added AI-supported trade-alert summaries, intent-based communications monitoring and policy assistance. These capabilities cover parts of the workflow where firms must connect employee conduct, trading activity and communications evidence.

Brian Fahey, founder and chief executive officer of MCO, said: “We are expanding our technology team, investing even more deeply in product development and AI-powered solutions, innovating faster, and continuing to deliver the integrated compliance platform that financial services needs.”

The financing extends a relationship between MCO and Accel-KKR that began in 2020. Accel-KKR Credit Partners provides financing to software companies, including non-dilutive investments for founder-owned businesses and flexible credit products for institutionally owned firms. It has completed more than 100 investments and deployed $1.7 billion, according to the announcement. MCO says more than 1,500 companies across over 125 countries use its software.

ProCredit Selects Teciem’s Kondor Up for Group-Wide Treasury Operations

ProCredit group has selected Teciem’s Kondor Up treasury platform to support funding, liquidity management, trading and risk processes across its international banking network.

The group operates ten development-focused commercial banks in South Eastern and Eastern Europe. ProCredit Holding also oversees capital adequacy, regulatory reporting and risk management across the network.

Kondor Up will provide front-to-back treasury capabilities through a cloud-native operating model. ProCredit plans to deploy the platform across the group while adapting it to country-specific operating and regulatory requirements.

The implementation is intended to increase automation and give ProCredit the flexibility to introduce products across its banking operations. The release does not specify which treasury processes the group will automate first.

“The platform’s front-to-back treasury capabilities will help us drive greater automation across our operations while providing flexibility to support new products, broaden our offering and underpin our future growth ambitions,” said Christian Dagrosa, management board member and chief financial officer at ProCredit Holding.

Kondor Up builds on the existing Kondor treasury and risk management system. Teciem said the new version combines that functionality with a cloud architecture designed to support faster implementation, scalability and continuing software updates.

The platform will operate in a single-tenant environment and use Kubernetes-based infrastructure. Teciem said this approach supports data segregation, resilience and scalability.