How kompasbank is building a scalable compliance foundation with spektr

The Challenge: scaling the complex

Serving SMEs effectively is a compliance challenge as much as it is a product one. The segment demands high speed, fast decisioning, and ongoing oversight - all while meeting the KYB and AML requirements that come with operating as a regulated bank.

Processes that relied heavily on analyst intervention couldn't scale efficiently alongside customer growth, and the absence of a unified compliance platform meant that onboarding, monitoring, and screening each carried their own operational overhead. And for a bank with ambitions to transform the market for Transaction Banking (TxB), the manual model was not an option.

"For us, it’s about building a scalable machine. With this new flow, we are ensuring a 100% digital onboarding experience built for the demands of tomorrow’s TxB customers. It’s about removing friction at every stage," says Thomas Ulrich, CTO at kompasbank.

The challenge was the cumulative drag of running three interconnected compliance functions without the infrastructure to tie them together.

The Vision: one unified solution

kompasbank's starting point was clear: they needed a single compliance platform capable of bringing onboarding, monitoring, and screening together, with KYB and AML data flowing through each layer rather than being managed separately across them.

The goal was to rearchitect how those functions operated as a whole, reducing the volume of work landing on analysts and freeing the team to focus on the cases that genuinely require human judgment.

"We didn’t just want to patch existing processes. We wanted a solution that could deliver everything in one place, from automated onboarding to sophisticated risk logic and ongoing monitoring. And where KYB and AML data doesn't live in silos but functions as a cohesive engine driving both security and customer experience. Furthermore it had to be flexible enough to handle future regulatory changes, too," says Thomas Ulrich.

Underpinning all of this was a longer-term ambition: building the compliance infrastructure that would allow kompasbank to grow its SME offering without compliance operations becoming the bottleneck.

The Build: automation for heavy lifting

Working with spektr, kompasbank has been building out an automated compliance setup that spans onboarding, monitoring, and screening - with KYB and AML data integrated across each stage rather than siloed within it.

The setup is designed to do the analytical heavy lifting that would otherwise fall to the compliance team. Onboarding flows run through structured, automated checks; monitoring operates continuously in the background; and screening is embedded into the process rather than bolted on as a separate step. Together, they form a joined-up system where data moves through each layer without requiring manual coordination between them.

Erik Wagner, co-founder at spektr, on what this kind of build requires:

"For a bank focused on SMEs, the volume and variety of cases is significant. The work with kompasbank has been about building a setup that handles that complexity systematically, so their analysts are spending time on risk, not administration."

The result is a compliance function that runs with considerably less manual input, with analysts stepping in where their expertise genuinely adds value rather than at every stage of the process.

The Advantage: speed and compliance are not opposites

The solution kompasbank is building with spektr is positioned to scale alongside the business. As the SME customer base grows, the compliance setup grows with it - without a proportional increase in manual effort or analyst overhead.

Having onboarding, monitoring, and screening operating as a connected whole, underpinned by KYB and AML data, means kompasbank can maintain strong compliance standards while moving at high speed for customers.

For SME customers, it means one thing: they get a bank that moves as fast as they do.