How Pleo is rethinking compliance operations with spektr

The Challenge

Scaling a spend management platform across European markets means navigating a patchwork of regulatory requirements, each with its own documentation standards, due diligence thresholds, and ongoing monitoring obligations. For a company growing at Pleo's pace, this naturally creates pressure on compliance operations.

Onboarding and ongoing due diligence processes had accumulated complexity over time, with workflows distributed across internal systems that weren't always built to talk to each other. Getting a new client through the process meant coordinating across those systems, often with manual steps bridging the gaps. The friction this introduced was an internal efficiency issue and showed up in the customer experience, contributing to drop-off at exactly the moments that matter most.

So whilst Pleo's compliance infrastructure was holding up, it wasn’t enough for the pace the business was moving.

The Vision

Rather than bolting new tooling onto existing workflows, Pleo was looking for something more fundamental: the ability to surgically target the manual steps that were creating the most drag, and replace them with automated, auditable processes that fit cleanly into their existing architecture.

Modularity was a key requirement. Compliance operations at scale aren't monolithic, and a solution that forced a full rip-and-replace wasn't a viable path. Pleo needed a partner who could work within the grain of their systems, integrate directly with their internal infrastructure, and build automation around the specific tasks where it would have the most impact.

"We weren't looking for a platform that would force us to rebuild around it. We needed something that could plug into how we already operate and remove friction where it actually lives," says Roshni Bharadwaj, Group Product Manager at Pleo.

The Build

Together with spektr, Pleo is implementing a compliance setup built around monitoring and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), orchestrated through spektr's process engine and powered by spektr AI.

The integration layer is central to how this works. Rather than requiring data to be manually exported, reconciled, or re-entered, spektr connects directly into Pleo's internal systems, so compliance workflows operate on live, consistent data across their existing infrastructure. Manual handoffs between systems are removed by design, not patched over.

On top of that foundation, spektr's process engine handles the orchestration of individual compliance tasks, making it possible to automate specific, high-friction steps without overhauling the broader setup. The modularity of this approach means Pleo can address the exact pressure points in their onboarding and ongoing due diligence flows, rather than accepting a generalized solution that wasn't built around their reality.

spektr AI layers into this to support the more judgment-intensive parts of the process, helping analysts work through higher-complexity cases with better context and less manual assembly of information.

Erik Wagner, co-founder at spektr, reflects on what makes this collaboration distinctive:

"Pleo operates across a lot of markets simultaneously, which means their compliance setup has to be both precise and adaptable. The work we're doing together is about building that infrastructure in a way that gives their team leverage, not just coverage."

The Advantage

The architecture Pleo is building with spektr is designed with headroom. As volumes grow and regulatory requirements shift across European markets, the underlying setup can adapt without requiring structural rework.

Reducing manual touchpoints across onboarding and ongoing due diligence is expected to improve both the speed of the process and the experience of the clients moving through it, addressing drop-off at its root rather than at the surface. And because the automation is built around Pleo's own systems and logic, rather than imposed over them, the compliance team retains full control and visibility throughout.