From catching up to keeping up: the shift towards real-time compliance

A payment leaves an account in Helsinki. Three seconds later, it’s in Madrid. Within that same blink of time, a compliance system must decide whether the transaction is legitimate or part of a fraud network. There’s no buffer, no batch, no end-of-day review; only now.

This is the new reality of financial crime prevention. The moment money moves, so does risk. 

Compliance teams need precision at speed. Decisions that once took hours now happen in milliseconds. 

The shift towards real-time compliance is a reality where compliance becomes an active part of the business engine, embedded into every transaction and customer interaction. 

For compliance professionals, it means moving from catching up after the fact to keeping up as events unfold. 

In this article, we’ll discuss how compliance is moving from periodic to continuous and what this shift means for financial institutions. 

The path to real-time compliance 

To understand why compliance must evolve, let’s look at how payments and transactions have changed. Generally, transactions were processed in batches, moving slowly between institutions. That pace gave compliance teams time to review, analyse, and report.  

Then came faster clearing, meaning that money could move between accounts much quickly than in the earlier batch-based systems.  

Over time, this evolved into instant payments, supported by the rise of mobile wallets, cross-border account-to-account transfers, making money movement both simpler and faster. 

Even regulations began defining how fast a transfer should be processed. For example, the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation now mandates euro transfers within ten seconds.  

This acceleration reflects broader technological progress, social development, and society’s growing expectation for immediacy and innovation in financial services. 

However, while each innovation improves customer experience, it tightens the window for compliance teams to react. When money moves in seconds, control can’t come later. 

From static know-your-customer to perpetual customer due diligence 

The same transformation is visible in customer due diligence. As Linda Cederbom, Solution Manager at Trapets, recalled in a previous webinar, earlier KYC processes were static: “a set of questions and manual reviews.” 

Teams gathered information periodically and often relied on outdated data. 

Today, that approach no longer works. The shift is towards perpetual KYC, a real-time process that continuously updates as customer behaviour or ownership changes. 

“You need to know who you’re dealing with,” Linda emphasised, “and you need to do it in real time.” 

Perpetual due diligence means using event-driven triggers, such as transactions, new products, and adverse media, to refresh information dynamically. It also demands smarter data validation: knowing when something changes and verifying that change instantly. 

This evolution marks the end of static compliance. In its place stands an adaptive model, where insight never sleeps. 

The real-time paradox: speed versus certainty 

Real-time compliance brings its own paradox: the faster we move, the less time we have to trust the data we rely on. 

Liza Ivinskaia, Product Owner at Trapets, noted: 

“Institutions are required to make instant decisions using information that was never designed for real-time use.” 

Counterparty names, for example, are often the only available field in a transaction, and that data may be incomplete or inaccurate. 

This tension between the need for speed and the need for accuracy defines the challenge of modern compliance. 

The good news is that regulatory changes and better data-sharing standards are gradually improving the quality of the information compliance relies on. But the friction remains: how do you make instant decisions with imperfect data? 

Balancing control and customer experience 

Every second counts: not just for payments, but also for customers. The faster a process feels, the more frictionless the experience becomes. But each compliance control adds time, and each delay risks losing a customer. 

Liza shared a story that many in compliance will recognise. A relative of hers fell victim to a credit fraud after approving a loan via e-identification BankID. When she called the bank, their response was blunt: 

“It goes so fast that you don’t have time for control.” 

This illustrates the trade-off every institution faces. If controls are too strict, conversion drops. If they’re too light, fraud and money laundering risks will grow.  

Compliance joins the revenue engine 

For decades, compliance was seen as a function that monitored and reported after the fact, but this framework won't work anymore. 

As Liza explained: 

“Every sanction check and risk decision now sits inside the customer journey.”

If those checks fail, payments stop, onboarding stalls, and revenue halts. “Compliance downtime is now business downtime.” 

Compliance has become a live part of the business engine, operating alongside sales and technology. It requires the same investment in infrastructure, automation, and resilience. As Linda described it: 

“You need balance between all three wheels: technology, sales, and compliance working together.” 

People, technology, and the path forward 

As perpetual KYC and continuous monitoring become the standard, manual work alone can’t keep up. Artificial intelligence and automation are key to handling the growing volume and velocity of information. 

Linda added that unifying compliance tools on one platform makes daily work far smoother: 

“It makes your daily life easier. You don’t need to switch between systems.” 

Still, artificial intelligence doesn’t replace human expertise; it rather it amplifies it. The most effective compliance teams will be those that combine data-driven automation with human judgment, guided by reliable information and clear governance. 

The future is continuous 

The transformation towards real-time compliance is well underway, and it’s not slowing down. Payments will get faster, regulations will tighten, and expectations for instant decision-making will grow. 

But as Linda and Liza reminded us, this evolution is about making sure that as money moves faster, compliance moves with it: intelligently, transparently, and confidently. 

Because in a world where money moves in seconds, compliance can’t afford to sleep.