Reducing Sanctions Compliance Pressure with Smarter Tools - with Kandie Ibaka of Citi
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: Reducing Sanctions Compliance Pressure with Smarter Tools - with Kandie Ibaka of Citi
This 17-minute episode dives into the escalating complexity of sanctions compliance in 2025 and how financial institutions are leveraging advanced technology, particularly AI/ML, to transition from reactive monitoring to proactive risk guidance.
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is the evolution of sanctions compliance workflows within large financial institutions, specifically addressing the overwhelming volume of new regulations and the shifting expectations from regulators. Key themes include the application of automation and AI/ML to translate policy changes into real-time operational strategy, and the necessary evolution of compliance professional skill sets.
2. Key Technical Insights
- ML for “So What” Analysis: Machine learning is moving beyond simply flagging regulatory changes to helping compliance teams understand the implications (“the so what”)—connecting new guidance to existing controls, risk appetite, and specific business lines or transaction types in real-time.
- Automation for Ingestion and Mapping: Automation tools are actively used to ingest new regulatory guidance and immediately map its impact against the institution’s current control framework, ensuring immediate operational relevance.
- Data Quality as a Prerequisite: A major technical challenge remains ensuring the quality, consistency, and completeness of human-generated data across disparate regional systems, which directly impacts the reliability of AI/ML outputs.
3. Business/Investment Angle
- Shift in Regulatory Expectation: The relationship with regulators has fundamentally changed; institutions are now expected to provide real-time insight and demonstrate the rationale behind every decision (escalation or non-escalation), moving beyond simple post-facto documentation.
- Proactive Risk Guidance: Successful compliance is now defined by the ability to guide risk proactively, advising leadership on risk trade-offs and demonstrating that systems are designed to catch issues before they become problems.
- Vendor Trust and Transparency: Financial institutions require vendors utilizing AI to provide clear visibility into system logic and data provenance to maintain trust and meet governance demands, especially concerning potential hallucinations in generative AI applications.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Kandie Ibaka (Citi): Vice President and Sanctions Control Officer, providing expert insight into the operational realities, technological adoption, and regulatory pressures facing sanctions compliance leaders.
- Citi: The institutional context for the discussion, highlighting how a major bank is implementing these technological and procedural shifts.
- Mindbridge: Sponsor of the special series on AI and financial workflows.
5. Future Implications
The industry is moving toward a model where compliance professionals must be analytical storytellers who can translate complex, data-driven risk narratives into defensible arguments for regulators and leadership. The required skill set for compliance staff is shifting from pure execution to cross-functional fluency (connecting with tech, legal, and ops) and adaptability to continuously evolving tools.
6. Target Audience
This episode is highly valuable for Financial Services Compliance Professionals, Risk Managers, Financial Crime Technology Leaders, and Executives involved in AI adoption strategy within regulated industries. It is essential for those needing to understand the practical application of AI in high-stakes regulatory environments.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
đź’¬ Key Insights
"Finally, the skills required in compliance are evolving. Cross-functional fluency, confidence with technology, and the ability to tell a clear data-driven story are becoming just as critical as subject matter expertise."
"Candy highlighted how machine learning and automation are helping compliance teams shift from reactive monitoring to proactive oversight."
"It's going to be a lot more about storytelling than necessarily the evidence will be there, especially if you have really good robust systems, but how do you tell the stories is going to be where we're going to see a lot of skills being applied across the board."
"So I believe no longer are we just expecting to execute tests. It's about owning insight, which means that these skills are needing a shift."
"And also some analytical storytelling, not just presenting the data, but shaping it into some kind of defensible narrative that regulators and leadership can act on."
"I believe no longer are we just expecting to execute tests. It's about owning insight, which means that these skills are needing a shift."