FinCrime Job Focus: Jane Jee, chief executive, Kompli-Global

What is your full job title?

Jane Jee, CEO at Kompli-Global Limited

How long have you worked in the industry?

Overall, I have worked in the payments industry for over 30 years, with seven years specifically in compliance.

How long have you worked in your current role?

I’ve been in this current role for over 4 years since the company was founded in July 2016. At Kompli-Global, we are focused on enabling companies to safely on board and monitor their customers or suppliers to prevent financial crime, including both fraud and money laundering.

How did you get into your current role?

Before embarking on my current CEO role, I was working in a law firm in London. From this point myco-founder John Davies invited me to head up the business. John is CEO at Just Loans group, our sister company, and was well aware of the challenges of due diligence and the necessity to avoid taking on bad actors as customers and avoiding overall fraud risks. Since we launched in 2016, we are focused on providing a combination of software and human expertise to identify and exclude these bad actors.

What does a typical day look like?

My typical day as CEO at Kompli-Global involves daily discussions with other company executives and a weekly team meeting to make sure I have good contact and know what tasks we must tackle and agree priorities.

Staff morale and well-being are important when we are all working remotely so I regularly ‘meet’with my staff to ensure we are providing the best possible platform with which to thrive.

Additionally, given the nature of our business, I have to read a great deal and keep up to date on legal, regulatory, and compliance issues relevant to our business. This field – tackling financial crime and the available technology is evolving continually; criminals and fraudsters will find new ways to use and abuse technology, so we must stay one step ahead and strive to ensure excellence in our offering.

What is your greatest achievement so far?

I think demonstrating adaptability is probably my biggest achievement. Like most people my career has been one of lifelong learning and reinvention. I liked the discipline of being a lawyer but by moving jobs I learnt some skills in marketing and PR and while I was at Access and I doubled the brand awareness by bringing back a campaign using the iconic “Flexible Friend” characters and strapline.

I have learnt a lot about brand protection – when I began working at Worldpay in 1999 I helped secure investment from NatWest bank and trade marked “Worldpay” even though that word had been registered as a trade mark by a bank.

I have brought all these skills to bear in the launch of Kompli-Global over the last four years. To be successful one must constantly be ready to learn new skills and adapt to changing circumstances. I would never have imagined years ago that I would be talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies which I have had to learn about in my current role. Technologies that can serve inthe fight against financial crime.

What is the most challenging thing about your role?

I think one of the biggest challenges I have experienced is overcoming the concerns about using technology. Many businesses are concerned that the regulator may not like something so new and often they need assurance that the technology is acceptable to regulators and can be trusted. It is important that businesses find the right solution for them. They should look across the market at what technology is available to prevent fraud and money laundering and ask questions of suppliers and the regulators to get the best-in-class solutions.

What part of your role do you enjoy the most?

One of the many activities I find most enjoyable is speaking at speaking at conferences and webinars. This is because I find it very satisfying to inspire people in the field of compliance to think about how they can acquire new, relevant skills while also encouraging them to find ways to improve what they do.

I have become an evangelist for RegTech as I believe that technology can significantly reduce financial crime with all the underlying evils that so affect our society. Many forget that financial crime covers some of the most heinous crimes in our world, from modern slavery to people and drugs trafficking. These types of crimes are used to create cash for criminals and that money is laundered throughout the financial system. No one has yet been able to put an exact monetary figure on the amount of money that is laundered (in 2019 the National Crime Agency estimated that money laundering costs the UK more than £100 billion pounds a year)but if we can make some movement to dent this figure then we will have had a positive impact.

How do you see your role/industry changing in the next few years?

There is no doubt that the use of technology in banking and payments will increase and I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of that digital transformation.

Would you recommend working in this role, please give your reasons?

The market for software to stop financial crime is at an early stage and will evolve massively over the next few years. It will be satisfying to influence the direction of travel of the financial services industry so that it is competitive and can effectively identify bad actors and prevent them exploiting  the system for their benefit.

If I had my time again, I would not do anything different. I am incredibly fulfilled by our mission of fighting criminals and those involved in financial crime and I implore everyone to find a role that gives you this kind of drive and enthusiasm.

We are looking for people who work in AML/CTF, fraud detection, threat intelligence and related legal and regulatory fields across a range of industries to tell us about their everyday job.

Just fill in a short Q&A and submit a photograph to be considered for inclusion. We want to feature people of all levels of seniority.

If you want to take part, email Carl Brown at carl@grcworldforums.com