Nobody would design compliance this way on purpose
25 June 2026On 18 June, we opened our Ghent office to a full room of compliance, risk, and innovation professionals for the Belgian edition of Compliance Connection. An opening note and three expert-led roundtables, no slideware marathons, no sales pitches, just an honest day of exchange between people sitting with the same questions.
One idea ran through every conversation, from the opening note to the closing drinks: compliance is no longer a set of obligations to tick off at the edge of the business. It is becoming a strategic function, a system to orchestrate and, increasingly, to prove. The challenge is no longer simply being compliant. It is demonstrating, continuously, that you master a system you no longer fully operate yourself.
Here is what stayed with us from the day.
💡 Key takeaways
- Compliance is shifting from a cost centre and a control function to a strategic part of the business, one that shapes how institutions grow, partner, and earn trust.
- The most resilient teams are reframing their relationship with the supervisor: the regulator is better treated as an ally to engage early than an adversary to brace for.
- AMLR readiness is being judged on the credibility of the trajectory, not only the final state. Supervisors will assess the direction you are travelling in, not just where you land.
- Technology, AI, digital identity and wallets, automated UBO and data integration, is moving from optional to expected. It is becoming the baseline, not the differentiator.
Layer on layer, control on control
We built compliance systems the way cities grow: layer on layer, control on control, each addition rational at the time, until the result is something no one would design on purpose. Thomas Van Maele opened the day with the question underneath all of it: if we were rebuilding compliance from scratch today, what would actually look different?
The answer that emerged across the room was less about tools and more about position. Compliance is moving from the back office to the boardroom, from a function that absorbs cost to one that shapes how an institution grows, partners, and earns trust. Johannes Thym followed with a candid look at how Ayvens is rethinking compliance operations inside a large, distributed organisation. Not a vision deck. A case in progress, with the trade-offs left in.
AMLR: it is the direction that gets graded
July 2027 is closer than it looks. The point that landed hardest in this session was that supervisors will not only assess your final state; they will assess the credibility of the trajectory you are on. A defensible plan, honestly executed, counts for more than a polished claim of readiness.
The roundtable worked through what financial institutions are actually building right now, what they are still waiting on, and where the biggest unknowns remain, with the regulatory detail grounded by practitioners who live with the implications day to day. Much of it comes back to what AMLR changes for customer due diligence, and how it fits within the wider EU AML package. The throughline: AMLR is less a deadline to survive than an opportunity to rebuild compliance as the strategic, orchestrated system it needs to become.
The supervisor is not the enemy
At some point the letter arrives. The instinct is to treat the inspection as something to brace for. The more useful reframe that came out of this session was the opposite one: treat the supervisor as an ally, not an adversary. A regulator who can see clearly how you reach decisions is a regulator you can build a relationship with.
That only works if the evidence is there to be seen. When a supervisor asks you to reconstruct the decision chain behind a closed alert, the answer should not be days of gathering elements scattered across inboxes and folders. The roundtable worked through the audit lifecycle, how to prepare so that documentation, decisions, and rationale are defensible by design, how to conduct yourself during the inspection itself, and how to structure remediation afterwards. Drawn from people who have been through it.
The baseline moved while everyone was watching the deadline
Technology no longer just supports compliance; it is becoming the baseline regulators expect. eIDAS 2.0, perpetual KYC, AI-driven detection, digital identity and wallets, and automated UBO and data integration are moving from optional to expected.
The conversation was refreshingly unhyped. The potential of AI in screening, detection, and risk scoring is real, but the harder question is how to put it into production in a way that is operationally sound and defensible to a supervisor, and where human judgement still has to sit. The same applies to digital identity and to UBO and data integration: the institutions getting ahead are the ones treating these as infrastructure decisions with a ten-year horizon, not features to bolt on.
What we took away
Three things, in the end. Compliance is becoming a strategic function, not a line item to minimise. The supervisor is better understood as an ally to engage early than an obstacle to manage late. And the technology baseline has quietly moved, so that what was optional a few years ago is now simply expected.
Our thanks to everyone who joined us in Ghent, and to the speakers who made the conversations what they were: Thomas Van Maele, Johannes Thym, David Vantorre, Joan Carette, Christophe Olenaed, Jeffrey Goethals, Marta Gonzalez Perez, Kevin Seminck, Philippe De Prez, Philippe Montreux, Mathias Heyse, Alexandra Hoen, Pierre-Henri Janssens, and Saar de Zutter.
Compliance Connection is a series of peer-focused gatherings for compliance professionals, organised by Harmoney across Europe. If a session here raised something you would like to think through further, we are always glad to continue the conversation.
Stay tuned for our next events. Harmoney offers a cutting-edge digital platform that streamlines intricate onboarding and compliance procedures, featuring automated screening functionalities. Interested in discovering more about our innovative solution? Reach out to us for further details or stay in touch via our newsletter ⬇️.