Modernizing AML screening for global financial institutions

This article is a part of Startup Spotlight, a series that features young, up-and-coming startups.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Baran Ozkan previously worked as a director of product at a remittance firm. He spent two years searching for a flexible transaction monitoring solution. Legacy vendors consistently fell short of expectations.

A conversation revealed that other fintechs faced identical compliance software issues. This prompted him to launch Flagright alongside Madhu Nadig. They built the real-time transaction monitoring platform they previously lacked.

😟 Problem

Financial institutions heavily rely on legacy vendors for anti-money laundering compliance. These outdated systems produce high rates of false positives and experience frequent operational downtimes.

Compliance teams also work across fragmented tools and spreadsheets, making investigations slower and increasing operational costs.

💡 Solution

Flagright acts as an AI operating system for financial crime compliance. The platform enables institutions to integrate operations within a single week. The software provides several specific capabilities, including: 

• A centralized hub for transaction monitoring and watchlist screening.
• No-code rule building to empower teams without engineering support.
• AI agents designed to automate tasks and reduce false positives.

Image credit: Flagright

📊 Market size

The financial industry continues shifting toward real-time digital payments. Surging transaction volumes force institutions to modernize their compliance infrastructure.

The startup projects reaching over 500 global clients by 2027. Modern tools will drastically reduce manual overhead. Automated workflows can eliminate up to 80% of required compliance labor hours.

🤝 Team

• Baran Ozkan. Co-founder and CEO. He previously led product at a remittance company, where he experienced the limitations of legacy AML software firsthand.
• Madhu Nadig. Co-founder and CTO. He previously worked as a software engineer at AWS and held early engineering roles at Palantir India.

🚀 Traction

• Secures over 100 global financial institutions as clients, including UniCredit and GoCardless.
• Processes transaction volumes exceeding the entire GDP of Canada.
• Reduces investigation times for compliance teams by up to 70%.

🏆 Competition

💰 Financials

🚩 Risks