Iain Armstrong Executive Director in the Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) Strategy function at ComplyAdvantage reveals his no-nonsense approach to tea: strong, non-dairy milk, no sugar at the ComplyAdvantage Fintea Chats.
Behind the title, Armstrong brings decades of hands-on experience across financial services, spending nearly ten years at the UK regulator, supervising both authorised and unauthorised firms, before moving into senior risk and compliance roles at some of the UK’s largest banks. Financial crime has been the common thread throughout his career.
At ComplyAdvantage, Armstrong’s role is as much about translation as it is about strategy. Internally, he helps teams across the business, from engineers to marketing and sales, understand the realities faced by compliance teams on the ground. Armstrong also spends time listening closely to customers, keeping a “finger on the pulse” of what’s worrying them, what pressures they’re under, and how financial crime compliance is evolving. That feedback loop is critical in shaping products that genuinely solve problems rather than just ticking boxes.
When asked about the biggest challenge facing compliance teams today, ComplyAdvantage is blunt: it hasn’t changed much in the last decade as compliance is still often viewed as a cost centre, making it difficult to justify investment or clearly demonstrate its contribution to revenue and growth. As a result, teams are frequently asked to do more with fewer resources and ComplyAdvantage notes that over the past two to three years, many firms have scaled back compliance headcount, even as expectations and risks continue to rise.
Despite these pressures, Armstrong is optimistic about the direction of travel and what excites him most is a growing, shared recognition across the industry that traditional approaches simply aren’t fit for purpose anymore. Criminals move fast, adopt new technologies quickly, and aren’t slowed down by governance or committees. That reality is now widely acknowledged, not just by compliance teams, but by regulators, technology providers, and law enforcement too.
ComplyAdvantage sees this alignment as a turning point as there is a genuine, collective will to embrace innovation and use tools like artificial intelligence to counter increasingly sophisticated financial crime. For ComplyAdvantage, the momentum feels real, and fast-moving. Attitudes are shifting, the ground is changing, and for once, compliance feels less like it’s playing catch-up and more like it’s gearing up for the fight ahead.
