Intelligence sharing has become a defining feature of Estonia’s approach to tackling financial crime, sanctions evasion, and fraud.
Few understand the reality of this work better than Siiri Grabbi, sanctions and counter-terrorism financing officer at Coop Pank and chair of the sanctions working group at the Estonian Banking Association, claim Salv.
Drawing on her four years of experience using Salv Bridge, she describes how the platform has transformed collaboration within Estonia’s financial sector.
Grabbi began her career in diplomacy, spending more than a decade negotiating EU sanctions in Brussels as a RELEX Counsellor. She recalls how the role offered a powerful vantage point over policymaking, but it wasn’t until she joined the banking sector that she saw the scale of evasion attempts undermining those rules. This shift in perspective made the need for fast, reliable intelligence sharing abundantly clear.
In her current role, Grabbi works closely with Salv’s tools across both her past position at LHV Bank and now at Coop Pank. Bridge, in particular, has become a fixture in her daily operations. While she doesn’t use it every single day, it plays a critical role several times a week in managing fraud cases, sanctions alerts and patterns of unusual behaviour.
Before Salv Bridge, Estonia’s financial institutions relied heavily on informal channels such as WhatsApp groups, working groups and direct phone calls. These methods were slow, inconsistent, and vulnerable to gaps when staff changed roles. With threats evolving quickly and teams needing to work in sync, the sector recognised that it needed a dedicated system for instant communication.
Senior leadership across the major banks agreed that AML cooperation had to be embedded into their strategy. This top-level support paved the way for rapid progress, underpinned by a strong sense of community. Estonia’s financial sector is relatively small, meaning colleagues often know each other personally. Regular Salv Bridge workshops strengthened those bonds further, forming the trust needed to share intelligence confidently.
In practice, Salv Bridge now shapes day-to-day AML and fraud workflows. When unusual transactions, sanctions hits or suspicious accounts emerge, teams can query other banks and receive responses within hours rather than days. In fraud cases, the ability to share IBANs linked to criminal activity instantly has shortened recall times and helped prevent losses. For sanctions, Bridge helps confirm the identity of individuals who may share common names, allowing banks to avoid incorrect freezes while ensuring genuine matches are escalated immediately.
The platform has also strengthened cooperation with Estonian authorities, particularly the Tax and Customs Board. Suspicious activity reports can be submitted directly via Bridge, replacing slower legacy systems and ensuring every step is logged and secure.
Technology alone is not enough, Grabbi stresses. Collaboration depends on clear processes, shared expectations and strong relationships between legal, AML and compliance teams. Early on, banks aligned on what could be asked through Bridge, the legal basis for sharing, and expected response times. Informal connections matter, too—knowing the person behind the message often accelerates decision-making.
In recent years, Estonia’s domestic collaboration has expanded beyond national borders. Banks now share intelligence directly with Lithuanian counterparts, including FinTech firms such as Paysera. This is vital because smaller institutions can act as transit points for rapidly moving fraudulent funds. Stopping those flows early helps protect the wider financial ecosystem and shields institutions from reputational risk.
While legal interpretations still vary across jurisdictions and upcoming regulations such as AMLR Article 75 seek to harmonise approaches, Estonia’s experience demonstrates what proactive cooperation can achieve. For Grabbi, Salv Bridge is proof that collaboration works. It enables faster responses, protects customers and fosters trust between teams that once operated in silos.
Ultimately, she argues, beating financial crime relies as much on human connection as it does on regulations. When teams know and trust one another, cooperation becomes instinctive—and that is the foundation of an effective defence.
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