WIDTH, an AI-native all-in-one compliance platform, has been recognised among the FinCrime50 — a prestigious selection of the most innovative companies tackling financial crime. Formed following Vernal Capital’s acquisition of Asia-based multi-award winning RegTech firm Cynopsis, WIDTH combines the same leadership team and customer relationships with expanded product capabilities and a bold growth strategy. We sat down with Chye Kit Chionh, Co-Founder and CEO of WIDTH, to find out what’s behind the platform and where it’s headed.
When it comes to compliance within financial institutions, most systems are built over time, creating a monolith of disjointed solutions. Chye Kit likened this to “building a Frankenstein.” A firm might be balancing various vendors, using internally built tools, managing workarounds or simply relying on an Excel spreadsheet. “The outcome is relatively horrendous and that’s what’s been happening over the last 10-20 years,” he said.
It is exactly this problem that WIDTH was built to solve — and what earned it a place among the FinCrime50. Rather than adding yet another point solution to the stack, WIDTH consolidates core compliance functions, including KYC, KYB, KYT, transaction monitoring, fraud detection and ongoing due diligence, into a single system designed for regulated industries such as banking, payments, FinTech and digital assets. It covers the entire customer lifecycle from onboarding to offboarding.
“It is very rare you find someone in this space, like us in the Asia region, that actually covers the end-to-end,” Chye Kit explained. While individual point solutions might be best-in-class in certain areas, it is difficult for firms, especially smaller ones, to get them all working in symphony with each other. WIDTH is designed to be a cost-effective compliance solution for companies across Asia-Pacific, leveraging AI to create automated and auditable compliance processes. It boasts 10-times faster onboarding and a 95% reduction in false positives.
“Compliance systems need to move from static workflows to executable infrastructure,” Chye Kit said. “This platform is designed to operate at scale across jurisdictions and use cases, while giving our customers stronger capabilities for what comes next.”
An AI-powered co-pilot for compliance
Central to WIDTH — and a key factor behind its FinCrime50 recognition — is its AI Compliance Officer. This software layer supports real-time compliance decisions, case review, and recommendation generation with human oversight. Chye Kit pointed to onboarding as a perfect example.
When conducting onboarding, a compliance professional is required to carry out various background checks, such as adverse media screening and scanning sanctions and politically exposed person (PEP) lists. This can create multiple false positives, especially when including fuzzy logic to assess name variations or transpositions, leaving the worker with a long list to work through.
WIDTH’s AI helps to reduce that burden. It synthesises data a firm has already collected from customers and matches it to the screening checks and verification checks, such as selfies or liveness checks. This information is then assessed, and it alerts the compliance analyst if there are any issues or anomalies that need further investigation.
“The AI reviewer is intended to be like the co-pilot of the compliance officer,” Chye Kit said. “It then becomes like the first line of defence for the compliance officer.”
Not only does this improve the ability to spot red flags, it helps businesses scale. The tool can review cases, generate recommendations and maintain audit records — all with human oversight. For a business looking to grow its client base, without the AI, they would need to proportionally grow their compliance team. With WIDTH’s support, compliance teams can increase speed and handle more cases.
“It will massively help a lot of compliance officers and teams with very stunning support,” Chye Kit added.
Eyes on the future
The FinCrime50 recognition comes at a pivotal moment. WIDTH is also advancing the concept of Know Your Agent (KYA), reflecting its view that future compliance systems must assess not only customers and counterparties, but also whether AI agents are safe, trustworthy, auditable, and fit for regulated workflows.
WIDTH will focus on expanding across Asia-Pacific, serving financial institutions, FinTech companies, and digital asset firms, with particular emphasis on payments and insurance compliance. The company plans further investment in automation, risk modelling, workflow orchestration, and AI-assisted compliance — building on the very capabilities that caught the FinCrime50 judges’ attention.
Cense was recently named in this year’s FinCrimeTech50, which identifies the companies leading tech companies fighting money laundering, fraud and financial crime in financial services. The full FinCrimeTech50, including profiles on each company, can be found here.
Copyright © 2026 FinTech Global
