Chartis and Hawk reveal AI’s compliance breakthrough

November 12, 2025

A new global study from Chartis and Hawk has revealed that FinTech and payment companies are entering a more advanced stage of artificial intelligence (AI) maturity, transforming compliance through automation, precision, and scale.

The report, AI in Financial Crime & Compliance: Charting the Path from Pilot to Maturity, explores how these firms are leveraging machine learning, generative AI (GenAI), and agentic AI to enhance detection accuracy and investigative efficiency.

The findings suggest that the financial crime and compliance landscape is being redefined by AI-driven transformation. Payment companies are not only improving detection rates but also reducing investigation times and operational costs.

Over half of those surveyed identified improved detection accuracy as the most significant benefit of AI implementation. Meanwhile, 73% of payment firms reported achieving measurable savings in anti-money laundering (AML) costs, with nearly one-third expecting those savings to surpass $5m in the next year.

Investment in AI technologies continues to accelerate across the payments and FinTech industries. An overwhelming 94% of respondents plan to boost AI spending, highlighting the strong confidence in its value.

GenAI, in particular, is gaining traction, with 88% of companies indicating plans to increase investment to improve document handling, data processing, and investigative workflows. Similarly, 84% are investing in agentic AI, recognising its potential to support case investigations and streamline the drafting of suspicious activity reports (SARs).

The research makes clear that AI has moved beyond experimentation. It is now a critical part of compliance strategies, empowering organisations to detect risks faster, handle complex data sets efficiently, and scale their operations effectively.

Those able to master AI deployment at scale, according to Chartis and Hawk, will lead the next generation of compliance innovation — setting new industry standards for responsiveness and resilience in the face of evolving financial crime threats.

Download the report here.