Trade Without the Wait: How AI Can Help Banks Fight Financial Crime and Reduce Trade Friction

Trade finance is becoming faster, more digital and increasingly interconnected. At the same time, the financial crime risks surrounding it are becoming more complex.

For banks, that creates a difficult balance. Controls need to become stronger, but legitimate trade cannot be held up every time another check is introduced. Because when a good customer is kept waiting too long, compliance stops being only a risk issue — it becomes a customer experience and commercial issue too.

At the Global Trade Finance Expo in Dubai, Nour Rimawi, Director at QUBE Events, sat down with Kaushiq Kodithodika, Director, Business Development – GCC, Africa & APAC at Eastnets, the forum’s Sponsor, to discuss how technology, integration and AI can help banks strengthen financial crime controls while keeping legitimate trade moving.

▶ Watch the full interview with Kaushiq Kodithodika: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFzTsAoaVW4 

When More Controls Create More Friction

Large transaction banks rarely operate through a single system.

Onboarding, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, trade finance and other compliance processes can each sit within separate platforms. Some overlap, others hold different pieces of customer or transaction information, and bringing everything together into a complete view can be difficult.

The result can be unnecessary friction.

As Kaushiq explains:

“In the name of extra controls, the bank ends up delaying a legitimate trade.”

— Kaushiq Kodithodika, Director, Business Development – GCC, Africa & APAC at Eastnets

The issue becomes particularly important when looking at the experience from the customer’s perspective.

A legitimate customer who has already provided information and passed the necessary checks should not feel as though they are starting from zero at every stage of the relationship.

Where existing information can be used intelligently across the customer journey, banks can reduce duplication while maintaining the controls they need.

The objective is not fewer checks. It is smarter checks with less unnecessary friction.

Smarter Checks, Not Simply Digital Ones

Digitising a manual process does not automatically make it intelligent.

For Eastnets, the opportunity goes beyond basic optical character recognition and document digitisation. Intelligent data capture can help institutions extract and analyse information that previously required significant manual intervention.

These checks can include reviewing Harmonized System (HS) codes, examining documents for potential inconsistencies or signs of manipulation, identifying potential over- or under-invoicing and screening for dual-use goods.

These are important checks in trade finance, but when information has to be manually gathered, reviewed and compared across multiple sources, the process becomes slower and more resource-intensive.

Bringing relevant information into a more unified environment gives compliance teams a clearer view of the transaction and allows technology to handle more of the initial analysis.

The result is not simply greater speed. It can also mean fewer unnecessary alerts and more time for compliance professionals to focus on the cases that genuinely require investigation.

Compliance Should Enable Business

One of the strongest points from the conversation was Kaushiq’s view of the role compliance should play within a financial institution.

“Compliance is there to enable business. It's not a blocker, although it is often seen as one.”

— Kaushiq Kodithodika, Director, Business Development – GCC, Africa & APAC at Eastnets

That distinction matters.

Compliance teams are working with increasing volumes of internal and external data. They must also respond to new regulations and evolving financial crime risks, including those associated with emerging payment methods, digital currencies and blockchain-based transactions.

At the same time, customers expect faster service.

The answer cannot simply be to remove controls. Instead, banks need to make those controls work more efficiently.

“Frictionless trade is what compliance also wants, but they cannot accept it without checking. With AI, they can make it faster.”

— Kaushiq Kodithodika, Director, Business Development – GCC, Africa & APAC at Eastnets

AI can therefore play a practical role: helping institutions process more information, identify relevant risks faster and direct human attention towards the exceptions that genuinely need it.

A Complete View Changes the Decision

Faster compliance depends on better visibility.

A financial crime risk may not be obvious when looking at one data point in isolation. The wider picture can involve onboarding information, transaction activity, sanctions and screening data, market information, regulatory developments and trade-specific factors.

In areas such as vessel tracking and dual-use goods, that picture can become even more complex.

When those sources remain disconnected, compliance teams have to build the picture themselves.

Integration changes that.

By connecting relevant internal and external data, institutions can automate more of the initial analysis and give investigators a more complete view of the risk in front of them.

Instead of spending valuable time searching for information, teams can spend more time deciding what that information means.

That is where AI and automation become particularly valuable — not by replacing compliance judgement, but by improving the information available when that judgement is required.

Adding Intelligence Without Starting Again

Introducing AI and automation does not necessarily mean replacing the technology a bank already has.

For institutions with established compliance infrastructure, starting again would introduce cost, disruption and additional complexity.

Kaushiq describes a different approach.

“We recommend banks keep their existing systems. Our systems will be an extra layer, so compliance can still work as before, but they can approve or resolve cases much faster and more efficiently.”

— Kaushiq Kodithodika, Director, Business Development – GCC, Africa & APAC at Eastnets

Through open APIs and integrations, additional intelligence can work alongside existing infrastructure rather than requiring institutions to rebuild it.

That is an important distinction for banks looking to modernise compliance operations.

Transformation does not always require another major system replacement.

Sometimes the bigger opportunity is making existing systems communicate more effectively and giving teams a better way to use the information they already have.

From Compliance Friction to Competitive Advantage

The wider message from the conversation goes beyond technology.

A legitimate trade delayed unnecessarily is not simply an operational inconvenience.

It affects the customer.

And in a market where businesses increasingly expect financial services to operate quickly and digitally, the quality of the compliance experience becomes part of the overall banking relationship.

The institutions that can identify genuine risk quickly while allowing legitimate transactions to move efficiently are not only improving their compliance operations. They are delivering a better customer experience.

That changes the role of compliance from something perceived as slowing business down to something that can help good business move faster.

Taking Sponsor Expertise Beyond the Stage

As part of our Sponsor Spotlight series, QUBE Events is extending the expertise shared at our forums beyond the event day.

For sponsors, the opportunity does not stop with a logo, booth or speaking session.

An expert discussion can become an interview. An interview can become an article. That content can continue reaching clients, prospects and industry decision-makers long after the event has finished.

More importantly, it allows sponsors to demonstrate their expertise around the real challenges their customers are trying to solve.

For Eastnets, this conversation is not simply about AI. It addresses a challenge transaction banks face every day: how do you strengthen financial crime controls without making legitimate customers pay the price through slower service?

That is the type of conversation that creates relevance — and gives the relationship between sponsor and audience somewhere to go next.

Sponsor Spotlight: EastnetsSponsor Spotlight: Eastnets

Thank you to Kaushiq Kodithodika for sharing his perspective and to Eastnets for supporting the Global Trade Finance Expo in Dubai as our Diamond Sponsor.

To learn more about Eastnets and its work across financial crime compliance, Payments and trade finance:

Visit Eastnets: https://www.eastnets.com/

At QUBE Events, the Global Trade Finance Expo brings together banks, financial institutions, regulators, technology providers and trade finance leaders to explore the developments shaping the future of global trade.

For our sponsors, we aim to take those conversations further through thought leadership, content, senior-level networking and curated one-to-one meetings that create opportunities to build meaningful business relationships.

Want to take your brand from visibility to conversation and from conversation to pipeline?

Explore speaking and sponsorship opportunities with QUBE Events.

Get in touch: info@qubevents.comView our upcoming events: https://bit.ly/3Hjjw6B

What should we ask in our next Sponsor Spotlight? Let us know which trade finance, Payments or compliance topic you would like us to explore next.