Evolving Compliance in the Digital Age | Executive Lens Episode 5

Compliance is no longer a back-office, box-ticking function. It has become one of the most strategic, technology-driven, and talent-critical areas across financial services and fintech.

EBC Europe Director David Webb sits down with Joaquin Calderon, who has spent more than 20 years transforming compliance functions in global banks and fast-growth fintechs. His career journey shows exactly how the role is changing and what the future demands. 

From Legal Gatekeeper to Business Partner 

Joaquin started his career in the traditional, legalistic model of compliance. But as regulations multiplied and products became more complex, he realised something: compliance professionals must understand the business as deeply as they understand the rules.

Most recently, Joaquin led the rebuild of Klarna's compliance function into a scalable, IPO-ready organisation, earning his team a real seat at the table by combining deep product knowledge with regulatory expertise, data insight, and a clear understanding of customer journeys from front end to back end. 

Today's most valuable compliance leaders are commercially aware, product-savvy, and deeply embedded in the business from day zero. 

From Reactive to Predictive: The Technology Shift 

Joaquin is direct about where compliance is heading. The function needs to move from periodic auditing to continuous, automated monitoring. From gut-feel judgement to data-driven decision making. From reacting to breaches to predicting where things will fall apart before they do. 

AI and machine learning are central to this. But Joaquin is specific about what good looks like: explainable, transparent AI frameworks that allow compliance teams to interrogate larger datasets, improve accuracy, and significantly reduce false positives. Not AI as a buzzword, but AI as an operational tool that changes how the function works day to day. 

Automation compounds the effect. When routine monitoring and checking area automated, compliance teams free up capacity to focus on higher-order judgment, strategy, and business partnership. The return on investment improves. The function becomes faster and more scalable. 

The practical impact is significant. Onboarding a corporate client currently takes an average of 100 days at many commercial banks, a large portion of which is compliance-driven. That is 100 days of zero revenue after a handshake. Smarter automation and AI-enabled compliance processes can compress that dramatically, reducing customer friction while maintaining rigour. 

Federated Intelligence: The Next Frontier 

One of the more forward-looking points Joaquin raises is the need for compliance teams to move beyond siloed, institution-level monitoring toward something closer to federated learning across the industry. Sharing intelligence to fight financial crime faster, without oversharing sensitive data. This kind of cross-industry coordination, he argues, is where compliance needs to go next. 

The New Talent Profile: Hybrid Thinkers 

The technology shift has a direct implication for hiring. The compliance professional of the next five years looks very different from the lawyer-turned-regulator model of the past. 

What organisations now need are hybrid thinkers: people who combine regulatory knowledge with data analytics skills, technology fluency, and the curiosity to read across disciplines and understand how decisions ripple upstream and downstream. Regulatory knowledge alone is no longer enough. 

Joaquin is equally clear that human qualities matter more than ever alongside the technical ones. Creativity, flexibility, attention to detail, and the ability to distinguish noise from genuine risk are what will separate good compliance professionals from great ones, and what machines cannot replicate. 

Why This Matters for Hiring 

The talent gap in modern compliance is widening. Organisations need people who can operate at the intersection of regulation, technology, and data, and those professionals are in short supply. 

As compliance continues its shift from cost centre to business enabler, the pressure to find, attract, and retain the right people will only intensify. 

That is where EBC comes in. We partner with financial institutions and fintechs across Europe and Asia to build compliance teams built for the digital age.