Michael Barrett

Michael Barrett, thank you for taking the time to speak with us about the upcoming Leaders in Finance AML event on 2 October. To begin, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role?

I’m the General Manager for the AML line of business at NICE Actimize, where I’ve been for 21 years. Over that time, I’ve held a range of leadership roles. I started with an engineering focus, before moving into delivery, running an implementation team out of EMEA that deployed our software and helped customers extract value from it. That experience gave me real insight into what’s important, and into the challenges of making financial crime technology work at scale.

I then shifted into product strategy, where I could apply that knowledge more broadly. With this rounded experience and years of working with customers across the globe, I was fortunate to be appointed General Manager two years ago. In this role, I’m responsible not just for product strategy, but also for ensuring that delivery, support, and sales are fully aligned, all working toward the common goal of fighting financial crime.

It’s a global role, based in London, with Actimize active in nearly 100 countries. I travel often, meeting customers and prospects, listening to the market, and being challenged on what we’re doing and where the next threats are likely to emerge. That dialogue with the industry is something I thrive on. It keeps me tuned into evolving needs and helps us shape the future of AML technology.

Looking back over the past five years, what would you highlight as the most significant and positive shift in the AML ecosystem?

Over the last three to five years, the emergence and acceptance of data science in solving financial crime problems has become a reality. Five years ago, data science was present in AML solutions, but adoption was low. There was skepticism around trusting the models, and regulators and auditors found it difficult to understand and accept that there might be a better way to identify risks. For me, the acceptance of data science and AI has been a huge shift in the AML ecosystem. At the same time, the volume and diversity of financial products have only increased over the past decade. Using AI and data science to counter this volume challenge is now widely seen as the right approach, and I think that’s one of the biggest positive shifts we’ve had.

Another important development has been the growth of public-private partnerships. In the UK, we’ve had JMLIT for some time, and we now see similar models replicated globally – whether through AFCA, the FinCEN Exchange, Europol, or initiatives in Singapore. These platforms allow financial institutions to share risk and learn from each other about high-risk organizations or customers. It’s a very healthy and positive shift.

Finally, accountability levels have risen significantly. Five years ago, AML systems were important, but not always treated as a board-level priority. With AMLA, MLRs in the UK and indeed the BSA Act in the US, there is now direct accountability at director level. AML is no longer background noise – it’s tied to the reputation and even the freedoms of senior leaders. That change in mindset has been a very helpful step forward for the industry.

Looking specifically at your own role and work at NICE Actimize, which aspects do you feel have had the greatest impact in driving the fight against financial crime?

From a personal perspective, one of the achievements I’m most proud of is bringing data science into production systems. It’s no simple task. There are many brilliant data scientists who, if you hand them a cube of data, can build fascinating models. But getting those models to work at scale in a production setting – with evidence, auditability, and consistency  – is extremely difficult. That’s something we’ve invested a huge amount of energy in, and I believe we’ve done a good job at making it real. It has been a key impact of our work.

The other major shift over the past five years, which goes beyond financial crime systems, is the move to cloud computing. Historically, delivering high-scale systems meant large computers, dedicated data centres, and massive IT spend and maintenance – a major obstacle for adoption. The cloud has changed that completely. It has opened doors for organisations to grow faster, scale their applications, and, importantly, strengthen their AML systems. Scalability, resilience, flexibility – all the things that were once hard to manage are now available almost instantly through cloud providers.

So, if I look back, I’d say productising data science and leveraging the cloud are the two big developments that have had a material impact – both on what we do as an organisation and on the value our customers can achieve.

Looking ahead, over the next five years, what do you see as the biggest challenges?

The biggest challenge ahead is the speed of technology. We’ve innovated significantly over the past five years and will keep doing so, but criminals innovate too – often faster. It’s a foot race, except I carry the weight of governance, auditability, accountability, proof points. Those checks slow me down when bringing next-gen solutions to market, while criminals are free to exploit any AI tools to push synthetic identities, automate money movement, and exploit systems. These constraints exist for good reason, but they put me at a disadvantage in the fight. That’s the primary challenge I see for myself, the industry, and vendors in the next five years.

A second challenge is the integration of fraud prevention and AML systems. They’re two sides of the same coin, and we can’t afford to treat them as separate disciplines. Greater information sharing between the two is crucial. Some risks only emerge when you take that holistic view. Progress is being made, but it must continue – this integration will be a key focus for the industry going forward.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities, and how do you think international cooperation fits into that?

I keep coming back to information sharing, because I truly believe it’s the most powerful weapon the industry has against criminal activity. If every FI collaborates on what they uncover and act on those risks, the friction this creates for criminal networks globally will be off the scale. It becomes incredibly difficult for bad actors to simply shift jurisdiction, switch institutions, and move their money elsewhere.

We now see a raft of public–private partnerships worldwide that help broker this kind of sharing. But I think the private sector needs to go further – by building platforms that allow information to be shared directly, without always going through an intermediary body. For me, that’s the key opportunity for the industry to work on, because it would make a huge difference.

Are you optimistic that this can become a reality within the next five years?

I’m cautiously optimistic. By 2030, if the industry has made little progress on information sharing, I’ll be very disappointed. It’s so clearly the right thing to do to stop financial crime.

Of course, there are challenges: trust, intellectual property when it comes to threat detection, and different risk appetites across institutions and borders. I get all of that. But the positives so heavily outweigh the challenges that it’s worth working together, sharing the risks, and creating the opportunity for a truly global, holistic view of how money moves across the world.

What advice would you give to other AML professionals who want to make a greater impact in the years ahead?

I think a lot of people in the industry will recognize this: you get bogged down in the day-to-day. You have your task list – whether you’re building products to fight crime, testing them, auditing them, or using them to work through your caseload. Those tasks need to get done to meet goals and get paid.

But what I always remind my teams, and what I believe every AML investigator should keep top of mind, is the bigger picture: we’re here to stop financial crime and catch the bad guys. That focus has to guide how we operate. Of course, there are circumstances where defensive suspicious activity filing is an acceptable course of action. In some cases, that’s reasonable. But often that kind of output won’t really help stop the bad actors.

That’s why it’s worth taking a few extra steps to build a stronger story – so that when law enforcement picks it up, it can actually lead to a real outcome. That’s what I want us all to remember: at the end of the day, we are here to stop the bad guys.

Thank you Michael Barret, we look forward to having you at the Leaders in Finance AML Event on 2 October.