A major UK banking group

BankingMajor UK Banking Group

Economic crime prevention as a shared orchestration platform

From fragmented point-solutions to a vendor-agnostic, event-driven economic crime screening fabric.

Platform & ArchitectureEconomic Crime & Screening

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Unified orchestration layer for sanctions, PEP, and adverse media screening. Ultimately the primary entry-point for all screening journeys

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Vendor-agnostic architecture: screening providers are interchangeable without re-platforming

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Harmonised multi-vendor ecosystem with consistent data contracts and policy controls

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Built to add new screening vendors, data sources and jurisdictions without architectural change

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Engineering Facets

Event DrivenDomain AlignmentObservabilityModularityRuntime IntegrityGovernanceStandards

Expertise

Event-Driven Architectures Domain-Driven Design Practice

Accelerators

Event Interaction Runtime Integrity Engineering Domain Reasoning Engine Observability Baseline Performance & FMEA Suite

Capabilities

Platform Engineering

Commercial customer onboarding reduced from 10 days to under 12 hours. The first real-time API-based screening platform in the group's economic crime prevention capability.

“The real advantage in economic crime screening is orchestration: harmonising existing vendor capabilities into a single real-time fabric with end-to-end explainability.”

Value created

10 days → hours

Commercial customer onboarding screening time, from batch processing to real-time API-based decisioning

First real-time API platform

The first real-time API-based screening capability in the group's economic crime prevention lab

Vendor-agnostic

Screening vendors interchangeable without re-platforming. Vendor switching cost reduced from months to weeks

Multi-brand deployment

Single platform serving multiple regulated entities and jurisdictions with localised policy controls

Zero-disruption migration

Progressive migration of screening workloads with parallel running, no BAU impact during transition

Context

The bank had multiple overlapping vendor products for sanctions screening, PEP checks, and adverse media monitoring. Each vendor had its own integration model, data contract and change cycle. Every new regulation, scheme rule or provider change resulted in duplicate projects and fragmented controls. Switching or adding a screening vendor was a multi-month programme in itself. Regulators were moving towards outcome-centric supervision: expecting clear evidence of detection coverage, policy rationale and operational effectiveness, not vendor badges.

The Challenge

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Rationalise disparate screening capabilities across multiple vendors without disrupting BAU
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Avoid another vendor-locked platform that would itself become legacy
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Provide auditable, explainable workflows across multiple screening types and vendors
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Enable faster onboarding of new screening vendors and data sources
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Maintain strong performance and resilience across high-volume payment and onboarding flows

Our Approach

Event-driven architecture

User journey and onboarding events captured once and enriched through a pipeline of screening processors. Loosely coupled microservices communicating via asynchronous events and APIs.

Vendor-agnostic processor adapters

Each screening vendor (sanctions, PEP, adverse media) wrapped in a standardised adapter with clear contracts. Vendors are interchangeable: new providers onboard without impacting the rest of the platform.

Policy-driven workflow orchestration

Configurable workflows to combine screening processors, manual investigations, and escalation paths. Clear separation between policy logic, workflow routing and runtime infrastructure.

Audit, observability and QoS by design

Non-repudiation audit trail for every screening decision. Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, drop-off analysis, and SLA tracking at each stage. Real-time dashboards for operations and risk teams.

Harmonised multi-vendor ecosystem

Multiple screening vendors operating through a single orchestration layer with consistent data contracts, normalised outputs, and unified reporting, regardless of which vendor performs the underlying check.

Extensible operating model

Platform designed to support multiple regulated entities and jurisdictions. Consistent policy control with localised parameters and routing. New jurisdictions and brands onboarded through configuration, not code.

Engagement Timeline

Discovery & Architecture

2 months

Mapped existing screening capabilities across vendors, defined the vendor-agnostic orchestration model, and established the event-driven architecture blueprint for multi-brand deployment.

Platform Build

3 months

Built the core orchestration fabric, vendor-agnostic processor adapters, and policy-driven workflow engine with full audit trail integration.

Migration & Hardening

1 month

Migration of screening workloads onto the platform with parallel running, performance validation, and operational handover.

Ongoing Evolution

10 months

Onboarded additional screening vendors and journeys, refined operational dashboards, extended coverage to new regulated entities, and prepared for multi-channel risk signal integration.

Outcomes

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A single economic crime screening fabric supporting multiple bank brands, regions and screening vendors.
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Vendor-agnostic architecture: screening providers can be switched, added or replaced without re-platforming.
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Reduced integration cost and time for new screening vendors and data sources.
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Improved regulatory posture through end-to-end transparency and explainability of screening decisions.
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Operational teams gained a unified view of queues, alerts and workflow progression across all screening types and vendors.
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Architecture engineered to support future AI-driven risk signals and automated triage.

Technologies & Patterns

Event-driven microservicesVendor-agnostic adapter frameworkMulti-vendor orchestration engineKubernetesKafkaDomain-driven design

What Our Client Said

“Bugni Labs played a crucial role in accelerating our development process. Their understanding of our brief and their insight into the types of solutions we were aiming for was invaluable.”
Economic Crime Prevention Platform · published TechPros interview

“The code generator helped us to significantly reduce the engineering effort from two engineers over four to six sprints down to just one engineer in a single sprint...”
Economic Crime Prevention Platform · published TechPros interview

“Working with Bugni Labs felt very natural from the start.”
Economic Crime Prevention Platform · published TechPros interview

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