It’s now been just over a year since I made the decision to step away from leading compliance operations, something I had built my career in and move into a role where I’m still a compliance professional but now working on the other side, selling compliance and KYB at Detected.

After a year in the role, it feels like the right time to pause and reflect on that journey, from those very first conversations with Detected’s co-founders Pete and Liam through to where I am today.

At the time, it felt like a huge step outside of my comfort zone. A very exciting one but also one that was going to be very different to what I was used to. If I’m honest, there were moments at the beginning where I did question whether I had made the right decision. It was such a different environment to what I was used to. A number of people asked me why I would make that move, shifting from leading and operating compliance processes to working on the other side of the table. But for me, the transition actually felt like a natural progression.

Having spent years in compliance operations, I had seen the good, the bad and the ugly. I had been responsible for onboarding processes, risk decisions and operational delivery but what I really enjoyed in those roles was not just improving processes on paper but improving the systems behind them. Making a real impact for the people using them by making things quicker and easier, removing repetitive manual work and improving the day to day experience.

Over the years, I sat through countless vendor demos searching for a solution that truly delivered. In reality, I never found one that did everything it needed to. That changed when I was introduced to Detected.

When I first saw the platform over 1.5 years ago, it didn’t do everything I ideally needed it to but it did a lot. What really stood out to me though was not just the quality of the product but the approach. In many of the demos I had seen before, the focus was on showcasing what already existed. With Pete and Liam, the focus was on understanding what was missing. They wanted to dig into the gaps, the pain points and what wasn’t working and looking back, it’s that approach that’s made the platform what it is today. That was something I had not seen from other vendors.

Discovering Detected from the Other Side

In my previous roles, I spent a lot of time dealing with the realities many compliance teams know all too well. Manual onboarding checks, spreadsheets, poor data sources, time consuming investigations, one size fits all processes and systems that simply weren’t built with compliance teams in mind.

In one of my previous roles, the onboarding process was probably the most manual I have ever seen. It was clear that change was needed. So I started exploring different solutions, hoping to improve the onboarding process. That is when I first came across Detected.

At the time, bringing a platform like Detected into the business would have solved so many of the challenges we were facing. It had the potential to be genuinely game changing but what really stood out to me was not just the platform, it was Liam and Pete.

They invested a huge amount of time in truly understanding our current processes, the challenges we were facing and what needed to change. More importantly, they were able to bring that to life in a way that showed how those challenges could actually be solved.

It was also a breath of fresh air in terms of how the “sales” process was handled. I wasn’t being constantly chased for updates which if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of, you’ll know is rare. I wasn’t getting repeated requests to jump on calls, I wasn’t being pushed on next steps in the way we have all experienced with typical sales approaches. Instead, the focus was on how Detected could help solve the problems we were facing and I was given the space I needed to do what I needed to do internally, without pressure and if anything they were offering support with the internal conversations.

That, in itself, felt very different. It never felt like I was being sold to. It felt like I was being supported and it was something I hadn’t experienced with other vendors. Looking back, that experience played a much bigger role in my decision to join Detected than I probably realised at the time.

Rethinking What Compliance Should Actually Do

As part of my early conversations with Liam, he was really supportive in helping me build out an internal use case to demonstrate the impact that bringing in Detected could have. That process fundamentally changed the way I think about compliance technology.

Too often, compliance is seen as something that slows businesses down and to be honest, when you have manual, inefficient processes in place, it does. It becomes a necessary control but also a blocker to growth.

What really stood out to me during that process was the data. When Liam and I were working through the onboarding journey, I was genuinely shocked to see the drop off rate. It was over 50%, which is huge and one of the highest I had seen across the companies I had worked in. That was a real turning point for me.

It made it very clear that the way compliance is implemented can have a direct impact on growth, not just risk and it reinforced something I hadn’t fully appreciated before. When the right infrastructure is in place, compliance doesn’t have to slow a business down. It can do the opposite.

It can enable organisations to:

• onboard customers faster
• reduce manual investigation work
• make clearer, more auditable decisions
• scale into new markets with confidence
• improve alignment between Sales and Compliance

In other words, compliance becomes an enabler of growth, not a blocker and that is something I now see very differently in the role I am in today.

What I Didn’t Expect Moving to the Other Side of the Table

One of the things that did surprise me when I first joined was just how much more the platform could do than I had initially realised.

From the outside, I understood the core capabilities based on the conversations I had been part of but once I got hands on and started learning the product in detail, I could see there was far more depth to it which of course was an amazing surprise.

But what stood out much more and what I didn’t fully appreciate until I was in the role, was just how different it is selling to compliance teams. There was definitely a learning curve in those early months. Understanding how to translate what I knew from an operational perspective into conversations in a completely different context took time.

Compliance professionals don’t want to be sold to, well....nobody does. They have seen every demo, heard every promise and asked every question and rightly so. In many cases, they have probably heard it all before.

Because when you are responsible for onboarding, risk decisions and regulatory outcomes, the cost of getting it wrong is high.

What that means is that a typical sales approach often misses the mark. In many cases, the focus is on features, on what already exists and on pushing towards next steps. But from my experience, both before and now, that is not what compliance teams actually need.

They need to be understood. They need someone to take the time to get into the details of how their processes work in practice, where the pain points are and what is not working today.

That is what felt different to me. It was never about just selling a product. It was about understanding the problems and working towards solving them, even when that meant acknowledging gaps or building something new.

And that is something I have now seen consistently over the past year. It is not just in the conversations, it is in the product itself. Continuous improvements, regular releases and a genuine focus on evolving the platform based on real customer challenges.

That is what makes the difference. What makes it even more impressive is that neither Pete nor Liam came from a compliance background, yet through the way they engage with teams and really take the time to understand the details, they’ve developed a deep understanding of the challenges in practice.

Why My Compliance Background Changes How I Do This Role

Having spent years working in compliance operations, I have found it very difficult to approach this role in the same way a typical sales role might be approached because I know what it feels like to be on the other side.

I know what it is like to be responsible for onboarding decisions, for risk outcomes and for ensuring processes stand up to scrutiny. I also know how frustrating it can be when solutions do not quite do what you need them to.

That has naturally shaped how I approach every conversation still very much from a compliance perspective. For me, it is not about leading with features. It is about understanding the process first, where the challenges are and what is not working today.

It also means being honest. No solution is perfect and I think having that transparency is far more valuable than overpromising and most importantly, it is about thinking beyond implementation. It is about how something will actually work day to day, for the teams using it and how it will evolve over time.

In many ways, I haven’t left compliance. I’ve just found a different way to apply it, not just operationally, but in shaping how solutions are designed and delivered. Over the past year, I have realised that this role is not really about selling at all. It is about understanding problems deeply and helping teams find a better way to solve them.

What I’ve Seen Working With Compliance Teams This Year

Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to work closely with a wide range of compliance teams across different industries and one thing has become very clear. Many of the challenges I experienced myself are still very much a reality.

Manual processes are still everywhere and spreadsheets are still heavily relied on. In some cases more than anyone would like to admit. Investigations are still time consuming and in many cases, teams are trying to scale processes that were never designed to scale in the first place.

What has also stood out to me is that the challenge is not always just the technology, change itself can be difficult.

Even when there is a better system in place, there can still be a natural tendency to fall back on manual processes. Sometimes that comes from a lack of trust in the data, sometimes it comes from familiarity and sometimes it is simply because “this is how it has always been done”.

What I didn’t expect was just how much of the challenge wasn’t the technology itself, but how teams think about their processes and trust the outputs.

I have seen cases where teams hesitate to rely on automation because the data is not perfect. But in reality, no data is ever perfect and it never will be. The key is understanding how to design processes that account for that, including how you manage exceptions and the “unhappy paths”. That is something I have found particularly interesting in this role.

It is not just about implementing a platform, it is about helping teams think differently about how they approach their processes, how they use data and how they balance efficiency with risk. It is also where my previous experience has really helped.

Being able to relate to those challenges, to understand the hesitation and to work through those concerns in a practical way has been a big part of the role.

It has also given me the opportunity to feed those insights back into the product itself. To help shape enhancements based on real world challenges and to be part of building solutions that genuinely make a difference to how compliance teams operate day to day.

There have also been moments where I’ve seen the impact of that first hand. Helping a team move away from heavily manual processes or seeing something we’ve built genuinely improve how they operate day to day, is something I find incredibly rewarding.

One thing that has really stood out to me recently is just how much this has come full circle.

Over the past few months, I have found myself working with former colleagues again, but in a completely different context. One of the companies I previously worked at is now implementing Detected for their KYB processes and another former colleague’s organisation is already using the platform.

I am also in conversations with several people I have worked with in the past who are now in new roles, facing similar challenges and actively exploring how those challenges could be solved differently.

What has been particularly interesting is that many of these teams are reassessing larger, more established solutions that, in reality, are no longer keeping up with what they need in practice.

From what I have seen, the challenge is not necessarily that those platforms are bad, but that they are often slower to evolve. In an environment where requirements are constantly changing and where processes need to be flexible and efficient, that gap becomes more visible over time.

In contrast, what I have experienced over the past year is how much value there is in continuous improvement. Regular releases, ongoing enhancements and a genuine focus on solving real customer challenges as they arise.

It is not just about what a platform can do today, but how quickly it can adapt to what is needed tomorrow.

I think it also speaks to the importance of trust. People know the way I work, the challenges I have faced myself and that I would not be part of something unless I genuinely believed in it.

It has really reinforced for me how universal these challenges are, but also how much the industry is starting to shift in how those challenges are approached. In many ways, it has brought me back to where I started, just with a different perspective and a different way to contribute.

What I have also learned is that even with the right approach and the right technology, change does not happen overnight. It takes time, alignment and trust to truly transform how teams operate.

One Year In

Looking back, moving from compliance operations into the tech space has given me a completely different perspective on how much the industry is evolving.

Regulations are becoming more complex, risk landscapes are expanding and manual processes simply do not scale anymore but what I have seen over the past year is that the organisations that succeed are not the ones that treat compliance as a burden.

They are the ones that treat it as infrastructure for trust and that is something I now see very differently than I did before.

And after a year at Detected, I am still excited to be part of that shift and more importantly, to be part of helping shape what that looks like in practice. I think the next few years will be even more interesting as expectations continue to evolve.

For teams going through that same shift, if there's one thing I’ve taken from the past year, it’s that the conversation around compliance is changing. It’s no longer just about managing risk, it’s about how you design processes that support growth, without compromising on that risk and I think we’re only just getting started.