Overview
A leading U.S. retail bank set out to modernize its compliance operations at a time when regulatory expectations, customer-facing volume, and internal oversight requirements were steadily increasing. The bank’s Compliance organization spanned the full three-lines-of-defense model and was responsible for ensuring that frontline employees understood policy, that oversight teams could review applications and product changes efficiently, and that customer interactions consistently adhered to internal and regulatory standards. Many of these activities were heavily manual, inconsistent across teams, and difficult to scale. Using StackAI, the bank implemented a suite of AI agents that delivered fast, citation-backed guidance to business users, accelerated KYC oversight, and enabled comprehensive call-compliance monitoring across thousands of daily interactions. The results?
Reduced average review time from 27 minutes to 9 minutes and tripling analyst throughput
Answered more than 18,000 frontline policy questions in the first 90 days, cutting inbound inquiries to Compliance by 60%
Expanded call oversight from <5% manual sampling to 100% automated review
Reduced manual compliance workload by an estimated 14,000 hours annually
Strengthening the First Line of Defense
In the first line of defense, the bank’s business teams needed to make policy-aligned decisions every day. Whether designing new product features, updating website content, or handling routine customer inquiries, employees often struggled to locate the correct policy documents or interpret their requirements. Key knowledge lived in PDFs, static intranet pages, and email threads, which slowed down decision-making and created avoidable risk.
The Solution: Real-Time Policy Guidance for Business Teams
To address this, the bank deployed a Compliance Chatbot that allowed employees to ask questions in natural language and receive accurate, citation-linked answers drawn from the bank’s official policy library and regulatory documentation. Staff could instantly confirm how to handle sensitive information, which disclosures were mandatory for a particular product, or what internal approval sequence was required before launching a new feature. By giving the first line of defense immediate access to authoritative guidance, the bank reduced ambiguity, improved accuracy, and strengthened frontline adherence to compliance standards.
Accelerating the Second Line of Defense
The second line of defense, staffed by compliance controllers and oversight specialists, was responsible for reviewing KYC files, evaluating customer applications, and ensuring that changes to products or processes met regulatory requirements. Growing volumes of applications, combined with increasing complexity in identity verification and AML checks, placed significant pressure on turnaround times and consistency.
The Solution: Automated KYC Review and Oversight
Through StackAI, the bank implemented a KYC Review Agent that ingested customer applications, supporting documents, and third-party verification results, and then synthesized a structured compliance assessment. The agent identified missing information, flagged inconsistencies, highlighted potential AML concerns, and provided analysts with a coherent summary of issues that required attention. As a result, reviewers no longer needed to manually compile information from disparate systems, and the overall evaluation process became significantly faster and more reliable. Analysts could now focus on judgment-driven decisions rather than repetitive investigative work, improving both throughput and oversight quality.
The deployment of AI agents across the three lines of defense created a more consistent, efficient, and proactive compliance organization. KYC reviews were completed significantly faster, enabling analysts to redirect their attention to edge cases and complex risk scenarios. Customer calls, once reviewed sporadically, were now monitored continuously, providing the bank with unprecedented visibility into conduct and regulatory adherence. Frontline teams were empowered with immediate access to authoritative policy guidance, reducing the likelihood of misinterpretation and rework downstream. Together, these improvements reduced operational bottlenecks, strengthened regulatory posture, and increased confidence across all levels of the organization.
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