Meet Gudmundur Kristjansson, CEO at AML & Financial Crime Technology Company: Lucinity

Lucinity is an AML and compliance software platform that uses augmented intelligence to aid financial crime professionals in banks and FinTechs. Our artificial intelligence monitors the behavior of clients to help find the needle in the haystack that could lead to potential money laundering. When these suspicious cases are detected, the data is contextualized through visualizations and a user-friendly interface that helps compliance officers interpret the case.

An AML Analyst in a bank could currently be spending 80% of their time making sense of data. Lucinity eliminates that problem, improving productivity and efficiency by over 50% for our clients, thus reducing alert fatigue. Our goal at Lucinity is to help our clients Make Money Good™ by making their financial crime-fighting jobs more straightforward, more engaging, and more effective.
 
 
Lucinity - Bobsguide
 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I developed my first reinforcement-based learning software when I was 14 and sold it when I was 16. It became the leading tool for dyslexic children in Iceland. I then went into MedTech, where I felt I was doing something good for the world. Afterward, I worked at NICE Systems as the Director of Product Management, where I really saw the opportunity to help improve the financial crime prevention industry.

I then joined Citigroup as the Director of Compliance Surveillance Technology, where I learned about AML from the inside of a bank for three years. At the time, financial institutions were easily spending $120 billion on AML, yet their employees were still using systems built in 2003 before the iPhone was invented. I saw nearly 99% of AML Analysts spending most of their day saying no to the software. This, combined with a series of major banks exposed to financial crime scandals, is why I decided to start Lucinity.
 

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Lucinity has snowballed since we launched in November 2018. This time last year, we had approximately 25 employees. Today, we have over 70 employees, more than doubling in growth. We are now a global company with employees, clients, and partners across Europe and North America.

This year has been specifically exhilarating for our growth and culture. Pleo, a $4.7B FinTech used by 20,000 companies, chose Lucinity as its central hub for financial crime prevention after a rigorous selection process of 50 vendors. We then announced a partnership with Experian, a partnership with SEON, and a funding round of $17 million.
 

What can we hope to see from Lucinity in the future?

 
Our goal is to be the most loved product in the AML industry and become the central hub for financial crime fighting for many organizations. We aim to have a lot of happy clients who are long-term partners and enjoy collaborating with us. In addition, we want to be seen as a company that flourishes and grows. This includes a 2-3x growth in revenue and keeping our Employee Net Promoter Scores (ENPS) high.