Temenos’ Barb Morgan on Winning Best Compliance Solution and Redefining AI-Driven Financial Crime Compliance

We sat down with Barb Morgan, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Temenos, which won Best Compliance Solution in the 2025 Tech Ascension Awards to learn more about banks navigating rising regulatory and financial crime pressures. Barb also explains how the company's FCM AI Agent achieved less than 2% false positives using explainable, regulator-accepted AI.

Temenos recently won the 2025 Tech Ascension Award for “Best Compliance Solution.” What does this recognition mean for you and your clients? 

This recognition shows that Temenos is leading the way in AI-driven financial crime mitigation (FCM). For our clients, it means they’re working with a partner that delivers proven, regulator-accepted AI innovation, helping them reduce risk, cut costs, and deliver frictionless customer experiences. It’s about turning compliance from a burden into a competitive advantage through fewer manual reviews, faster straight-through processing, and significant operational savings. 

2. The FCM AI Agent has achieved less than 2% false positives — a remarkable benchmark. What makes this technology so effective compared to other compliance screening tools? 

Precision is the differentiator. Our proven AI model learns from context and historical patterns, dramatically reducing false positives compared to traditional rules-based systems. However, data science alone doesn’t move the needle. The real value emerges when AI is embedded directly into workflows, where autonomous, goal-driven agents can make intelligent, context-aware decisions within complex processes. That’s where banking compliance truly changes the game. 

Explainable AI is a key theme in Temenos’ approach. How does the “explainable” element of your AI model help build trust with regulators and clients? 

Transparency is non-negotiable in compliance. Our AI doesn’t operate as a black box; it provides clear, auditable reasoning for every decision. This builds trust with regulators, accelerates adoption by banks, and ensures ethical AI principles like bias mitigation and accountability are embedded from day one.  

Many banks are still cautious about adopting AI for compliance. What lessons have you learned from live Tier-1 deployments that might help others accelerate their journey? 

Start small, prove value, and build trust. Our “shadow mode” allows banks to validate AI performance in a safe environment as part of a phased rollout. Demonstrating measurable outcomes, like reduced false positives and improved customer experience, helps overcome internal resistance and builds confidence across the organization. 

Financial crime management is evolving fast with generative AI and real-time data. How do you see compliance solutions adapting over the next few years? 

The future of compliance is about confidently harnessing AI to drive speed, precision, and trust at scale. AI will enable smarter alert handling and faster investigations, while advanced analytics will anticipate risks before they occur. The future is about combining automation, explainability, and agility to keep pace with increasingly complex financial crime threats. 

The FCM AI Agent is cloud-native and API-driven. How important is flexibility and interoperability for financial institutions managing complex compliance environments? 

It’s essential. Banks operate across diverse jurisdictions and technology stacks. A cloud-native, API-first architecture ensures seamless integration, scalability, and rapid deployment, whether on-premises, private or public cloud or as SaaS. This flexibility minimizes implementation risk and future-proofs compliance strategies as regulations and technologies evolve. 

What’s next for Temenos? 

We’re continuing to push the boundaries of AI-driven innovation. Expect deeper automation, enhanced explainability, and scalable solutions that make compliance faster, smarter, and more intuitive.