Compliance teams need to assess more quickly who they are doing business with, the risks involved, and when those risks change. As corporate structures become more complex, customer and supplier networks grow increasingly international, and regulatory requirements become more stringent, relying solely on manual processes is no longer sufficient.
AI in compliance enables organizations to gather information faster, identify risks earlier, and prepare case files more efficiently. Rather than replacing compliance professionals, AI supports them within their existing workflows. This is where AI agents make a real difference: they assist with KYC, KYB, AML, screening, due diligence, and continuous monitoring.
De vraag is dus niet óf AI een rol krijgt in compliance, maar waar AI vandaag al waarde toevoegt. Dit zijn de belangrijkste manieren waarop organisaties AI kunnen inzetten binnen hun complianceprocessen.
1. Using AI for Entity Resolution
An effective compliance process starts with correctly identifying the right organization. While this may sound straightforward, in practice, company names, trade names, addresses, business locations, and corporate group structures can create significant confusion.
AI can help compare and match this information much faster. A unique identifier, such as the D-U-N-S® Number, enables organizations to be identified more consistently and linked to the correct legal entity, even when company names or corporate structures differ.
This provides greater clarity about the organization behind a customer, supplier, or third party. As a result, compliance teams are less likely to assess risk based on incorrect or incomplete business information.
2. Leveraging AI for KYC and KYB Onboarding
During KYC and KYB onboarding, organizations need to quickly establish who a company is, who is behind it, and what potential risks may be involved. AI agents can retrieve business information, summarize ownership structures, identify directors and ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs), and highlight relevant risk indicators.
This makes onboarding less dependent on manual research. Especially for KYB, the impact can be significant. Traditional onboarding often takes days or even weeks, whereas AI agents can dramatically accelerate the preparation process by making relevant business context instantly available within the workflow. According to early results reported by Dun & Bradstreet, AI-driven compliance workflows can reduce processing times by 70–96%.
3. Leveraging AI for Screening and Match Assessment
Sanctions screening, PEP screening, AML checks, and adverse media screening often generate a large number of potential matches. Not every match is relevant, but every match requires review. This is particularly challenging for individuals, where identical or similar names are common, spelling variations differ across countries, and without additional identifying information, it can be difficult to determine whether a match actually relates to the correct person.
AI can help distinguish relevant matches from false positives more quickly. An AI agent can add valuable context by assessing whether the match relates to the same organization or individual, verifying whether the name and location align, checking for additional data attributes such as date of birth, gender, or nationality, and identifying relevant business relationships that strengthen the risk signal.
This is important because false positives require a significant amount of manual review. According to early results reported by Dun & Bradstreet, AI-driven workflows can reduce false positives by 50–90%. This enables compliance teams to focus more quickly on the alerts that genuinely require their attention.
Interesting read: The future of AML in Europe: what reporting institutions need to know
4. Leveraging AI for UBO and Ownership Analysis
UBO investigations are often complex, particularly when dealing with international or multi-layered corporate structures. AI can help map shareholders, corporate relationships, and ultimate beneficial owners more clearly, providing compliance teams with a more comprehensive view of ownership and control.
AI can also make changes in ownership or management more quickly visible. This helps compliance teams determine whether a customer, supplier, or third party needs to be reassessed.
5. Leveraging AI for Perpetual KYC and Continuous Monitoring
Risks do not only change during onboarding or periodic reviews. A company may change ownership, become part of a different corporate group, enter a higher-risk market, or appear on a sanctions list.
AI supports perpetual KYC and continuous monitoring by continuously flagging relevant changes. As a result, compliance teams do not need to wait for the next scheduled review and can instead identify earlier which relationships require renewed attention.
Interesting read: Perpetual KYC: Why Customer Due Diligence Doesn’t End After Onboarding
6. Deploy AI for risk prioritization and justification
Not every case requires the same level of attention. AI can help prioritize alerts, matches, and cases based on risk, urgency, and internal policies. When multiple signals come together, it becomes faster and clearer which cases require immediate action.
In addition, AI can help ensure compliance cases are documented more consistently. This includes capturing the information used, relevant risk signals, changes over time, and follow-up actions. This supports internal controls, audits, and accountability.
AI in compliance starts with reliable business data.
AI can accelerate compliance, but only reliable data makes the output actionable. With D&B Risk Analytics, the D&B Commercial Graph, and the D-U-N-S® Number, organizations gain the business context needed for KYC/KYB, screening, due diligence, and monitoring. Via AI agents and MCP integration This context can be directly integrated into existing compliance workflows.
This positions AI not as a standalone tool, but as an integral part of a reliable compliance process: faster, better substantiated, and focused on the risks that truly require attention.
Learn more about how to apply AI in compliance or contact your account manager.
