Cynopsis Solutions named Regulatory Leader at Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) FinTech Excellence Awards 2025

Singapore, 18 November 2025 – Cynopsis Solutions has been named the winner of the Regulatory Leader Award at the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) FinTech Excellence Awards, held in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the Singapore FinTech Festival.

The SFF FinTech Excellence Awards are jointly organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Singapore FinTech Association, with support from PwC Singapore. The award ceremony recognises organisations and individuals whose work strengthens regulatory compliance, financial inclusion and innovation in financial services. In the Regulatory Leader category, submissions are evaluated on impact, practicality, interoperability, uniqueness and creativity, and sustainability.

Cynopsis received this recognition for the way its KYC, AML and CTF platforms are used as regulatory architecture that authorities and financial institutions can rely on as shared infrastructure, rather than as isolated tools deployed institution by institution.

What this recognition means for your financial crime programme

Beyond the announcement itself, this recognition signals how the platform performs under real regulatory and operational conditions. The award was granted on the strength of a live deployment where customers are onboarded, screened and monitored every day, and where decisions are regularly tested by internal audit and supervisors.

The recognised deployment operates in a production environment and supports regulators and financial institutions that share a common financial crime framework. Instead of each participant interpreting requirements on its own, the underlying architecture provides a consistent layer of controls, data and evidence. Institutions continue to apply their own internal policies and risk appetite, but they do so on top of a shared foundation that is aligned with regulatory expectations.

Independent evaluation under the SFF FinTech Excellence Awards framework provides additional confidence that this approach is credible to supervisors, scalable across multiple financial institutions and workable for frontline teams that need to close reviews, document decisions and defend outcomes across multiple participants and workable for frontline teams that need to close reviews, document decisions and defend outcomes.

Using a common platform to support shared regulatory infrastructure

Most KYC and AML platforms are implemented one institution at a time. In this project, the Cynopsis platforms are built and used differently, as shared compliance rails that sit beneath an entire banking and financial ecosystem.

At the centre is a technology stack that brings together digital onboarding, KYC due diligence, sanctions and PEP screening, adverse media checks, risk assessment, ongoing monitoring and case management. When these capabilities are deployed in a coordinated manner, they form a regulatory architecture that regulators, banks and other market participants can build their compliance programmes on.

Regulatory expectations are translated into configurable rules, risk factors, workflows and evidence standards that can be applied across multiple institutions. Participants connect through well defined interfaces and integrations, while keeping control over risk appetite, product design and internal governance. From a supervisory standpoint, this creates clearer visibility over how customer financial crime risk is assessed and managed across the system, instead of requiring review of a patchwork of differing interpretations.

This use of the same KYC and AML platforms as shared infrastructure, rather than separate applications, is a key reason the Cynopsis solution stood out in the Regulatory Leader category.

What the award recognises in our approach

The SFF FinTech Excellence Awards framework looks at real outcomes, not just innovation in isolation. Cynopsis demonstrated strength across all assessment areas in a way that ties back to how programmes operate in practice.

In terms of impact, the deployment showed that a common control layer can lift the overall quality and consistency of financial crime controls. By moving core elements of KYC and AML into a shared foundation, duplication was reduced, variation in control strength narrowed and case files became more complete and connected. This allows compliance teams to focus on genuinely higher risk relationships rather than spending time reconciling fragmented records.

From a practicality perspective, the solution has been proven under business as usual conditions. The platforms sit alongside existing onboarding channels, core systems and approval structures, so analysts and reviewers follow familiar steps. Control points are strengthened and documentation is captured automatically in the background. Institutions therefore improve control effectiveness without needing to rewrite every procedure.

Interoperability was another defining feature. The architecture is designed to link regulators, financial institutions and infrastructure providers through shared data models and interfaces. Identification data, documents and risk information can be taken from multiple sources, processed under consistent checks and risk models, then returned as structured outcomes into the systems teams already use for customer lifecycle management, monitoring and reporting.

The approach is also distinctive in the way it applies a regulatory-first design. The starting point is supervisory expectations and AML and CTF standards, rather than a generic workflow template. Capabilities such as advanced search logic, configurable risk scoring and structured case management are configured around the questions that compliance teams regularly face from internal audit, senior management and supervisors. These include why a relationship was approved, which checks were performed, how the customer’s risk profile has evolved and what evidence supports the current position.

Over the longer term, the deployment has shown that the architecture is sustainable. Changes in legislation, guidance or typologies can be reflected through configuration rather than complex redevelopment. The same foundation can be extended into new customer segments or jurisdictions, providing a long term path for regulators and institutions instead of a one off initiative.

How this compliance infrastructure can support your context

Specific client deployments remain confidential, yet the pattern recognised by this award is directly relevant if you are reviewing your own financial crime framework.

Regulatory authorities can treat this as a case study that shared compliance infrastructure across markets or sectors is achievable while still respecting institutional autonomy. Common rails for onboarding, screening and risk assessment can lift baseline standards across participants, while each institution continues to apply its own risk appetite and product strategy above that base.

On the institution side, a regulatory-first architecture helps bring structure to complex customer segments, reduces uncertainty around expectations and makes it easier to demonstrate that controls are working as intended. When the underlying platform already reflects how regulators expect programmes to operate, compliance teams can focus on managing risk and closing cases rather than repeatedly reinterpreting new guidance.

The same architecture can support remote onboarding, cross-border client populations and sector wide improvements in screening quality and evidence documentation and capture. In each of these areas, a proven KYC and AML platform is used as infrastructure for regulatory outcomes, not just as another piece of software to help you check boxes.

Comments from Cynopsis Solutions

Exploring the next phase of your financial crime framework

Many banks, financial institutions and payments firms are revisiting how their financial crime frameworks are structured, the tools they rely on and how everything integrates to form a unified defence. The recognition from this global award demonstrates our capability to work with national-level regulatory bodies and institutions on building coherent, regulatory-aligned architectures that support daily operations and meet supervisory expectations.

If your institution is exploring how to streamline your compliance stack, our team is open to a conversation on how different approaches can be calibrated to your risk profile and operating model. Rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach, we work with institutions to understand their objectives and constraints, then consider whether and how our compliance architecture can play a role in an optimised stack that delivers effective and sustainable financial crime control.

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About the SFF FinTech Excellence Awards

The FinTech Excellence Awards is part of the Singapore FinTech Festival, one of the world's largest platforms bringing together the global policy, finance and technology communities to advance financial innovation. The Awards are jointly organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Singapore FinTech Association, with support from PwC Singapore. They recognise corporates and individuals whose innovations strengthen governance, promote inclusion and enhance the delivery of financial services.

About Cynopsis Solutions

Cynopsis Solutions is a Singapore-headquartered regulatory technology company that helps financial institutions and other regulated entities manage customer financial crime risk with confidence. Its end-to-end compliance KYC, AML, and CTF solutions are designed by compliance experts and aligned with international Financial Action Task Force standards.