Q: How did you enter the world of compliance?

A: I started in compliance by coming in from banking and a government body and then moved into FinTech. I worked for the International Olympic Committee, then the Italian Parliament, then I worked for a stock brokerage. I did over six years at Oppenheimer & Co as a compliance AML officer. I looked after the Israei match. There's no one loser. We don't want to admit that the system is obsolete and very slow. When you ask the customer to explain why he wants to do an unusual transaction and he gives you an answer, you have to look into it before he makes the transaction itself.

Q: Will you ever get out of compliance?

A: Not for now. I quite like what I'm doing now, building compliance technology. 15 years ago there was a fear in the office of compliance officers but now there's a different vibe. Compliance is on the front line now. Compliance can help the growth of a firm. Today it's very unusual to find a compliance officer who's glad to use technology to do his job. The old-school compliance officer usually works behind a firewall and the tech team is somewhere else. I don't want to be sitting at my desk writing policies and procedures all day. Nobody can follow them anyway if they do not match the reality of the firm’s business model – in that case they are just there for visiting regulators to read. I want to be involved in the building of the product from day one and to make sure that we actually apply all compliance rules accordingly.

If I were to leave I'd teach at university – I did it before. I'd like to teach youngsters to be a chief compliance officer like me.