Can Compliance be a Philosophical Problem?

What If Compliance Isn’t a Regulatory Problem, But a Philosophical One?

In the world of global finance, “compliance” is often treated as a burden. A hurdle. A cost centre. Something to be managed, minimised, an afterthought

But what if we’ve been looking at it all wrong?

What if compliance isn’t a bureaucratic burden, but a reflection of philosophy — a signal of what we value, how we define legitimacy, and ultimately, who we allow into the system? Because make no mistake: compliance isn’t just about rules. It’s about worldview.

Every regulation is based on assumptions. Assumptions about what makes a person trustworthy. About which behaviours are normal. About which documents matter. And most of those assumptions come from the same narrow corridors of European and American governance — translated into acronyms, exported through institutions, and enforced through financial gatekeeping.

It’s no surprise, then, that billions of people find themselves misaligned with the system. They’re not non-compliant in any meaningful sense. They simply live in contexts the system never considered.

I’ve encountered this across every region I’ve worked in. A successful trader in Lagos who can’t open a corporate account in Dubai. A generational business in Lahore that fails automated due diligence because their documentation is in Urdu. A high-integrity family office in the Gulf, flagged simply because they don’t use Western trustees.

These aren’t outliers. They’re the norm. And they expose the truth: global compliance today isn’t built for inclusion. It’s built for control.

But it doesn’t have to be.

If we shift our mindset, compliance can be a lens through which we build systems that are more intelligent, more adaptive, and more just. We can stop asking how to make people fit the rules and start asking how to make the rules fit people — without compromising rigour.

This is where technology can play a transformative role. Not by replacing compliance officers with algorithms, but by enabling compliance frameworks that understand context. That speak multiple cultural “languages.” That recognise nuance and pattern, not just paper and precedent.

Imagine a system that learns from local behaviour — not to flag it as suspicious, but to map it against a wider matrix of trust. Imagine a compliance engine that sees the whole person, not just a passport scan. Imagine due diligence that respects cultural difference without sacrificing clarity.

More about redefining than lowering standards.

The best compliance doesn’t create barriers — it builds bridges. It allows good actors from complex environments to be recognised for who they are. It filters risk based on behaviour, not postcode. It acknowledges that integrity is not monopolised by geography.

To me, compliance should not and cannot be just a checkbox. It’s a mirror. It shows us what we think matters — and who we think belongs. And right now, that mirror reflects a system that still hasn’t made peace with plurality

But we can change that.

We can choose to see compliance not as a constraint, but as a canvas. A chance to encode ethics into code. To turn philosophy into process. To design systems that do more than meet regulations — they reshape them.

If we do that, then compliance becomes something far more powerful than a department. It becomes a declaration: that we believe in a world where inclusion is rigorous, and trust is earned — not inherited. And that’s a world I want to help build.

Inclusion Starts at the Core: Building a System That Understands

Inclusion has become a buzzword. It’s splashed across slide decks and investor briefs, used to sell apps and justify expansions into “emerging markets.” But I’ve come to believe that real inclusion doesn’t begin with strategy. It begins with architecture.

And architecture, like values, is invisible until it’s tested.

If your system wasn’t designed for people at the margins, it doesn’t matter how good your UI is or how many languages your chatbot speaks — exclusion is baked in. You can’t retrofit empathy. You have to build it into the core.

What do I mean by the core? I’m not just talking about servers and code. I’m talking about logic — the underlying assumptions that determine how systems respond to the unknown.

In most financial systems, the core logic is binary: compliant or non-compliant. Trusted or not. White-listed or flagged. And those decisions are driven by standards designed in London, New York, Frankfurt — places with specific regulatory histories and cultural biases.

Now apply that same core logic to someone in Kinshasa or Karachi or Kampala. Someone whose documents don’t map cleanly to expected formats. Someone whose financial activity reflects regional realities, not Western norms. The system doesn’t know what to do — so it says no.

And frankly, that’s due to ignorance not risk.

A truly inclusive system doesn’t just verify — it interprets. It doesn’t just check identity — it understands its context. It doesn’t assume risk based on geography — it measures behaviour in situ.

We have the technology now. Machine learning models can learn from local data. AI can be trained to recognise legitimate patterns that don’t conform to Western defaults. And yet most platforms still apply the same narrow filters to everyone — flattening difference into suspicion.

I believe inclusion is a function of intelligence. Not artificial intelligence — cultural intelligence.

The most powerful thing we can do is teach our systems to see. To see reputational trust in informal economies. To see the nuance in community-based finance. To see integrity in forms we haven’t been trained to expect.

This doesn’t just benefit the so-called unbanked. It makes the whole system better. Because when you build for nuance, you catch more real risks and exclude fewer good people. You stop relying on blunt instruments and start building surgical ones.

But none of this happens unless inclusion is a design principle, not a PR strategy. Unless it lives in the core, not just in the pitch.

That’s the work I care about. Not app layers or slogans — but foundational shifts in how we think about legitimacy, trust, and value.

If we want a world where people are judged on who they are, not where they’re from, we need systems that are capable of recognising the difference.

That recognition has to start deep in the architecture — because that’s where real inclusion is either born or buried.