At Consortix, we’ve spent more than ten years helping banks strengthen their defenses against financial crime. During that time, we’ve taken part in more RFIs and RFPs than we can count. The shift in what banks ask for is unmistakable. The conversations today look nothing like they did even a few years ago.
Not long ago, proposals were all about long feature lists. Banks wanted one vendor to deliver everything in a single package: transaction monitoring, customer risk scoring, case management, and more.
That’s no longer the dominant view. The leading institutions now ask about openness, speed of integration, and the freedom to add new tools. Their focus has moved to different questions.
Can we plug in new capabilities without a major project? Can we scale fast? Can we adjust as technology, regulation, and threats change?
Financial crime risks now evolve too quickly for any single, all-in-one platform to keep pace. Typologies, regulatory expectations, and criminal behavior change far faster than traditional systems can.
At the same time, the market has become richer. Cloud-native, API-driven vendors now offer highly specialized capabilities: anomaly detection, network analysis, watchlist intelligence, investigator-assist tools. Each is excellent at a specific task. They don’t claim to do everything, and that focus is exactly what makes them valuable.
This is why the former “one vendor for everything” mindset has slipped into the past. It made sense when systems were static and innovation cycles were slow. Today, flexibility and openness matter far more than the illusion of a complete solution from a single provider.
A composite stack is a collection of specialized components designed to work together. At its center is a strong analytics and case-management platform, often supported by AI-driven tools that can enrich data or create investigator narratives on demand.
Around this core sit specialized detection modules (watchlist screening, anomaly detection, fraud detection, and others) all connected through modern, real-time APIs.
These elements don’t have to come from the same vendor. That’s intentional. The value lies in picking the best tool for each task and connecting them into one operational system. Because these services are cloud-based and built on standard interfaces, they don’t need to share the same infrastructure or legacy foundations. They simply integrate and run.
And importantly, banks don’t always have to replace what they already use. Existing systems can be connected and enhanced with new modules, extending their life instead of forcing a costly rebuild.
A composite approach gives banks real advantages: the ability to adopt new capabilities quickly, avoid dependence on a single supplier, scale parts of the system independently, and take advantage of new innovations without waiting for a large vendor’s release cycle.
For some teams, sticking with a single vendor still feels simpler. It often creates rigid systems that are slow to adapt.
A stronger approach is to define the real challenges, choose the right tools from trustworthy partners, and bring them together in one secure, unified environment. That’s where we come in: helping institutions compose solutions from a curated set of vendors and ensuring everything connects smoothly.
From the bank’s perspective, the result is not patchwork. It’s a resilient system designed to keep up with the risks of today and ready for tomorrow.
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