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Europe's new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) is beginning to take shape, with an ambitious mandate to harmonise AML supervision, strengthen financial intelligence, and create a more consistent approach to tackling financial crime across the EU.
As I tuned into the livestream of AMLA's first public conference, I was interested to hear how the authority plans to approach some of the biggest challenges facing the industry today. Topics ranged from AI and cross-border financial crime to public-private partnerships, supervision, financial intelligence, and the future of AML across Europe.
While there were plenty of discussions around regulation and implementation, one message stood out to me above all others: AML needs to become more effective, not more complex.
Financial crime is evolving faster than traditional approaches
One of the clearest messages from the conference was that the nature of financial crime is changing faster than many of the frameworks designed to combat it. Criminal networks are increasingly cross-border, funds move faster than ever, and technologies such as AI are creating opportunities for both legitimate businesses and bad actors. But, as one speaker noted, the same technologies that empower criminals can also empower those trying to stop them.
At the same time, compliance teams, regulators, and financial intelligence units face a familiar challenge: threats are growing faster than resources. The scale and complexity of financial crime continues to increase, yet budgets and operational capacity cannot keep pace indefinitely. This creates pressure on everyone involved in the fight against financial crime to work smarter rather than simply work harder.
That reality appeared to underpin much of the thinking from AMLA. Throughout the conference, there was a recognition that simply adding more controls, more reporting, or more complexity is unlikely to deliver better outcomes. Instead, the focus was on identifying ways to improve effectiveness, prioritise resources, and ensure that efforts are concentrated on the risks that matter most.
From reporting to intelligence
One area where this philosophy was particularly visible was the discussion around financial intelligence and reporting.
AMLA repeatedly emphasised the importance of moving beyond reporting for the sake of reporting. In fact, one of its early priorities appears to be the harmonisation of reporting across Europe. The logic is straightforward: if supervisors and Financial Intelligence Units receive information in different formats, with varying levels of quality and different interpretations of risk, it becomes much harder to build a consistent picture of financial crime across the EU.
The ambition is not simply to standardise reporting processes, but to improve the quality of the intelligence generated from them. That means more structured and consistent reporting frameworks, higher quality suspicious activity reports, better information sharing between authorities and FIUs, and a stronger collective understanding of emerging typologies and risks.
What struck me was the emphasis on quality over volume. Success should not be measured by how many alerts are generated nor how many reports are submitted. It should be measured by whether those reports contribute to meaningful intelligence and help identify criminal activity more effectively. At a time when institutions are dealing with increasing volumes of data and growing operational pressure, reducing noise and improving signal quality feels like an increasingly important objective.
Harmonisation, collaboration and the role of technology
Another recurring theme was the idea that AML cannot be tackled in silos.
Whether discussing supervision, financial intelligence, or emerging threats, speakers repeatedly returned to the importance of cooperation between regulators, financial institutions, FIUs, and technology providers. Several discussions focused on strengthening public-private partnerships, improving knowledge sharing, and creating a more consistent understanding of risk across Europe.
This is also where the conversations around harmonisation became particularly interesting. Terms such as convergence, standardisation, and the Single Rulebook can sometimes sound like additional layers of regulation. Yet the impression I took away was quite the opposite. AMLA's vision appears to be rooted in simplification. By creating more consistent supervisory expectations and a common understanding of risk across member states, organisations operating across multiple jurisdictions could ultimately face less fragmentation and greater clarity.
Technology was positioned in a similar way. AI featured throughout the day, but not as a standalone objective or a silver bullet. Instead, it was consistently discussed as an enabler of better outcomes. Better detection. Better intelligence. Better reporting. Better allocation of limited resources.
One observation I found particularly interesting was that AMLA is arguably the first European AML supervisor being built in the era of AI. Unlike many organisations that are trying to modernise decades of legacy infrastructure, AMLA has the opportunity to design processes and frameworks with modern technologies in mind from the outset. That does not mean technology is the answer to every challenge, but it does create an opportunity to rethink how supervision, intelligence sharing, and risk management can operate in a more connected and data-driven environment.
From activity to outcomes
Perhaps my biggest takeaway from the conference was a broader shift in mindset.
The discussions around AMLA's future supervisory framework, including its direct supervision model and risk-based approach, all seemed to point towards the same objective: moving beyond checkbox compliance and focusing on outcomes.
For years, AML programmes have often been measured by activity. How many alerts were generated. How many reports were filed. How many reviews were completed. While these metrics remain important, AMLA appears to be asking a different question: are these activities actually helping reduce financial crime?
That may sound simple, but it represents a significant shift in perspective. Success becomes less about volume and more about impact. Are we identifying meaningful risk? Are we generating better intelligence? Are we making it harder for criminals to exploit the financial system? Are we creating a framework that genuinely improves the effectiveness of AML across Europe?
If there was one thread connecting the discussions on harmonisation, reporting, technology, supervision, and collaboration, it was this focus on outcomes.
Final thoughts
Going into the conference, I expected discussions about regulation. What I came away with was a conversation about effectiveness.
Simplification rather than complexity. Intelligence rather than volume. Collaboration rather than silos. Technology as an enabler rather than an objective.
The road ahead will undoubtedly be challenging, and AMLA itself acknowledged that. Yet if the themes discussed in Frankfurt are anything to go by, the ambition is not to create more AML.
It's to create better AML.
Have your say
One thing AMLA repeatedly emphasised throughout the conference was the importance of industry participation. The authority is actively seeking feedback on a number of consultations, including its draft Guidelines on Ongoing Monitoring of Business Relationships.
If AMLA's future framework is going to be built on collaboration, now is the time for financial institutions, technology providers, and industry stakeholders to contribute their perspectives and help shape what comes next.
https://www.amla.europa.eu/policy/public-consultations_en
