Community banks enter 2026 facing a compliance landscape unlike any in recent memory. Fraud is rising, exam expectations are expanding, and BSA/AML teams—especially those operating with lean staffing—are being pushed to manage more alerts, more documentation, and more risk with the same resources.
During our recent Finovifi BSA/AML webinar, our guest expert highlighted several trends that every institution should be preparing for right now. Below are the five insights that matter most as we move into a new regulatory cycle.
Fraud activity increasingly mirrors AML typologies, and AML anomalies increasingly begin with fraud behavior. Mule accounts, synthetic IDs, deposit fraud, and rapid funds movement now sit at the intersection of both domains.
When institutions use separate systems for fraud and AML, critical context is missed. Investigations slow down, risk escalates, and examiners notice the operational drag. In 2026, banks will need technology that lets fraud and AML teams work from the same source of truth—not parallel workflows.
Suspicious activity continues to rise. Yet across the industry, SAR filings have plateaued.
This isn’t a reduction in crime; it’s a symptom of workload. Alert queues grow faster than analysts can resolve them. Documentation takes too long. Routing and triage lack standardization. And many banks simply don’t have the staffing to keep pace.
Regulators are paying attention. They know teams are overwhelmed, and in 2026 they will expect clearer logic, cleaner narratives, and evidence that institutions have modernized their review process.
The BSA/AML burden is no longer just about the volume of regulation. It’s about the hours required to manage it.
Common pain points we heard from institutions:
One comment from the webinar stood out:
“Most banks aren’t under-regulated—they’re under-automated.”
Automation is becoming the only sustainable way community banks can maintain compliance without continually expanding staff.
Deposit fraud, mobile deposit scams, and account mule activity are reshaping the risk profiles of customers—especially early in the relationship.
Key shifts:
Static CDD/EDD models simply cannot evaluate today’s risks. Banks must adopt ongoing, behavior-driven risk monitoring.
Examiners understand staffing shortages. They also expect banks to compensate with technology that improves consistency, auditability, and documentation.
Community banks need:
This is the direction the industry is moving—and the reason Finovifi is launching BSA Guardian in January 2026.
Built for community banks, BSA Guardian brings together machine-learning transaction monitoring, real-time sanctions screening, dynamic customer risk scoring, integrated case management, and automated SAR assistance in a single platform. It gives lean BSA/AML teams the structure, intelligence, and efficiency needed to manage rising regulatory demands without adding unnecessary complexity.
Preparing for 2026 Starts Now
The institutions that thrive this year will be the ones that modernize proactively—not reactively.
To recap, the most important steps for 2026 are:
Community banks don’t need more pressure. They need more capability—and Finovifi is committed to delivering exactly that.