MENA's Leading Platform to Automate Compliance | January 2026 Product Updates

How AI-Powered Surveillance and Government Integration Transform Compliance Operations

Created by compliance practitioners. Designed for performance. Built to scale.

The Compliance Trilemma Keeping MENA RegTech Leaders Awake

Financial institutions operating across MENA face an impossible triangle: detect sophisticated trading fraud before regulators do, onboard clients faster without compromising suitability standards, and verify identities with government-grade certainty, all whilst managing exploding operational costs.

Traditional approaches force you to choose two at best. Manual trade surveillance catches patterns but drowns analysts in false positives. Suitability questionnaires reduce liability but create friction and inconsistency. Identity verification either relies on outdated document checks or expensive third-party services with incomplete coverage.

azakaw's January release breaks this trilemma with three targeted capabilities that don't just digitise existing processes; they fundamentally transform how compliance operates.

Challenge 1: Market Abuse Hides in Plain Sight Until It's Too Late

The Reality: Trading surveillance teams across MENA-regulated firms review thousands of transactions daily, hunting for patterns that might indicate insider trading, wash trading, or front-running. By the time suspicious activity is flagged through manual review, the damage is done and regulatory scrutiny has begun.

Why It Persists: Traditional rule-based systems generate excessive false positives. Analysts spend 70% of their time investigating legitimate trades whilst sophisticated actors exploit the noise to hide genuine fraud.

The Solution: Trade Audit & Forensic Monitoring System

azakaw's AI-powered surveillance engine analyses every trade in real-time through a dual-validation architecture, designed by compliance practitioners who understand the operational realities of MENA financial institutions:

Primary Detection Layer

• LLM-based fraud detection model scores each trade instantly

• Contextual analysis considers trader history, market conditions, and behavioural patterns

• Configurable risk thresholds adapt to your firm's risk appetite

Secondary Validation

• Automated corporate email keyword search when trades exceed thresholds

• Cross-references communication patterns with trading activity

• Prevents premature case closure on flagged transactions

Complete Audit Trail Every action (from initial flagging to investigation escalation to final resolution) is logged with full permission controls. Whether you're preparing for a regulatory examination or defending a compliance decision, the forensic trail is defensible and complete.

The Institutional Difference: Unlike point solutions that bolt onto existing systems, this surveillance capability is native to your trading infrastructure. Built by compliance practitioners who've run compliance operations at scale, trades flow directly from applications with automatic reconciliation, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Challenge 2: Risk Suitability Assessments Create Bottlenecks and Inconsistency

The Reality: Client risk tolerance drives product suitability, portfolio construction, and regulatory obligations. Yet most firms rely on subjective questionnaires interpreted differently by each relationship manager, creating compliance exposure and operational delays.

Why It Persists: Standardising human judgement is hard. Building custom scoring logic requires specialised development. Firms accept inconsistency as the cost of personalised service.

The Solution: Automated Risk Tolerance Calculation

azakaw transforms suitability assessment from subjective interpretation to standardised calculation:

Score-Based Classification

• Each questionnaire answer carries a predefined weight

• Total scores automatically map to Low, Medium, or High risk categories

• Instant classification displayed to clients for transparency

Regulatory Control with Flexibility Clients can accept the system-generated classification or override it, but every override is timestamped and logged with the original calculated result. This preserves client autonomy whilst maintaining regulatory defensibility.

The Compliance Advantage: When regulators question a high-risk classification that led to investment losses, you can demonstrate both the objective scoring methodology and the client's informed override decision. The audit trail protects both parties.

Challenge 3: Identity Verification Relies on Documents Anyone Can Forge

The Reality: KYC processes across MENA depend on document uploads, manual checks, and third-party databases with inconsistent coverage. Sophisticated fraudsters exploit these gaps whilst legitimate clients face friction and delays. For MENA-regulated firms, meeting KYC and KYB requirements whilst maintaining efficiency remains a critical challenge.

Why It Persists: Government identity databases exist but integrating them requires navigating complex protocols, managing multiple authentication layers, and ensuring data flows correctly into onboarding systems.

The Solution: Absher OTP & Yakeen Integration

As part of azakaw's comprehensive digital onboarding capabilities (covering both KYC and KYB), we now connect directly to KSA's authoritative identity sources through a two-stage verification process:

Stage 1: Absher OTP Authentication

• Secure OTP verification replaces legacy authentication methods

• Triggered automatically when clients enter National ID or Iqama

• Verification codes delivered directly to registered mobile numbers

• Full transaction logging for every authentication attempt

Stage 2: Yakeen Data Retrieval Once identity is confirmed, verified data flows directly into onboarding:

• First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth

• Nationality, ID Number, Expiry Date

• National Address (complete Saudi postal system integration) 

Data Integrity Controls All auto-populated fields are locked as read-only. Clients can't modify government-verified information, eliminating the risk of manual data entry errors or deliberate falsification.

The Regulatory Difference: You're no longer relying on document uploads you hope are genuine. You're integrating with the same government systems that issued the identity in the first place.

Strategic Impact: One Comprehensive System for MENA Compliance

These January releases strengthen azakaw's position as MENA's leading platform to automate compliance across your entire regulatory lifecycle:

Digital Onboarding (KYC/KYB) → Government-verified identities and standardised risk assessment

AML Screening & Transaction Monitoring → AI-powered surveillance that catches what humans miss

Corporate Compliance → Complete audit trails and forensic defensibility 

Most importantly, these aren't standalone tools. They're integrated capabilities within one comprehensive system, sharing data, audit logs, and compliance workflows. The risk tolerance calculated during onboarding informs transaction monitoring thresholds. The identity verified through Yakeen becomes the trusted record for all future compliance checks.

Built by compliance practitioners who understand MENA regulatory requirements, azakaw ensures MENA-regulated firms remain audit-ready across digital onboarding (KYC/KYB), AML screening, transaction monitoring, and corporate compliance. This is the platform advantage: designed for performance under operational pressure and built to scale with your institution's growth.

What This Means for Your Compliance Strategy 

If you're still relying on manual surveillance, subjective suitability assessments, or document-based identity verification, you're not just inefficient; you're exposed. 

MENA regulators expect firms to deploy technology that matches the sophistication of the threats they face. AI-powered surveillance isn't optional when fraudsters use AI to hide their tracks. Government integration isn't optional when document fraud is trivial to execute.

azakaw's January release gives you the defensive capabilities regulators expect and the operational efficiency your business demands, all within an audit-ready platform built specifically for MENA-regulated firms.

Ready to see how MENA's leading compliance automation platform transforms your operations?

Contact our team to schedule a demonstration of our platform built by compliance practitioners, including Trade Audit & Forensic Monitoring, Automated Risk Tolerance Calculation, and KSA Identity Verification integrated with your existing infrastructure.