“No one has to remember about an investigation. We now have a system in place that reminds us to revisit the case in an appropriate amount of time, which has allowed us the freedom to prioritize our work with the knowledge that everything will be waiting there for us when we do have a moment to focus.”
Paulo Donati
Compliance & Risk Operations Manager at Metal Pay
Company Facts
Company fact 1
$1 Billion
Company fact 2
100,000
Company fact 3
23 Across Ohio & Michigan
Company fact 4
285
THE PROBLEM
When Paulo joined Metal Pay, the company was already finalizing its contract with Unit21. However, prior to implementing Unit21’s Transaction Monitoring and Case Management software, Metal Pay was using an internally built system, which was difficult to update and costly to maintain. When referring to internally developed systems like the one that Metal Pay had in place before moving to Unit21, Paulo noted that “if it’s not developed in a scalable way, it can be a bottleneck for both the compliance team and dev team. Having a quality case management system improves a compliance team’s organization and time management, which are critical for time-sensitive reporting obligations.” The decision to move away from an in-house system to a software platform like Unit21 was an easy one, and choosing Unit21 as their risk and compliance operations solution was also a bit of a no-brainer. When asked about which other vendors they considered, Paulo mentioned that Unit21 was already being utilized for a different Metal Pay product.
Given that everything was working well for that team, they decided to keep working with Unit 21 instead of vetting other options.
TLDR: Problems
Transition from Costly Internal System
Scalable Case Management for Compliance
WHY UNIT21
Ultimately, they chose Unit21 because they were able to see first-hand how the product is constantly improving and how intent the Unit21 team is to listen to customer needs and address their pain points. They recognized that Unit21 continuously incorporates customer feedback and ideas, and this was a key selling point for them.
TLDR: Why Unit21
Continuous Product Improvement
Customer Feedback Integration
“It’s clear that Unit21 has a talented team that knows how to build quality software. Going with a legacy case management system is extremely costly, and for the most part, they are not innovating enough to keep up with the needs of fast-growing fintechs and crypto companies.”
customer quote citation
THE RESULTS
In terms of how Paulo and his team are using Unit21, he is pleased with the flexibility that the Unit21 software offers when it comes to testing different rules, iterating on escalation workflows, and experimenting with operational procedures for alerts and cases. He pointed out specifically that one of Unit21’s key features, shadow mode (or “silent mode”), has helped him run transaction monitoring rules in the background that don’t affect his alert queues, but allow him to investigate these “shadow” alerts to get an understanding of the quality of a given rule that might be considered for production. In a nutshell, as an alternative to historical validation of detection modeling rules, this feature allows rules to run in "silent mode" where alerts are not sent into production queues for review, but can still be used as part of the validation results. This feature has helped Metal Pay quickly test and iterate on their transaction monitoring rules so they can continuously improve upon their process.
TLDR: Results with Unit21
Flexible Rule Testing and Iteration
Shadow Mode for Background Assessment
Enhanced Monitoring Process
“I think Unit21 possibly has the best technical team focused on AML compliance products. Additionally, Unit21’s active engagement with its customers is unlike any other compliance vendor I’ve seen in this industry. I don’t know of any company providing this level of support to their customers.”
